The Effects of Depression in Elementary Infants - Research Paper Example

Schools do a lot more than teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. They have become places where children receive mental health services alongside their cartons of milk. This is not a situation schools can avoid or afford to ignore, because mental health and behavioral problems must be addressed in the school setting for the health and safety of all the students and staff. Researchers and the general public continually point out that schools must have the proper tools and skilled staff to deal with all kinds of mental health issues.

In addition, children may not have outside resources (such as health insurance) that allow them to seek help outside the school setting. Trials, studies, randomized control groups, wait-list techniques, comparing interventions, etc. etc. interest researchers and psychology professionals—school teachers, counselors, administrators, parents and the children themselves are not interested in such things. They want to use easy, economical interventions to ease the painful symptoms of depression which derail young children both in the moment and perhaps for a lifetime.

There has been much research performed on the effects of depression in adolescents, but the roots of depression often start much earlier in life. Elementary school-age children exhibit signs of depression and younger and younger children are beginning to act out their emotional states through self-destructive or other-destructive behaviors. Teachers cannot afford to dismiss the subject of depression with even very young children; for instance, half of the third graders and 95 percent of fifth graders understand the concept of suicide, and children as young as four years old have completed suicide.

Elementary school teachers, resource specialists, school administrators, and school counselors are all in position to spot signs of depression in young children—if they have the skills and strategies, and if they pay attention.