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Mental Health Advocate

Matt's Thoughts On...

School

I have been through a lot with my schooling. Teachers often just don't understand these illnesses. They haven't learned about these things in school. They think that you are choosing to just be bad. I didn't want to be a bad kid. It was my reactions to things. I didn't have enough energy to handle things and I would react badly. People acted as if I had a choice about this. I didn't choose this. Who would choose this? I am just trying to deal with what I have given to the best of my ability. I missed nearly 60 days of school a year. It was all I could do just to stay alive. My depression gets worse in the winter when there is less sunlight. I would start to get depressed in September or so, and by my birthday in October I was often in the hospital, having ECT, or at home. My school days would start as full days in the fall. As I would get more depressed we would shorten my school day. Usually by around Christmas my day was less than half a day. I would often go on home instruction for part of the year. One year I was on home instruction from January until June. One year I was so sick in the fall I couldn't do any school at all for nearly 3 months. All I could do was sit and stare and watch movies. I barely ate or talked. My mom and doctor talked about what we could do the next fall because they said they could never let me get that sick again. The next fall I started Electro-shock treatments, ECT.

As you can imagine, when you are this sick it is hard to focus on math. I didn't barely have enough energy to keep myself alive, let alone learn. I was in a partial hospitalization program through a local mental health agency for about 1½ years. I have been in a day treatment school, self-contained classes, home instruction, no instruction..but now I am so well I am back in public school for a special education English class and then on a work-study job the rest of my day. I will graduate with my class and am on the honor roll.

The teachers want to help. They just don't seem to know how. We need education to every single teacher about these illnesses and how to help us. This is critical. The things they do with us in the classroom stress us out and make our illnesses worse. They don't mean to do it. They just don't know how to help us.

We need teachers who understand us and can help us. We need them to know when to lay low and when to have us do more in school We want to do well in school. We know that education is the basis for our future. All I wanted was to be well enough to be at school.

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