How Can Teachers And School Systems Help My Child Manage Depression?

— -- Question: How can teachers and school systems help my child manage depression?

Answer: Well teachers and school systems really have an important role in helping families and children with depression. First they can help primarily by recognizing depression. Secondly they can help by monitoring the symptoms of depression.

So acting as -- since children spend so much of their day in school, it'll be important for schools to give information back to the family and to the health care providers about the impact of the symptoms of depression in this child on this child's academic, social, and psychological well-being in the school environment -- so really monitoring symptoms. A third role the schools and teachers and other school personnel may perform would really be to help implement some of the coping strategies that health care professionals are trying to develop in children with depression -- positive styles of coping, ways of reducing stress, ways of being more successful in the social and academic realms of interactions that take place in school.

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