By Julia Gajewski-Nemes ’15

By age 19, 28 percent of all adolescents will experience at least one episode of major depression. With each instance, students will likely experience symptoms such as withdrawal from friends and family, changes in eating and sleeping habits, lack of motivation, and difficulty concentrating, which can hinder the student’s ability to do his or her best in school.

Although more than one in every four teenagers has experienced symptoms of depression during adolescence, MCPS has failed to adequately accommodate students who are struggling with it.

Currently, MCPS assigns one school psychologist to several schools. According to the district’s policy, the job of a school psychologist is to work in collaboration with school staff in order to create a healthy learning environment for students. However, school psychologists are strictly accessible to MCPS staff and parents and cannot be contacted by students for help. In fact, students rarely, if ever, have any one-on-one interactions with school psychologists in a therapeutic setting.

Nevertheless, every school in MCPS has school counselors that are available to students on a daily basis. Although in their job description MCPS briefly mentions that counselors can play a role in maintaining emotional health, counselors at the high school level primarily focus on students’ academic achievements and goals for the future. Furthermore, students do not always feel comfortable reaching out to their school counselors or do not always realize that they are suffering from depression. There needs to be more involvement in the classroom to recognize depression and respond appropriately to students who may be struggling with it.

As of today, there is very minimal training for teachers on identifying depression in students. Many teachers may not realize that depression affects as much as a quarter of their students and could be the reason behind a fluctuation in grades in some of them. The lack of motivation and focus that depression causes usually leads to lower test scores and the inability to complete tasks. Without understanding the effects of depression, a teacher may be giving grades to a student that does not reflect his or her true capability.

At a minimum, MCPS should create an online workshop that all middle and high school teachers must complete before every school year to ensure awareness of the signs of teenage depression, what can cause it, how it affects a student, and its newest research developments. This awareness would allow a teacher to informally screen students with depression and give them a greater understanding for the students in his or her classroom at a more personal level.

The recognition of their students’ emotional states would allow for a more effective teaching style that tailors to each student. If a teacher were to see a student with signs of depression that significantly affect the student emotionally and academically, then the teacher would not only offer emotional support to the student, but also potentially offer an extension or retake on specific assignments in which the student’s true ability was not demonstrated.

School would be a much more comfortable place for adolescents if they felt that the staff are not there simply to ensure they are academically on the right path to “success.” Students need to feel that the people responsible for their education also care for their overall well-being.