Introduction: Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses not only with the adults, but it is becoming more frequent among children and adolescents. Preventive programs help children and their parents in recognizing symptoms of depression, and how to lead the life after diagnosis. It is important that we educate young individuals about depression, because it can have an important impact on prevention and treatment of depression in children and adolescents. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to present depression in children and adolescents, present the work of nurses in prevention programs and existence of them in Slovenia. Methods: In this thesis we will use a descriptive method with a review of professional and scientific literature, which we will find with the help of remote access to the digital library DiKUL, and international databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, ScienceDirect, and PubMed. When searching and reviewing the literature, we considered the following criteria: depression in children and adolescents, limitation of the publication year between 2011 and 2021, original scientific and review articles published in full version, freely available articles and language of publication (Slovenian and English). We excluded articles older than 10 years that deal with depression in adults and do not focus on set age group, and articles that are similar in content. Results: Prevention programs have an important role in recognizing children and adolescents, which are in risk of developing depressive disorder, and they offer help to children and adolescents and their families, when there are already developed symptoms of depression. Nurses are often the first contact with children and adolescents and with their parents, therefore, it is important that they make a safe, trusting and relaxed environment. It is also important that they know how to give important information’s to families and their children, and that they know how to establish a therapeutic relationship. Discussion and conclusion: Depression is lately on the rise in children’s and adolescents’ lives that is why nurses have an important role in prevention and health education about this mental illness. With help of prevention we can lower the number of children and adolescents with depression in future.
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