TITLE

How Your Depression Can Hurt Your Kids’ School Performance

DESCRIPTION

This very readable Time Magazine article is presented in an anecdotal quasi case study that discusses how a parents’ depression can affect their children’s school performance.  Many examples of problems in the family system can affect children and parental depression can have a far reaching effect.  The article coordinates with a JAMA study and states: “A new study confirms… a parent’s depression has a direct negative impact on the children… found that children of clinically depressed parents fare worse in school than their peers with healthy parents. While all children were affected by their parents’ diagnoses, maternal depression had a larger negative effect than paternal, and the link to poor performance was strongest among female children.”  At the end, the article makes a few suggestions as to what might be done in a family to ameliorate the effects of the parental depression.

SOURCE

Time Magazine, February 3, 2016, by Donna Gorman

LINK TO RESOURCE

http://time.com/4205928/how-your-depression-can-hurt-your-kids-school-performance/

(TinyURL)   http://tinyurl.com/hxoeojj

CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

•Begin with a discussion of depression as an affective disorder.
•Briefly have the students discuss and speculate on the effects within a family setting of having a parent who is chronically depressed.
•If possible, ask the students about the idea of “the family as a system.”
•What are the suggestions that are offered at the end of the article to ameliorate the effects?
•Critical thinking:  examine the article from a methodology point of view in terms of the problems “anecdotal case studies” in light of scientific Psychology.