Depression in school is hard to handle. People who deal with depression and attend school will struggle because of their illness. Many with depression tend to distance themselves from others and even from themselves. They can lose interest in activities or really anything that they loved before. They can start to hate themselves and don’t have many cares in the world because it is too draining for them. High school is very demanding for people’s time and effort.

People dealing with depression now have to keep up with grades so they can go to college and start their lives. In class it can be hard to concentrate or do their work because of the chaos going on in their heads. Teachers and parents push kids to do better in school, mainly in good interest. But having depression, especially when it is severe, makes it tough for a depressed person to care about school and all the homework because they don’t care about their own life.

Being in class while in a bad state of mind will affect that student, like it would to anyone, but it happens much more often for these people. So much is racing in their minds, and somehow at the same time, nothing at all. Many kids will just “clock out” and stare off and think about whatever infinite thoughts they have. When crowded by unwanted thoughts the last thing someone depressed wants to do is school work that they despise and have no care for. Of course every case is different; many people can function well in school while depressed just fine, but many cannot.

Canadian researchers from Reuters Health have found that teens with depression are twice as likely to drop out of high school. This fact is important so we can inform people the struggles of school with depression. It displays how when a child has depression, it drives them to drop out of high school and lose motivation for anything.  This statistic shows what the struggles do to people. Mentally, it can seem impossible and useless to do school work. It seems like a task to do pretty much anything, and doing the task will only make this person resent themselves and the task even more, spiraling so far behind in school and then having to catch up while learning the new information.

Depression is very hard to handle and schools should recognize this problem and have better solutions to the problem. Right now their solutions are sort of flimsy and are not the best that they could do. Whitney offers a 504 plan which allows you to sit anywhere in the class where you would be most successful.  You can extend deadlines and walk out of class when you need a breather. This plan is pretty good, but it isn’t enough. These kids don’t need more time, they need less work. As of now there might not be a real solution, and every case is different. This is why it is hard to have one solution for the problem, because one solution might help some, but will leave many in the dirt. The school needs to develop individual solutions for each person so everyone can succeed.