Edited by
Kedar Nath Dwivedi
and Ved Prakash Varma

There has been a growing awareness of the need to take the problem of
childhood depression more seriously. It is sometimes felt that there is a
lack of high quality practical material to help professionals assist children
and adolescents with depression today. Both Ved Varma and myself
have been acutely aware of the need for such material for some time and
we feel that this book will go a long way to meet it.
1 am very grateful to Ved for his active encouragement in instigating
this project and for the extensive editorial experience that he brought
with him. It has been an immense pleasure to help create this important
book, particularly because all the contributions have been of such a high
standard. Moreover, the experience of working with such a diverse
multidisciplinary team of experts has been challenging, exciting and
educationally rewarding. The team included specialists in child, adolescent
and family psychiatry, child psychotherapy, social work, community
psychiatric nursing, educational therapy, the coordination of special
needs in teaching, and general practice.
We are deeply indebted to all the contributors, some of whom had to
put up with our ‘gentle’ reminders about deadlines or requests for revisions.
We are equally grateful to the publishers for their enthusiastic,
sensitive, creative and painstakingly thorough approach to this very
important project.