Depression & Anti Social Behavior

Posted By Jean on February 11, 1999 at 22:26:47:







My 16 year old son tells me that he has clinical depression.  He has told me that from the ages of 11 to 14 he had thoughts of suicide, but that he doesn't feel that way now.  At the age of 4 he was sexually abused by a male babysitter.  It was at the age of 11 that he told us of this incident.  We sought help and had one family session with a therapist and she felt that this incident had no major effect on his well being.  It has since been put in the back of our minds and never discussed.
His social behavior has been the following: unable to make close friends, quiet, irritable, associates better with younger children than his peers, has difficulty speaking out to teachers and people of authority, and basically is a loner of sorts.  He was in special education classes all through elementary school and most of junior high.  However, we finally saw that this was holding him back and he has been mainstreamed and is now making the "B" honor rolls.  His teachers say that he is a good student, but that he doesn't talk. He was evaluated in school and we found that his high level of anxiety had been holding back his learning abilities.
How should I follow up on his claim of clinical depression? He doesn't appear to be depressed all of the time.  Would antidepressant drugs be helpful?