Child and Adolescent Psychology

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This essay will focus on the understanding of depression among children during the ages of early childhood (2-6) and adolescent (12-18) through the Brofenbrenner Ecological Systems theory. This theory looks at a child’s development within the perspective of the system of relationships that form their environment. Here you will find a description on the impact of family, school, community and other systems, according to Brofenbrenner, have on their lives. This will also show the influence of the attachment theory and how it interacts with the causes of depression which can occur amongst early childhood and adolescents. Urie Brofenbrenner has uniqueness to his theory, “stressing the need to understand development in terms of the everyday environment in which children are reared, a concern that is seldom the focus of many other theories” (Bukatko, D. 2008, p 28). He believes that development must be studied outside of the laboratories, and within the environment in which we live in order to gain full perspective. “One of Brofenbrenner’s major theoretical contributions has been his comprehensive portrait of the environment – the ecological forces and systems that exist at several different but interrelated levels – and the bidirectional and reciprocal relationships that exist among them’ (Bukatko, D. 2008). He describes this process in five separate layers which are microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. The first layer is the Microsystem, this layer is the one that is closest to the child and also contains the structures with which the child has a direct contact with. Structures found within the microsystem include family, school, neighborhood, as well as childcare environments. The Mesosystem is the... ... middle of paper ... ...enbrenner, one can see the many things that can attribute to these feelings. The influence of the environment in one’s life can be either encouraging or unenthusiastic. Nevertheless; the strongest bond is within the microsystem which is where the attachment with parents is so very important in the development of a child. Works Cited Bukatko, D. (2008). Child and Adolescent Development: A chronological approach, 1st edition. Mason: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Herman, Reinke, Parkin, Traylor, & Agarwal (2009). Psychology in the Schools: Wiley Periodicals, Inc, Vol 46(5). Luby, Joan M.D. (2009) Treatment in Psychiatry: Am J Psychiatry, 166:974-979 Paquette & Ryan (2001) Retrieved on February 6, 2011 from http://pt3.nl.edu/paqutteryanwebquest.pdf Sokolova, Irina (2003) Retrieved on February 7, 2011 from http://www.peronalityresearch.org/papers/sokolova.html

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