Exactly. And it's a combination usually. It's really hard to do constructive therapy when you are depressed. Stabilise with the meds and then tackle the root causes with therapy.

But some people just are very prone to depression and need the extra help.

You wouldn't say "don't give that kid ibuprofen, let them just deal with the pain"?

And SSRIs are not very strong. They do have some nasty side effects especially sexually but this is not relevant at that age so that makes it even more suitable for kids than adults.

I would be very cautious advising SSRIs for anyone, especially developing children, considering my own experience (on sertralin), which was complete disappearance of a libido, and massive weight gain, +40kg (70 -> 110) in ~10 months. 5 years later I still have not undone the damage from it.

Yeah but it's something that affects people differently. I took escitalopram and my libido was a bit reduced but mainly it became harder to orgasm. That was not all bad, it's nice to be able to last an hour and a half :) I was already heavy but didn't gain any more weight. I did lose some when I moved to other stuff though.

But these side-effects just need to be checked for (and the libido issue isn't relevant to under-teens anyway).

How you acknowledge serious side effects some people have, sweep them aside with "but some people don't," and act like getting children on lifelong medication won't result in them having adult-relevant side effects once they're adults is mind-blowing.

> You wouldn't say "don't give that kid ibuprofen, let them just deal with the pain"?

Of course you would say that after the Nth time. You are supposed to find out what causes the pain, not mask it.

I've had recurring headaches my entire life. Have been to many neurologists, none have any idea what causes them, they just give me different pills to prevent them instead. This isn't unusual for headaches, quite often the cause is basically unknown. (If you ask people they'll give you a series of common things, eg water consumption, eating enough, etc, but it's just all unprovable folk medicine) Expecting everyone to "find the cause" is unreasonable.

If you have a headache, it's totally fine to take a painkiller. (If it happens on a regular basis, eg at least once a week, it can be a good idea to get those different pills from a neurologist, because the two main painkillers have bad side effects in the long run, but those different pills are just "masking" it in a different way)

I am not trying to say that you are never supposed to take medications long-term. I take medications, too. Unfortunately the causes are known (or rather, there is a diagnosis), but there is no treatment or cure.

What I am trying to say is that after the Nth time you would take the kid to the doctor to find out what causes the pain, instead of just giving them painkillers. It could easily be something treatable, or rather, curable.

Have you tried sumatriptan by the way?

You're talking about an adult, though, not a seven-year old child..

The dichotomy of such mental illness is people with more constitutional resilience just say "power through?" and they are absolutely correct, it is something they can power through.

Mentally ill folk literally cant, not in em. There are right answers to help them, but that's not the right one. It's kind of like telling someone who is color blind to squint real hard, won't ever help.

Myself, I'm someone very much in the power through category. It's the simplest and most straightforward answer surely. But if it were the answer that works in practice we'd have no homeless people, no drug addicts.

There are many mentally ill people who "power through", though. Some call it high-functioning depression.

There are different severities - a small depressive episode, a multi-year dysthymia or mixed (manic + depressive) episode.

I've been managing OK without meds, but maybe simply depression wasn't as severe as that of other folk. It's still a mental illness.

However, the effectiveness of Mindfulness based stress reduction and acceptance & commitment therapy show that those who can distance themselves from their thoughts have developed "mental resilience"

Is that the only alternative?

Therapy is effective, but not always. sometimes, especially with children, there is no root cause in life to the depression beyond "genetics". Additional, therapy may simply be useless and unproductive without medication being used concurrently.

There's also simply death. I didn't feel like mentioning it, but I think its worth pointing out that without treatment, death is a very real possibility.

>sometimes, especially with children, there is no root cause in life to the depression beyond "genetics".

I find this hard to believe. People in the past weren't depressed nearly as much, so whatever is causing it has to be environmental.

Do we know that, though? Historically the lives of most people were bleak and miserable. You don't really have much time to feel depressed when you have to work for 14 hours in a factory 6 days a week or lose your home and eventually die in the streets due to malnutrition and disease. People who couldn't take care of themselves and didn't have a support network just didn't live that long and/or were entirely erased from history...

People in the past couldn't get a diagnosis, so they had to settle for cirrhosis.

For a 7 year old? It's about as absurd/dystopian as somebody claiming their 3 year old was diagnosed with ADHD.