Verbetering van signalering, ondersteuning en doorverwijzing van depressieve klachten op middelbare scholen.

Abstract

Depressive symptoms in young people are common and can have many personal and social consequences. That is why it is important to identify depressive adolescents at an early stage and to offer a preventive intervention. School staff can play an important role in signaling and referring depressive adolescents. However, the literature shows that teachers have little knowledge about depression and their sense of competence is low. Besides, the identification, support and referral of students with depressive symptoms is not sufficient enough in secondary schools. Given the lack of insight into the Dutch situation with regard to dealing with depressed students in secondary schools, this study attempted to map the current situation regarding knowledge about depression, identification, support and referral of depressed students. Subsequently, it was examined whether teachers were interested in a brochure to support the prevention of depressive symptoms in secondary school students.

Sixteen teachers at secondary schools in the Netherlands were interviewed. In the interviews, questions involved 6 themes; knowledge about depression, identifying, supporting and referring depressed students, the teacher's sense of competence and the suitability of a possible brochure. The interviews were transcribed and coded using the atlas.ti program.

The results show that teachers experience insufficient knowledge with regard to depressive symptoms. In addition, the identification of depressive symptoms in secondary schools would not go well enough and teachers would not feel competent enough for this. Supporting and referring students with depressive symptoms would, according to the majority, be sufficient and most teachers would also feel competent enough in this. These results were used to develop a brochure.

More research, with a broader sample, is needed to get a more complete picture of the current situation, according to teachers. In addition, the brochure can be further examined to chart out the actual effectiveness.