Treating Depression with Cognitive Therapy

<a href="http://Emotional.lifetips.com/cat/57242/behavioral-health-treatment-and-therapy/index.html">Depression is becoming increasingly more common in young children today. Depression is not a temporary change in mood, but a pattern of behaviors that are persistent over time. Children who are depressed have cognitive structures of self-defeat, negativism, or sadness. They may have a negative view of themselves, other people, the world, and even their future.

One way to treat depression in children is through the use of cognitive behavioral-health-treatment-and-therapy/index.html">therapy. Cognitive therapy is a way of restructuring those negative thought patterns. The focus is typically to improve a child´s outlook while fostering the child´s social skills and interactions in social activities.

Do do this, the child is helped to "re-think" situations in advance of a problem situation. For example, a child might say, "There is no use in me trying out for the baseball team. I am no good at sports and will not be chosen anyway." Help the child restructure those thoughts. For example, "You are being hard on yourself. I remember seeing you hit a home run last session. Let´s think of some other times when you played really well." I like to write these down.

Next, teach the child to think of these positive experiences when the negative thoughts come to mind. In other words, instead of thinking "I am no good at baseball", teach the child to think "I hit a home run last session".

Teaching new thought patterns takes time and repetition and can be reinforced by modeling the new thoughts aloud, providing prompts and cues when negative thoughts appear, and helping the child practice these new thoughts before an anticipated situation.