High School Teachers - Our Main Hope in Fighting Adolescent Depression and Suicide

As acronyms go, this one is a little snarky, a little sad: Headsss. Teachers around the country, not to mention social workers, all who deal with adolescents, and are responsible for them in a professional capacity, are taught to pay attention to this little number. It is about how those that need to care for an adolescent in a certain capacity, need to always learn to ask the children in their care, questions that touch a number of areas, all covered by the letters of the acronym. The first, H, of course, is the most important - it stands for Home, for everything that happens there. The E stands, variably, for education and employment that the teenager engages in. The A reminds the caretaker to ask about the activities that interest and involve the child, and the D, about trouble with drugs if there be any. In the end, the three S's stand for safety, sex life, and sadly, suicidal thoughts. Of course, only a few teachers in our educational system usually have the time for such unusually involved questions; but a psychiatrist would surely be required to ask these in any standard case of adolescent depression, or other problems.

A teacher is our first line of defense. A lot of the time, probing questions to a young teenager will be met with an anxious exhortation: "If I tell you, how can I be sure that you won't tell anyone else?" It might be a judgment call with some, but most teachers would say that over the long run, to simply tell the truth helps establish more trust, openness and productivity in any session. Sometimes, a teacher has to ask the parent to provide the child with a bit of privacy, to help the child say it all. And the ground rule, the child has to know, will be that unless the secret shared is something deeply dangerous to the child's life, it won't leave the room.

Once all the formalities are out of the way, most caring teachers essentially begin any kind of questioning with a kind of screening for depression; adolescent depression is shockingly high in the rate at which it occurs. Most young people, are so caught up in their visions of their own resilience and strength, that they will all flat out deny that they need any help for being sad or depressed. However, when the teacher words it differently, using the vernacular of the young, they almost always get better results. A word that seems to work with young people these days, is "Stress". It may not mean to them exactly what it says in the dictionary, but it brings results.

Adolescent depression does not really look like adult depression. A lot of the kids who commit suicide are not depressed in the same way adults are. We may fail to recognize it because it may come through as recklessness - a wish to do whatever comes to their mind at the moment, or anger, or disappointment, or sometimes even as vengefulness. When teachers get these signs from their young students, they need to make their assessment right and see if there is suicide on the horizon. If it is, they can follow the protocol, and create a safety plan with the child whether or not they openly admit to suicidal thoughts. Teachers today are the bulwarks who have been protecting our children. This may not sound very hopeful, considering how poorly paid and overworked they are. But there you have it.