Early signs of depression/anxiety are difficult to detect. First 10 weeks - 2 years of development ( 'mirror neurons', empathy, emotional templates, and arousal patterning). Toddlers showing signs of persistent, severe or 'fixated' moods likely battle heredity - 30% of diagnoses had genetics in both families.

Conspicuous signs are irritability past 'normal stress responses'. Worry persisting 3 days - 2 weeks. When the brain forms physical structures (cognitive templates) that house distortions (catastrophic/obsessed thought) the stress response clings to the distortion.

Later cognitive behavioral strategies are useful for adolescents who exhibit social anxieties from the socially driven media pressures, heavy schedules, and academic demands that condition the mind to be in the 'anxious future'