The Solution at the School Level

Teenage is the best period in one’s life. But due to prevailing trend of nuclear family and working parents the child is left to find emotional support for himself/herself. In the view of both parents working and coming back home tired they are unable to give proper support, guidance and counseling to their ward. Social outing are restricted to family functions where most of them feel bored. Due to parents’ busy schedule they are not able to spend quality time with their children so they don’t get any space and time to vent out their daily traumas and feelings which leads to TEENAGE DEPRESSION.

There are various issues that bother teenagers such as examination stress, relationship issues, traumatic experience at home, bullying, parental discord, low self esteem, peer pressure etc. These emotional difficulties when not properly dealt leads to a depressive mind. Since this state of depression affects their emotional and mental wellbeing it becomes a necessity to cater their unidentified and unsolved conflicts prevailing in their minds.

At first it is very important for teenagers to get a space to vent out their concerns and get some insight about how to manage such issues and deal with one’s emotional turmoil.

Teachers assigned for counseling in our school, the school counselors interact with each class once a week and discuss about their day to day issues, concerns and challenges faced by them. “Need Assessment” is done in every class to know about children’s mental health issues. Accordingly, issues are discussed with the class. The purpose is that each child in class gets space to vent out their concerns, they introspect about their own issues and concerns which are bothering them and they gather some insight about how to deal with issues effectively.

When the issues are complex which may lead to emotional instability and affect their day to day tasks then they approach counselors individually. With required interventions their issues are addressed and they are facilitated to cope with their issues so that they are able to attain balance in their lives.

The counselors try to develop rapport and friendly relationship with students so that they share or vent out their feelings and concerns. Understanding their feelings and concerns help the counselors to know them better and accordingly interventions are designed. They don’t want to be depressed rather they want to feel good but lack of motivation and personal resources to do their best work. The teachers that counsel, work on their feelings of incompetence, worthlessness and low self esteem which is a major cause of teenage depression.

So, positive approach is used to help them to introspect about their positives and strengths. Cognitive restructuring is done to restructure their negative thoughts into positive thoughts. To motivate them they are positively reinforced for even the smallest efforts they put. Thus, this approach helps them to feel good about themselves and boosts their self esteem.

By: Manav Gudwani (India)

Image source: http://davblb.ac.in/File/119/school%20counselor%20(2).JPG