Clinical depression is a significant mental health problem that is associated with personal suffering and impaired functioning. These effects underscore the continuing need for new approaches that can inform researchers and clinicians when designing interventions. We propose that individual differences in the self-regulation of sadness and distress provide an important link between stress, depressed mood, and the onset of depressive disorder, and that if we have a better understanding of the ways children successfully manage negative emotions, we can better prevent and treat pediatric depression. In this article, we therefore examine the normative development of responses that children use to attenuate sadness, and aspects of the neurobiological infrastructure that both enable and constrain such self-regulatory efforts. We also address the emerging literature on affect regulation among children at familial risk for depressive disorders. We conclude that problems with adaptively self-regulating sadness and distress represent one pathway that can lead to juvenile-onset depression. And we need integrated, developmental studies of the psychosocial and neurobiological aspects of self-regulatory responses to sadness and distress in order to better understand this process, and to design age-sensitive intervention strategies for pediatric depression.

中文翻译：

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情绪（失调）调节和与抑郁症的联系。

临床抑郁症是一种重要的心理健康问题，与个人痛苦和功能受损有关。这些影响强调了对新方法的持续需求，这些方法可以在设计干预措施时为研究人员和临床医生提供信息。我们提出，悲伤和痛苦自我调节的个体差异提供了压力、抑郁情绪和抑郁症发作之间的重要联系，如果我们更好地了解儿童成功管理负面情绪的方式，我们可以更好地预防和治疗小儿抑郁症。因此，在本文中，我们研究了儿童用来减轻悲伤的反应的规范发展，以及支持和限制这种自我调节努力的神经生物学基础设施的各个方面。我们还讨论了关于有抑郁症家族风险的儿童情绪调节的新兴文献。我们得出结论，适应性自我调节悲伤和痛苦的问题代表了一种可能导致青少年抑郁症的途径。我们需要对悲伤和痛苦的自我调节反应的社会心理和神经生物学方面进行综合的发展研究，以便更好地了解这一过程，并为儿童抑郁症设计年龄敏感的干预策略。