201 12 Some of the most common psychological disorders in children and adolescents are internalizing dis- orders such as depression and anxiety. Research on the development of depression and anxiety suggests that internalizing disorders can be reduced, even prevented, by promoting more accurate cognitive styles, problem-solving skills, and supportive family relationships. Several cognitive–behavioral interventions have shown promise in treating and preventing depression and anxiety. We review the Penn Resiliency Program (PRP) as an example of such an interven- tion. We suggest that most of the skills covered in the PRP and similar preventive interventions are not specific to depression or anxiety and can be useful for increasing young people’s resil- iency more generally. Interventions that teach and reinforce these skills can help children to navigate a variety of difficult situations they are likely to encounter during adolescence and adulthood. Depression in Children and Adolescents At any point in time, approximately 2–3% of children and 6–9% of adolescents have a major depressive disorder (Cohen et al., 1993; Lewinsohn, Hops, Roberts, & Seeley, 1993). Approximately one in five adolescents will have had a major depressive episode by the end of high school (Lewinsohn et al.). Anxiety disorders, which often precede and co-occur with depression, are found in 10–21% of children and adolescents (Kashani & Orvaschel, 1990; Romano, Tremblay, Vitaro, Zoccolillo, & Pagani, 2001). It is notable that rates of depression increase as children enter adolescence (Hankin, Abramson, Moffitt, Silva, & McGee, 1998), indicating that the transition to adolescence is a particularly vulnerable develop- mental period for depression. In addition, several studies indicate that rates of depression and anxiety have increased dramatically over the past 50 years (Klerman et al., 1985; Twenge, 2000), so that young people today are much more likely to suf- fer from depression and anxiety than their parents or grandparents were. This chapter focuses on unipolar depression, 1 one of the most common types of internalizing disorders, because our research program focuses From Helplessness to Optimism: The Role of Resilience in Treating and Preventing Depression in Youth Karen Reivich, Jane E. Gillham, Tara M. Chaplin, and Martin E.P. Seligman K. Reivich () • T.M. Chaplin • M.E.P. Seligman University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, PA, USA e-mail: revich@psych.upenn.edu; tchaplin@psych.upenn.edu; seligman@psych.upenn.edu J.E. Gillham Department of Psychology, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, USA e-mail: jgillha1@swarthmore.edu S. Goldstein and R.B. Brooks (eds.), Handbook of Resilience in Children, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-3661-4_12, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 1 We will not focus on bipolar disorder, or manic-depression, which is relatively rare in children and which appears to be more heavily biologically based (Hammen & Rudolph, 2003).