Objective: For many years the problem of depression among children and adolescents has been uninteresting for psychologists and psychiatrists. They believed that depressive disorders do not exist in the early stages of ontogenesis. This situation has radically changed during the last twenty years. In many scientific centres interdisciplinary studies have been undertaken the aim of which is to explain the pathogenesis of depressive disorders among children and adolescents, the symptoms of such disorders, and to develop appropriate psychotherapeutic programmes. In such a context some diagnostic methods of depression in children should be developed. As the rate of depressive disorders among young children in Poland has increased considerably in the last few years, we are interested in developing effective methods of diagnosing depression in children on the one hand, and in adapting already existing ones, on the other. The purpose of this study was to find out whether Peter Rossmann’s Depression Test for Children could be used for pre-school children in Poland. The main assumption was that the Depression Test could be adapted under the following conditions: firstly, if it could distinguish an untreated population of 6-year-old children, and secondly, if the patterns of correlations between the extreme results for the children tested with the Depression Test and other psychological tests measuring children’s personality traits associated with depression disorders, would appear quite different ones from another.

Method: The tested sample consisted of 230 six-year-old children from nursery schools, (121 boys and 109 girls). During the pre-test study half of the group tested was assessed by their teachers as emotionally balanced, the other half as emotionally disturbed.

The following tests were used in the study:

— Depression Test for Children by P. Rossmann,

— Self-Esteem Scale by A. Janowski,

— Teacher-Report Scale of Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters by Messy-Matson,

— Classroom Behaviour Inventory, Pre-school to Primary by E. Schaefer and M. Aaronson,

— Test of Incomplete Sentences by J. Kostrzewski

— Raven’s Coloured Matrix for Children.

Pearson correlations and the Student’s t-test were employed for elaboration of the results of the study.

Results: As the results of our study we can see:

— Positive intercorrelations among the three subscales of the Depression Test by P. Rossmann.

No significant correlations between sex and the three subscales of the Depression Test.

Positive and relatively high correlations between the three subscales of the Depression Test and teachers’ estimations of children’s depressive disorders.

Statistically significant differences in the scores received by children tested in the three subscales of the Depression Test, as well as in others psychological tests used in the study.

Three subscales of the Depression Test were correlated with some cognitive, as well as socio-emotional characteristics of the children tested, but in a quite different way within the two groups distinguished as extreme on the basis of the scores gained by the children tested in the three subscales of P. Rossmann’s Depression Test This indicated that the Depression Test for Children differentiated our sample of pre-school children and for this reason it should be adapted in Poland as the measure of depressive states of pre-school children.

Conclusion: Our findings showed that the differentiation in the sample tested of the scores gained into the three subscales of P. Rossmann’s Depression Test was connected with the significant differences in the socio-emotional, as well as cognitive characteristics of the children tested. This result should encourage us to carry out a further study concerning the possibility of adapting P. Rossmann’s Depression Test for pre-school children in Poland.

The results also confirmed the possibility of depressive states in very early stages of children’s ontogenesis.

(The Paper was presented at the Second International Congress of Adolescentology, Milano 94: Adolescence and Family, Milano, Italy, November 18–19,1994).




Key Words: Depressive states, six-year-old children, adaptation of Depression Test.