Behavior of students with anxiety, depression, and suicidal behavior
Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric conditions in the United States, affecting more than 23 million people. Students facing anxiety disorder may exhibit behaviors such as intense tension or fear when there is no danger, feelings of losing control and a sense of doom, confusion, ruminations, excessive worry, irrational thoughts, catastrophic thinking, avoidance behavior, hyper vigilance, physical agitation, and inability to sleep and eat. When students feel depressed they are inattentive in class and this results in bad grades and sometimes forces them to drop out from college as well. Severe depression and anxiety may lead to increasing rate of suicide in students. Suicide is considered to be the 3rd leading cause in 10 to 14 year olds, with 303 deaths among 19,097,000 children in this age group. For adolescents aged 15 to 19, there were 1,802 suicide deaths among 19,146,000 adolescents. (NIMH, 2001)
Teacher responsibilities and interventions for students with anxiety, depression, and suicidal behavior and behaviors they should avoid
For a teacher the first and the foremost thing is to understand that the student is facing these problems and he needs to be tackled in a different manner. When the student if suffering from anxiety the teacher should take out time and talk to the student in private as much as possible, stay calm and try to handle matters with tranquility and avoid panicky situation. One thing that teacher should avoid is arguing with the student who already has irrational thoughts or catastrophic thinking because this would make matters more complicated. (Gavin, 2003)
When the student is facing problem of severe depression teacher should make it a habit to share as much information as he can with the student and listen to him calmly.....................
