Dallas students learn about mental health

DALLAS — In a scenario playing out in more and more classrooms around the world, a Dallas teenager recently asked her classmate if anything was wrong, noting that she hadn’t been acting like herself. The brusque reply: “Just leave me alone.”

The ninth-graders at the Uplift Hampton Preparatory school were role-playing as part of a program that aims to teach teens how to spot the signs of depression in themselves and others. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among Americans ages 10 to 18, according to government health statistics, and experts hope the lessons will get help to depressed teens more quickly.

“It’s kind of like ‘Mental Health 101.’ So they talk about depression and anxiety and just common mental health issues, and then I think the most important thing is they talk about what to do if you feel that way,” said Tony Walker, senior director of student support services at Uplift Education, which offers the program to all ninth-graders at its network of Dallas-area public charter schools, including Uplift Hampton.

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center is administering the program, which is called Youth Aware of Mental health, or YAM, and was developed by researchers at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and Columbia University in New York.

UT Southwestern researcher Marshall Motsenbocker, who led the program’s five 45-minute sessions at Uplift Hampton, said role-playing helps teens talk through difficult issues. When the two girls finished their recent scene, he asked the class what signs of depression they recognized and what might be causing it. He said teens are sometimes too quick to act, and these discussions help them pause to think about what might have motivated someone to behave a certain way.