Lately, I have been thinking about depression and adolescence and my main concern is if, as a teacher, I am not taking this issue seriously enough. Therefore I will try to do my job.
First of all I will differentiate between two main types of depression and from there to develop my position.
There is a primary depression in which there is no objective reason to be depressed; this means that there is a physiological reason for that. Sometimes, depression is a secondary symptom of other diseases such as Parkinson, but in most cases there is nothing else and it is explained as a malfonction of some neurotransmitters such as dopamine or serotonine. In these cases, the best solution is usually a drug therapy. Nowdays, science has taken great steps forward and new drugs have been produced to relieve the suffering that depression brings about.
There is, however another kind of depression, usually triggered by a great tragedy such as the death of a beloved person, a traumatic experience or other more ordinary troubles in everyday life.
The educational system cannot provide too much help in case of mourning or other problems whose origin lays outside the school, but if a student is depressed because of reasons directly related to the school, we, as teachers, are reponsible for their well-being.
In the first place, some students feel oppressed by their studies, by the homework, by difficult contents such as mathematics or English. Regarding responsible students, if there are quite a few in the ESO who suffered from anxiety, the impact is greater in the bachillerato. The need of good marks to study what they want at university generates a great amount of stress. If students are not able to deal with this stress in asuitable way this can end in depression.
How can we prevent that? In my humble opinion, some students should be well orientated about their real possibilities and the costs of their efforts to get what they want. I am now thinking about the great number of students which main wich is to become doctors, how they study hours and hours, they memorise the contents to be more precise in their exams, but obviously not all of them will get what they crave for. This will bring about frustration, a significant sense of failure and in the end a great sadness wich can lead to depression. I know Spanish Educational system and I know that nobody discourages the students in their dreams, just the contrary, counselors and teachers insist on the importance of studying more, and encourage themn to do their best, but asthe expressión"it was good while it lasted", when it lasts, the student feels a deep feeling of failure and it paves the way to depression.
Therefore, it is important to teach our students to be realistic, to assume their week areas and to find healthful solutions; for instance, in the case of these students who need good marks to undertake medecin studies, it would be advisable to work with he students in order to find other compelling options, such as nursery, physiotherapy, to help others but not in the health sector, etc. and above all, to feel that life doesn't end after a failure, that it is only another step towards adulthood.
In the second place, there are another group of students who don't get a successful adaption in secondary school because of their timidity, introversion or their odd personality. They are often worried because they do not want to be asked in class, or they feel bad because they have no friends to go with during break-time. They are usually victims of bulling and in a few cases, this ends up in a depression. That's what it is very important to work in the tutoring lesson with the rest of the class, to accept people who are different. Sometimes students don't understand why a classmate responds in a positive way to a joke and another blows up in rage. Sometimes the help of the psychlogical conselor can be a precious ressource at school.
In the third place, there are students who do not want to study; they find school difficult or boring and far from their own interests. The frustration that implies going to school everyday, sitting on a chair all morning, without learning anything at all, can lead to bad behaviour and in the end a feeling of rage against the scholar system. This kind of behaviours can lead to an early school leaving and in other cases to take illegal drugs and to start disrpting behaviours, all of them a reflect of inadaptation.
The question is how to help all this variety of students and their problems of adaptation in a system full of contradictions. For instance, it is said that students must be equal and following this principle, to take the same exams, to do the same tasks and to be treated equally. However it is also said that education must be personalised, adapted to each of the students, and to give each one what they need. An example can be useful here: an hyperactive student who is restless all the time, who speaks loudly and usually shows an agressive behaviour should be treated in a more tolerant way than others whose necessity of moving is not so urgent.
Another example: it is expected that everybody must learn the same things and in the same time and conditions. Nevertheless, there are students who are better at writting, others are better at speaking, others are better at expressing with drawings or pictures; for some mathematics are an inexpugnable mystery, for others English is an incomprehensible jargon; some are slow and methodical, others are quick and inaccurated. Society needs all of them, that is why it is urgent to find a satisfactory solution for the students to be integrated in the system with all their "shapes and sizes".
One last thing we have to take into account is the low level of frutration that the students appear to have nowadays. This means that when we do not get what we want immediately, we get frustrated, we protest, we insist, we hit others and in the end we go depressed because we think we can not get our goals. An important number of students do not understand that to learn something they need to make efforts and this means to insist, to accept the mistakes, to try again and again, not to expect a reward immediately after a task. It's thanks to the effort that Rafa Nadal has reached the top of the tennis ranking. Our students do not need to become Rafa Nadal to be happy but they need to learn a culture of effort, to control their desires and to delay the reward because a later one will be a bigger and more important achievement. Life is a strive against the elements, aginst ourselves, sometimes against others and we should be prepared to cope with difficulties, frustration and failure in orther to become healthy people ennabled to be happy and to help others to build a better society.
S. Gilabert
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