Esther Oladejo knew she’d crossed an invisible boundary when she started forgetting to eat for entire days at a time. A gifted rugby player, Oladejo had once thrived on her jam-packed school schedule. But after she entered her teenage years, her teachers started piling on assignments and quizzes to prepare students for high-stakes testing that would help them to qualify for university.
As she devoted hours on hours to cram sessions, Oladejo’s resolve began to fray. Every time she got a low grade, her mood tanked—and with it, her resolve to study hard for the next test. “Teachers [were] saying, ‘Oh, you can do much better than this,’” says Oladejo, now 18, who lives in Merseyside, England. “But you’re thinking, ‘Can I? I tried my best on that. Can I do any more than what I’ve done before?’”
One morning, as Oladejo steeled herself for another endless day, her homeroom teacher passed out a questionnaire to the students, explaining that it would help assess their moods and well-being. Oladejo filled it out, her mind ticking forward to her upcoming classes.
Soon after that, someone called to tell her she’d been slotted into a new school course called the Blues Program. Developed by Oregon Research Institute psychologist Paul Rohde and his colleagues at Stanford University, the program—a six-week series of hour-long group sessions—teaches students skills for managing their emotions and stress. The goal is to head off depression in vulnerable teens.
Although Oladejo didn’t know it at the time, her course was one in an expanding series of depression prevention programs for young people, including Vanderbilt University’s Teens Achieving Mastery Over Stress (TEAMS); the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Resiliency Program; Happy Lessons, developed by Dutch social scientists; and Spain’s Smile Program. The growing global interest in depression prevention is helping to establish the efficacy of a range of programs in diverse settings.
For researchers…
Read the full article here
