Best Practice

Tackling teenage depression – what can schools do?

Pastoral issues Pupil wellbeing
How can schools and teachers support young people who are suffering from depression? Dr Stephanie Thornton looks at what research into the issue can tell us.

Adolescence can be a tricky time. As anyone who works with teenagers knows, challenges from the social to the hormonal, from academic issues to relationships can very easily create pressures that can seem overwhelming to the young.

Just how big a problem is depression in the secondary school years? The truth is that we don’t know. Recent studies estimate that an astonishing 20 per cent of our young suffer at least one serious depressive episode. But just how many others suffer depressions severe enough to affect their lives, but not severe enough to come to our attention? Probably the majority, at one time or another. 

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