How Can I Help School Professionals Understand My Child’s Illness?

— -- Question: How can I help school professionals understand my child's illness?

Answer: So the way that you could make your school professional understand your child's illness is complex.

It depends on the training that the school has had and school personnel have had; some schools are extremely sensitive to the emotional needs of the child, and others are not as familiar with it, depending on their own experiences with children with bipolar disorder.

So there are a lot of resources that one could direct school personnel to -- the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, www.aacap.org, is probably the best one.

Also, the National Association of Mental Illness, NAMI, and the Family Association for Mental Illness are also two important web resources.

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