Depression and mood treatment for children, adolescents, and young adults
Low mood in a young person rarely announces itself. It arrives as irritability, anger, exhaustion, or a slow retreat from what used to matter. Therapy offers a steady way back toward energy, interest, and connection.
Signs of depression in children, adolescents, and young adults
Depression looks different at every stage, and it is easy to mistake for laziness, attitude, or a passing phase. These are the patterns families in Coral Gables describe most often. What they mean is a conversation with a psychologist, not a checklist. Dr. Wald's areas of specialty are a good place to begin.
In children
A young child may never say the word sad. Parents notice a shorter fuse, more tears over small things, and stomachaches or headaches on school mornings that fade by lunch. Play goes flat, invitations get turned down, and sleep and appetite shift. Teachers often see it first: a child gone quiet, or one who gives up the moment a task turns hard.
In adolescents
In adolescence, depression often reads as irritability rather than sadness, and in some teens it tips into anger and outbursts out of proportion. A teenager may sleep all weekend and still feel exhausted, quit a sport they loved, and drift toward a screen. Grades slip below their ability, and self-criticism turns absolute. Any comment about not wanting to be here, however offhand, is worth raising with a psychologist promptly.
In young adults
Young adults more often describe flatness than pain. Getting up for an early class or shift takes everything, messages sit unanswered for days, and simple decisions feel impossible. Some keep performing while the day feels empty inside, which is exactly why others miss it. Others are drinking more or sleeping at odd hours.
Why depression can look like irritability, not sadness
Depression is not a character flaw or a shortage of effort. It is a change in how a young mind and body handle energy, reward, and stress, and it feeds itself: the less a child does, the less there is to feel good about.
Dr. Wald treats that cycle, not the child. Together you trace what the low mood is responding to, what it costs, and which small changes begin to interrupt it. Depression rarely travels alone, so anything alongside it is treated as part of the same picture.
How depression treatment works, step by step
Care begins with understanding, not a protocol. Dr. Wald sets the pace around the child, the family, and what is actually getting in the way. Still deciding? Request a free 15 minute consultation and talk it through first.
Understand the whole picture
Dr. Wald begins with a careful assessment: mood, sleep, appetite, school, friendships, family history, and anything medical. Parents fill in what a young person cannot yet put into words.
Rebuild routine and question the thinking
Treatment pairs cognitive work, examining the harsh conclusions depression draws, with behavioral change: restoring sleep, movement, and contact with the people and activities that used to matter. It is built from small repeatable steps, not one breakthrough.
Bring the family and the school along
Parents learn to meet withdrawal and irritability without escalating or taking over. Dr. Wald coordinates with schools in South Miami and nearby districts when attendance or assignments need adjusting during treatment.
How Dr. Wald treats depression
Treatment draws on the evidence-based approaches used across the practice, adapted to each stage of development, in the Coral Gables office and by telehealth across Florida. Low mood often overlaps with other concerns. When it sits beside persistent worry and anxiety or OCD and intrusive thoughts, Dr. Wald plans around the full picture.
CBT for low mood
Cognitive-behavioral therapy helps a young person notice the conclusions depression draws and test them against what is actually true.
Behavioral modification
Small structured changes to sleep, movement, and routine, so momentum builds instead of waiting on motivation.
Mindfulness skills
Practice noticing a hard thought or feeling without being pulled under, which leaves room to choose a next step.
Motivational interviewing
For teens and young adults unsure about therapy, a collaborative look at their own reasons for change, not a lecture.
Parent training and family work
Guidance rooted in parent training and family systems theory, so home responds to withdrawal and discouragement in a way that helps.
Start depression care in Coral Gables
Dr. Wald sees children, adolescents, and young adults at the Coral Gables office on South Dixie Highway, and by telehealth in Florida, Maryland, and PSYPACT states. A short conversation is the place to start.