Author: Sujata Gupta / Source: Science News
The task was designed to scare the kids.
One by one, adults guided children, ranging in age from 3 to 7, into a dimly lit room containing a mysterious covered mound. To build anticipation, the adults intoned, “I have something in here to show you,” or “Let’s be quiet so it doesn’t wake up.” The adult then uncovered the mound — revealed to be a terrarium — and pulled out a realistic looking plastic snake.Throughout the 90-second setup, each child wore a small motion sensor affixed to his or her belt. Those sensors measured the child’s movements, such as when they sped up or twisted around, at 100 times per second. Researchers wanted to see if the movements during a scary situation differed between children diagnosed with depression or anxiety and children without such a diagnosis. It turns out they did. Children with a diagnosis turned further away from the perceived threat — the covered terrarium — than those without a diagnosis.
In fact, the sensors could identify very young children who have depression or anxiety about 80 percent of the time, researchers report January 16 in PLOS One. Such a tool could be useful because, even as it’s become widely accepted that children as young as age 3 can suffer from mental health disorders, diagnosis remains difficult.
Such children often escape notice because they hold their emotions inside.It’s increasingly clear, though, that these children are at risk of mental and physical health problems later in life, says Lisabeth DiLalla, a developmental psychologist at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Carbondale. “The question is: ‘Can we turn that around?’”
Maybe, says Joan Luby, a psychiatrist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Luby’s research has shown that treating preschoolers with depression helps the youngsters feel joy again, at least in the short term. “When you identify young children early” as needing help, Luby says, “you can treat them better.”
Sensors reveal that anxious and depressed children turn farther away from a perceived threat than healthy children. The difference between where the children are supposed to be going and where their body is turned is known as the yaw angle.
How kids react during an anxiety-inducing task
Early onset
Few experts believed young children were capable of experiencing depression or anxiety until 1980, when researchers found that children as young as 7 could indeed get depressed. By the 1990s, it was clear that depression and anxiety could start in children as young as age 3. But for many children, the symptoms of depression show up in seemingly unrelated ways, such as aggression, difficulty eating or hyperactivity. As a result, these so-called “internalizing disorders” are more likely to go undiagnosed in the younger years.
Though estimates vary widely, some 10 to 20 percent of preschool- and kindergarten-age children are thought to suffer from an anxiety disorder and about 2 percent from depression, with some even expressing suicidal feelings. The real rates, though, are likely higher. Because children under age 8 or so cannot articulate their own feelings, clinicians must rely on caregiver accounts of a child’s behavior. But children with anxiety or depression are often so quiet and unobtrusive that caregivers and teachers overlook their difficulties.
These kids “are not the squeaky wheels,” says Ellen McGinnis, a clinical psychologist at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington.
She and others have focused their research on finding objective ways to identify children with such conditions. This research can be laborious and time-consuming. As a graduate student, McGinnis recorded children during the snake or other similar anxiety-inducing tasks. Multiple research assistants would then evaluate those videos to gauge the children’s reactions. It took McGinnis two years to assess 10 children. “I was like, ‘This is ridiculous,’” she recalls.
So she teamed up with her husband, UVM biomedical engineer Ryan McGinnis, to find a faster, better way to identify children with depression or anxiety. The result: The pairing of the classic snake anxiety test with a commercially available motion sensor.
Of 63 children recruited to take the test, 21 had been diagnosed with anxiety or depression following a 90-minute interview between a trained clinician and caregiver — the current gold standard for assessment, says Ellen McGinnis.
In the snake test,…
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