Auntie Em! Auntie Em! I'm here! Auntie Em!

Who can't identify with Dorothy's panic locked in a tower in the Witch's castle with the hour glass sand and her life slipping away before her eyes. She sees and hears her aunt in the crystal ball but can't communicate with her. Dorothy continues to call Auntie Em's name until her image fades into the face and mocking voice of the Wicked Witch repeating, "Auntie Em!" "Auntie Em!"
This puts me in mind of the Cymbalta commercials on T.V. where they show a sad little dog with a leash who is suffering because his owner is depressed and can't get out of bed to take him for a walk. The point is that depression creates people we recognize physically but who can not react in the ways we are familiar with or have come to count on. Imagine how it feels after a disaster of some type when you have lost material possessions, your home, and perhaps have left rapidly to travel to a place, although safe, is unrecognizable to you. On top of that, what if your Mother or Father were no longer the same? Imagine the person who cared for you, who seemed to know everything, who set the rules and boundaries for your life, defined right and wrong and most important made you feel safe, now unable to get out of bed, crying uncontrollably, or sitting silently staring out a window. What if like Dorothy, you felt locked in a scary place, feeling imminently threatened, able to see and hear the person you counted on, but they can't for what ever reason respond appropriately to what you say or need?
Having a loved one suffer with depression and/or emotional break down can be devastating even when you are capable of understanding the nature of the disease and know as well it can take time to get well again. Many of us grasp that depression can be situational as related to the consequences of a natural disaster, understand familial tendencies, and may have seen it as a side effect of substance abuse or physical illness. As adults we can be tuned in to the signs of worsening depression, the effectiveness of medication especially when combined with talk therapy, and the impact of depression on the family in general. Perhaps most important of all we know that depression isn't a disease that is contageous in terms something we "catch" from physical contact. The prior statements are all couched in an adult understanding of what is going on and often the children impacted by a depressed family member are left in the dark as to what is happening in their family and when given no explanation, create answers of their own.
It is not untypical for children to assume responsibility for what has happened. When suffering multiple losses, it is easy for a child to leap to worst possiple conclusions and worry that their loved one is going to die or if they are hospitalized assume they are not coming back. A child who may need to be sent to a relative temporarily may have a sense of banishment. If depression is considered a taboo culturally in the family or conceived as a punishment from a higher spiritual power, the unspoken messages picked up by a child can be even scarier.
I think children are very intuitive in general and when put in a situation where they are craving answers and reassurance, they seem to double their efforts at retreiving information if it isn't forthcoming. In this regard mental health support as a preventitivbe measure in triaging the needs of disaster victims may be critical. Further more, perhaps it could be said that when you treat someone for depression, you treat their family as well. I think this is certainly true of children who are already suffering devastating consequences. Routine theraputic intervention for children who are impacted by depression in their family should be considered valuable just as it a beneficial when a loved one under goes cancer treatment, or treatment substance abuse, or perhaps when a family member is incarcerated. Remembering that children often lack a vocabulary for what they see and feel happening around them, an art or group therapy opportunity might be especially helpful.