DEPRESSION AND SCHOOL REFUSAL BEHAVIOR - A REVIEW WITH COMMENTS ON CLASSIFICATION AND TREATMENT

One of the most significant problems for school psychologists, teacher s, and educators concerns children and adolescents who have difficulty attending or simply refuse to go to school. Part of this problem is t he heterogeneity of behavior often displayed by this population, a fac t that has traditionally led to difficulties in classification, assess ment, and treatment. This is complicated by concurrent syndromes and s ymptoms of depression across subtypes of persons with school refusal b ehavior. This article reviews studies that have examined comorbid synd romal and symptomatic depression and school refusal behavior. Implicat ions for classification systems are then discussed, including the need for flexible taxonomic strategies that include persons with severe co llective, and less severe individual, symptoms of negative affectivity . Recommendations for assessment and treatment are also discussed, inc luding a dimensional assessment of negative affectivity and the need t o consider ''profiles'' of children with various levels of concurrent depression who refuse to attend school for various reasons.