Psychopathology In Schools

On average, children in schools K-12 spend 32 hours a week at school. Even so, that is just in the classroom setting, as most of the time children especially in elementary and middle school spent one to two hours after school for extracurricular activities. School is where children make friends, find their strengths and even find their weaknesses. That being said, because children spend so much time at school, what happens there can make a large impact not just on a student's academic life, but on their social life as well. Because of this, a school is a perfect place to address any social and mental issues a student may have. Two main methods of addressing and improving students' mental health at school include an instructor-led awareness

While this is a fairly new topic, professionals like Andrew S. Davis et al. advocate for this in his article, Understanding and Treating Psychopathology in Schools: Introduction to the Special Issue. This article addresses the studies in the journal, Psychology in Schools, and expresses the need of trained professionals to diagnose and treat children with psychopathy, or children with mental illnesses such as Anxiety, Depression, Early Onset Bipolar Spectrum Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Radicalized Attachment Disorder. Rather than just exposing students to and making them aware of mental health, this article calls for a "collaborative system of care that comprehensively meets the mental health needs of students" by having mental health professionals, such as psychologists and counsellors, and educators working with students that specifically have some form of psychopathy (Davis et al., 415). These must be adults who have been trained to either treat mental illness, using counseling or medication, be able to look for symptoms of mental illness, or sometimes both. Because psychologists, psychiatrists, and licensed counselors have gone to school specifically for treating students with mental illness, this article asserts the need for these mental health professionals in schools. As quoted by one of the articles in the journal, "Psychopharmacology in Schools" by Abrams et al., "school psychologists are a 'natural bridge' between schools, families and medical personnel" (Davis et al., 415). Overall, the article claims that there is a cost-effective way to implement trained mental health professionals into schools so students who are suffering from psychopathy can directly obtain the help they