Mental illness in school: What can teachers do?

A high school teacher might see eight to 30 students a day with serious mental health issues such as bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety, writes Michael Goldstein on FutureEd. The teacher doesn’t necessarily know who’s headed for trouble and who’s just struggling with “normal adolescent angst.”

Many teachers try to support and engage distressed students, he writes. They praise what ever they can. They reach out. “Hey you seem down, do you want to talk about it?”

A teacher might mentor one, two or three students in a given year, he writes, but eager rookies don’t know what to say and experienced teachers probably have been “burned or disappointed multiple times in their careers.”

Students who are distressed, but not disruptive, may “fly under the radar,” Goldstein writes. Teachers often refer a troubled student for counseling, but there may be no counseling slots or no parental permission.

If the student does receive counselor, the teacher typically “receives no update from the counselor, because of arguably misguided views on privacy.”

Finally, counseling may not help.

Counseling isn’t magic even when done by the best in the field, and the counseling skill found in schools is wildly uneven; often teachers do not see changes in student behavior, and lose faith in the school’s counselors. Other times, the school claims to have programs—small “Advisory Groups” for example, where teachers could help distressed students—but most teachers find these programs uneven, and they’re not meant to provide clinical help.

Mental illness in school: What can teachers do?

A high school teacher might see eight to 30 students a day with serious mental health issues such as bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety, writes Michael Goldstein on FutureEd. The teacher doesn’t necessarily know who’s headed for trouble and who’s just struggling with “normal adolescent angst.”