Adolescents are prone to developing depression, given their exposure to demanding school and home environments. In this case, the student is a 16-year-old adolescent called Cleophas. The student lives in foster care and has been recently struggling with depression. Living in foster care can be challenging for students like Cleophas, who have to balance their relationship with their birth family. The educator realized elements of destructive behaviors, such as being aggressive toward other students, exhibiting antisocial behaviors, and demonstrating symptoms of mood malfunctions, which are behavioral markers used by the educator to determine depressive symptoms. The current assessment exercise recommends screening and treating the student’s depressive symptoms to improve his learning engagement.
School Setting
Schools are integral in facilitating an effective developmental process for a child. VanBergeijk (2012) identified the school as an essential institution in a child’s life after their families and education personnel are integral in identifying incidents of maltreatment affecting the student’s well-being. The 16-year-old Cleophas is a high school student and attends an urban school setting, which can be problematic for educators to identify social issues affecting his life as a student and as a child. Educators deal with diverse student issues in urban school settings. In most cases, these schools are made up of many students with diverse learning and non-learning needs. Specifically, Cleophas, who is a foster child, has unique mental health needs that the educator needs to address to help improve his learning efficiency.
Still, urban school settings present other diverse student needs, such as a language barrier due to the multilingual identity of the student population. In some cases, urban schools, especially those with public status, are underfunded, which makes it more challenging for the educator to assemble the needed resources and personnel to address the varied student needs. Also, Cleophas is in high school, an educational phase defined by progressive ideas and an acceptable wide range of thinking, which makes it efficient to adopt a multidisciplinary approach in addressing unique student needs, like in the case of Cleophas’s struggle with depression.
Student’s Needs and Risk and Protective Factors
Adolescence represents a vulnerable period for the onset of depression, which makes Cleophas’s age a sensitive factor when developing interventions to address his various needs. According to Wahid et al. (2021), depression presents a health and developmental burden to the population, and treatment alone is inadequate in addressing the problem. In that case, it is crucial to identify the student’s needs and risk and protective factors to develop a data-informed solution to problems affecting Cleophas’s well-being as a student. For students’ needs, Cleophas presents unique academic and nonacademic needs that need to be addressed in the intervention. Stone (2008) established how students, especially in the adolescent stage, struggle with achieving a home-school balance. Given that Cleophas is a foster child, he may have been struggling with family needs needed to support his academic success. The student may have been struggling with parental neglect creating a hostile home environment that interferes with the school environment. Identification of neglect and abuse is integral since these practices have severe long-term physical and mental health implications for the victim (VanBergeijk, 2012). The family is pivotal in providing for the student’s emotional and materialistic needs, which are crucial for attaining school-family balance.
Also, the student has specific mental and physical health needs that need to be addressed. The student’s foster family should ensure he has a healthcare plan to provide routine checkups, addressing any identified health complications. Furthermore, the student exhibits significant social needs not addressed by either the school or home environment. Most student’s social needs relate to peer acceptance, parent-child relationships, interpersonal communication, and conflict resolution in a relational context (Stone, 2008). Finally, Cleophas portrays essential academic needs affected by the identified nonacademic needs. In a hostile family environment, non-supportive peers and educators would result in academic failure.
The intervention will also feature risk and protective factors for the student developing depression. Identifying and understanding biopsychosocial risk factors is vital in predicting the onset of depression, while protective factors inform the interventional measures developed to prevent symptoms manifestations and severity (Wahid et al., 2021). Maltreatment within school and home settings escalates depressive symptoms in students. VanBergeijk (2012) categorized risk factors into three groups, including childhood factors, family or parental factors, and social and environmental factors. A student’s physical or mental disability enhances his chances of being neglected and becoming depressive. For families, social isolation, financial instability, and living in communities with heightened social challenges such as substance use, unemployment, and crimes and violence increase the probability of neglect (VanBergeijk, 2012). Finally, lack of peer relations and support is a serious risk factor for students developing depression. A student needs friends, families, and educators to satisfy his social needs. However, in the case of dysfunctional social relationships, the student’s depressive symptoms worsen. Protective factors associated with decreased probabilities of child neglect and maltreatment include the child having an easy-going personality and functional social skills. Supportive family and educators are significant protective factors to overcome depression. Therefore, risk and protective factors are crucial to developing the intervention to address student needs.
Conducting Risk Assessment
Psychological research identifies several methods of performing risk assessment to outline developmental practices that expose the student to maltreatment. The first approach is observation, and in a school setting, they are planned and unstructured, and they happen without the intention of determining abuse (VanBergeijk, 2012). When in class, the teacher can observe the student identifying elements of antisocial behavior, such as Cleophas being aggressive towards his peers, resulting in social resistance from friends. Observing a child’s behaviors when interacting with others in a school setting is integral in assessing the risk of neglect and depression outcomes. Another approach is the use of interviews to identify the risks of depression. VanBergeijk (2012) suggests educators use an Early Trauma Inventory, which is a 56-question clinician-administered interview that assesses traumatizing experiences in a child’s or adolescent’s life that qualify as neglect or result in depression. Furthermore, the educator will use the Response to Intervention (RTI) to identify student’s academic struggles (VanBergeijk, 2012). For RTI, the teacher will analyze Cleophas’s grades to determine his academic achievement and determine if he is having learning difficulties. Conducting RTI provides school-based data that result from other nonacademic outcomes impacting Cleophas’s development. In that case, integrating the results of Early Trauma Inventory interview results, observation data, and RTI, the educator is able to identify emerging risk factors informing Cleophas’s depressive condition.
Overview of the Interventions
A vital intervention to salvage the student’s cognitive development is designing and delivering an individualized educational program (IEP) or special education services as recommended by the Disabilities Education Act. A student with behavioral and academic issues requires Tier 3 IEP services, achieved through a multidisciplinary approach to delivering intensive individualized support (VanBergeijk, 2012). When delivering Tier 3 intervention, the educator conducts individualized lessons for Cleophas to compensate for the knowledge acquired from the general education classroom. Also, the teacher will design peer activities as a form of group psychotherapy, offering the needed social support for the student. Furthermore, Tier 3 intervention will involve the student’s foster parents, who will perform some of the home assignments with the student. The goal is to eliminate a neglectful environment from the student’s environment.
Besides, there is a need to improve student functioning abilities associated with self-regulation to improve the way the student responds to adversity, including stress, mood, and social-emotional control (Corcoran & Hanvey-Phillips, 2012). As a result, mindfulness-based interventions, especially meditation, help improve self-regulation to cope with adversities emerging from school and home environments. Meditation and co-occurring mindfulness solutions nurture attention and awareness of cognitive abilities to cope with adverse psychosocial conditions without severe psychological outcomes (Mendelson et al., 2010). With mindfulness-based intervention, Cleophas will develop resilience to be aware of the adverse parenting conditions present in foster care, developing coping behaviors, such as understanding the situation to enable him to concentrate on attaining academic success. The student will be able to control himself in demanding and stressful environments, managing to avoid lashing out at peers and people around him.
Meeting the Student’s Needs
All the identified interventions uniquely meet various student needs. The Tier 3 interventions result in a multidisciplinary approach to addressing the student’s behavioral and academic needs (VanBergeijk, 2012). Specifically, the teacher works with the parents, the student’s peers, the special needs facilitator, and other staff to enable a socially supportive environment that will eliminate most of the behavioral issues exhibited by the students. For instance, peer support through class group discussions achieves inclusivity and eliminates antisocial traits from the student. Also, working with other professionals will ensure the student receives the needed physical and mental health support, improving his overall quality of life. Tier 3 interventions also ensure that Cleophas receives parental love and support to cope with stressful school environments, especially the academic demands to perform. Delivering a successful Tier 3 intervention through a special needs team requires the effort of a multidisciplinary team. The roles of teachers, peers, and parents have already been identified. A behavioral specialist, such as a psychologist, will be needed to address the already identified depressive symptoms. A psychologist may perform counseling services and collaborate with the educator to offer mindfulness-based interventions, specifically meditation. The collaborative effort will ensure the students restore their self-regulation abilities to deal with adversities within school and home environments.
Barriers to Intervention Implementation
A significant barrier to intervention implementation is the lack of a specialist to address some of the student’s unique needs. Cleophas is not a special needs student but has unique behavioral and academic issues that need to be resolved. The school management may find it challenging to assign the student to a qualified specialist, such as special needs education, a psychologist, or other support staff if their condition still needs to be medically diagnosed (Lamb, 2014). The resource and finance needed to facilitate the acquisition of a specialist creates challenges to the implementation of the interventions. Also, the lack of enough time to coordinate multidisciplinary activities identified in special needs education can be a problem (Lamb, 2014). For Tier 3 education, the student will engage in extra lessons and assessments in addition to general classroom education. The student will be required to work with peers, parents, and behavioral specialists. The process can be challenging to coordinate; hence, it is overwhelming to the student. Besides coordination, time may also be a significant barrier to achieving all the proposed solutions given that they are issued in line with general classroom education. The student may require more time to attend extra lessons, engage with his foster parent’s specialists, and work on extra assignments. Still, proper coordination and support from both home and school environments is critical to achieving the goals of the designed particular education intervention and mindfulness-based solutions.
Conclusion
High school students living in foster care are prone to developing depression due to adverse school and home environments. Cleophas was diagnosed with depression, necessitating the need to develop evidence-based interventions to address his various behavioral and academic deficits. Some of the student’s needs identified include social, academic, physical and mental health, and co-occurring developmental needs. The student is exposed to diverse school and home-based challenges, given that he attends an urban high school. As a result, the developed interventions require a multidisciplinary effort or approach to address the multi-student needs identified. Still, the educator facilitating the implementation phases should be aware of the systematic and individual barriers to addressing the student’s needs.
References
Corcoran, J., & Hanvey-Phillips, J. (2012). Effective interventions for adolescents with depression. In: Fraklin C., Harris., M, B., & Allen-Meares, P. (eds.). The School Services Sourcebook: A guide for school-based professional. (2nd ed.). p. 149-157, Oxford Press.
Lamb, V. (2014). Obstacles in the implementation of Response to Intervention. BU Journal of Graduate Studies in Education, 6(2), 27-31.
Mendelson, T., Greenberg, M, T., Dariotis, J, K., Gould, L, F., Rhoades, B, L., & Leaf, P, J. (2010). Feasibility and preliminary outcomes of a school-based mindfulness intervention for urban youth. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 38, 985-994, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-010-9418-x
Stone, S. (2008). Chapter 10: Nonacademic needs of students: How can schools intervene? In: Jill Deurr Berick., & Neil Gibert (eds.). Raising children: Emerging needs, modern risks, and social responses.201-220, Oxford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195310122.003.0010
VanBergeijk, E, O. (2012). Effective approaches for students experiencing abuse, foster care, and juvenile justice issues. In: Fraklin C., Harris., M, B., & Allen-Meares, P. (eds.). The School Services Sourcebook: A guide for school-based professional. (2nd ed.). p. 339-380, Oxford Press.
Wahid, S, S., Ottman, K., Hudhud, R., Gautam, K., Fisher, H, L., Kieling, C., Mondelli, V., & Kohrt, B, A. (2021). Identifying risk factors and detection strategies for adolescent depression in diverse global settings: A Delphi consensus study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 279, 66-74, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.09.098
write