Abstract
Public health initiatives at both federal and state levels have increased public awareness of the impact of mental illness on children and adolescents. The resultant de-mystification and de-stigmatization of mental illness will result in greater demand for mental health services. Furthermore, better informed consumers and health service managers concerned with how best to use scarce resources, will be expecting that services provided to meet increasing demand will be effective and efficient. Getting quality information on best clinical practice, supported by research, and how to rationally implement the use of effective treatment should be a high priority.
In child and adolescent psychiatry many effective treatments have been developed. The challenge has been how to translate the findings from the laboratory to the front-line of community-based mental health services and private practice. This monograph attempts to tackle this issue for the treatment of child and adolescent depression.
The prevalence rates in the community of depressive disorders in children vary from 1–3%, in adolescents from 3–9%, with cumulative rates of greater than 20% by age 18 years. Many adolescents with depressive disorders are never diagnosed, few ever receive effective treatments, with significant deleterious effects on social and academic achievement. This monograph focuses on evidence for the effectiveness of psychological and pharmacological treatments for major depression and dysthymia. Chapters also focus on the controversies surrounding the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in childhood and adolescence and interventions for suicidal adolescents. The authors are established researchers in the field, and the chapters are succinct summaries of the areas covered, though there is a disappointing overlap considering the brevity of the text.
It is difficult to recommend this book unreservedly as research in this field is proceeding at an accelerating rate, with texts quickly going out of date and with many good reviews and practice guidelines being published in the journals. Texts on how to implement evidence based treatments such as Kendal's book Child and adolescent therapy; cognitive behavioural procedures, Guilford, 2000; and Mufson et al.'s Interpersonal psychotherapy for depressed adolescents, Guilford, 1993; or a comprehensive review of evidence based treatments for child and adolescent mental health disorders, for example What works for whom, edited by Fonagy, Target et al. Guilford, 2002, might be better investments for the scarce resources of trainees and mental health librarians. One could recommend the text however, for its useful discussion of the evidence for childhood bipolar disorder, and the application of DBT in treating adolescents prone to repeated suicide attempts.