This document discusses strategies for preventing emotional crises in students and addressing mental health issues like autism, schizophrenia, and depression in the classroom. It provides information on the signs and symptoms of each condition and recommends interventions like encouraging students, meeting basic needs, using social skills training, consistency, scheduling downtime, and identifying local support resources. Classroom strategies include role playing, matching work to attention span, using alternatives to writing, and teaching problem solving skills.

1. Individualize and Personalize, QPI’s Joey Kuntz SPED 478

2. Strategies Two research based strategies to prevent an emotional crisis 1) Student’s are inherently motivated to learn but learn to be unmotivated when they repeatedly fail. It is important to encourage these students often and let them know that someone believes in them.

3. Strategies Cont. 2) All students have basic needs to belong, to be competent, and to influence what happens to them. Motivation to learn most often occurs when basic needs are met. -Mendler, Motivating Students Who Don’t Care. P. 7

5. Repetitive use of language and/or motor mannerisms (e.g., hand-flapping, twirling objects)

6. Little or no eye contact

7. Lack of interest in peer relationships

8. Lack of spontaneous or make-believe play

9. Persistent fixation on parts of objects http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_home

10. Classroom intervention Strategies: Role Play, model situations Be consistent Foreshadow changes in schedule Match Students Work time with performance time- if a student can concentrate on a subject for ten minutes, give that student a ten minute assignment Use alternatives to writing to demonstrate competence TEACH SOCIAL SKILLS AS PART OF CURRICULUM! Schedule in “down-time.”

11. Passage to for autistic students When Other Students Get Upset “Sometimes other students get upset and cry. When this happens their teacher might try to help them. The teacher might try to help them by talking to them or holding them. This is okay. Sometimes when other students get upset and cry, it makes me upset and angry. I can use words to tell my teacher that I am upset. I can say, "That makes me mad!" or "I'm upset!" It is okay to use words about how I feel. When I get upset I will try to use words about how I feel.”

14. Excessive sleeping or daytime sleepiness

15. Difficulty falling asleep

16. Depressed or irritable mood, bad temper

17. Substance abuse

18. Difficulty concentrating and making decisions

19. Acting out, unusual defiance, criminal behavior

20. Appetite changes, weight loss/gain

21. Feelings of worthlessness, sadness, or self-hatred

22. Loss of interest in activities

23. Thoughts about suicide, obsessive fear about death

24. Failing relations with friends and family

26. Depression interventions cont. Develop a caring relationship with child. Give directions in small steps. Check for understanding and completion. Develop an individual problem-solving plan. Collaborate with student support personnel. Identify the function of the behavior.

27. RESOURCES American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR (4th ed.). American Psychiatric Association. ISBN 089042 0529 Fassler, D. G., & Dumas L. S. (1997). “Help Me, I’m Sad”: Recognizing, Treating, and Preventing Childhood and Adolescent Depression. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc. Mendler, Allen (2000). Motivating Students Who Don’t Care. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree (2009). Schizophrenia. Retrieved July 21, 2009, from Schizophrenia In-Depth Web site: http://www.schizophrenia.com/index.php (2009). Autism Society of America. Retrieved July 21, 2009, Web site: http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer