"Students Learn Through Self-Evaluation and Creating Their Own Goals and Expectations" Bob Hugland

Self- Evaluation Questions 

(Ask yourself while evaluating)

Are you satisfied with your learning? 

• Are you satisfied that you demonstrated your knowledge and skill? 

• How does your work compare to the expectations on the rubric? 

• With which parts of the assignment (project, performance, etc.) were you most satisfied? 

• How closely does your work on this assignment (project, performance, etc.) reflect your learning? 

• Why do you think this assignment worked for you? 

• Were there any parts that didn’t work? 

• How did you do the assignment/project? Be specific. 

• Were the strategies that you used effective in helping you reach your goals? o What learning strategies were helpful? Explain. o What would you have to add to learn more, do better, etc.? 

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your effort? 

• Did the amount of time, effort and strategies used help you reach your goal? 

• If you were to do this over, how could it be improved? 

• As a teacher, what can I do to help you? 

• What can I do to increase the value of this assignment/project, etc.?

Unit 2: Mental Health-Reflective Assessment

                       Unit 2: Mental Health Assessment 

Michelle Obama speaks about the stigma that surrounds mental health,  “At the root of this dilemma is the way we view mental health in this country. Whether an illness affects your heart, your leg, or your brain, it’s still an illness, and there should be no distinction.” Our previous unit regarding physical and nutritional health proved to be extremely useful, by educating us on the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but our most recent unit proved to be just as useful as the last. Over the course of eight weeks we have been studying mental health in core and using subjects such as,  Science, English, and Technology to really educate,  ourselves, our peers, and our parents on the importance of mental health. By incorporating mental health into many of our projects such as Romeo and Juliet, our DNA Lab, and the unit project, I was able to really develop an understanding of mental disorders.

For almost five weeks we performed and analyzed the play Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare. The goal for this lesson was to choose any character and write an argumentative essay proving why you believed they suffered from a mental disability. I chose to write my essay about how the main protagonist, Juliet Capulet had developed depression in her childhood which ultimately lead to her suicide. With the help of articles such as “Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development” as well as presentations from “Project Success” and “Alcoholics Anonymous” I was really able to develop and understanding of depression and where it stems from.

The webinar, “Understanding Depression in Teens” by Doctor Stringaris explained that most mental disorders are passed on through genetics. To be able to more fully understand how genetics work we completed the Romeo and Juliet DNA lab. Every person has their own genetic code, and because each person’s genetic makeup is different some people are more prone to mental illnesses than others. It is also  very likely for someone to develop the same  mental illness that one or both of their parents may have suffered from. Chromosomes carry hereditary, genetic information in long strings of DNA called genes. Humans have 22 numbered pairs of chromosomes and a single pair of sex chromosomes,  each chromosome pair includes one inherited from the father and one from the mother.

As someone who suffers from anxiety, it is very easy for me to express my thoughts and emotions through art and for the unit project I did just that. I painted three canvases for this project, one canvas was meant to portray social anxiety, one was OCD, and my final painting was generalized anxiety disorder. With the help of research and inspiration, I was able to complete the project. I shared the results on all of my social media pages. Many people ended up messaging me saying that the paintings really portrayed what anxiety was and how it feels to suffer from this disability. The unit project really goes to show that sharing and educating others about mental health is as equally important as the education of physical and nutritional health.

This unit was extremely memorable, and I believe that what I learned can never be unlearned. The education of mental health is crucial. People need to know that having a mental disorder is not something to be ashamed of, some of the most successful and happy people were once victims of mental disabilities. If all schools provided mental health education the world would be a much more peaceful place.

Sebastian Junger's Ted Talk

"Our lonely society makes it hard to come home from war."

- On average 22 vets kill themselves every day

- Sebastian Junger believes that the trauma in war effects the war vets, but the society they come back to does

- In war you have a tribe, you trust others with your life but in modern society there is so much alienation and depression

- Huge gap between rich and poor and major racial profiling 

- The country the vets fought for is not stable or safe enough for them to come back too

- Poor women in Nigeria are less depressed than rich women in North America\

- Our country divides itself instead unifying 

- PTSD rates declined after 9/11 because one major trauma unifies people 

- Need to fix our society so we can also help the vets

- Why is it that people only come together when it effects them personally? 

- How can we make it our common goal to try and fix society?

Mental Illness Unit

Depression in Teens Webinar 

Why is there depression? 

 Some evolutionary theories of depression:

- Protection from negative outcomes

- Psychic pain (analogous to bodily pain)

- A way of changing one's own environment

Standard definition of Major Depressive Disorder

- Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day

- diminished interest in or pleasure in all or most activites 

- significant weight loss when not on diet 

- insomnia or too much sleep

- psychomotor agitation or retardation 

- fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day

- feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt

- diminished ability to think or concentrate 

- recurrent thoughts of death

Symptoms cause significant distress in social, occupational

Epidemiology of depression

- adolescents with major depression are up to 30 times more likely to die from suicide 

- In its severe form it affects about 9% of adolescents 

- Second leading cause of years lived in disability 

Aetiology of depression 

Genes and environment: 

- Genes: 30-50% of the liability to depression is due to genetic factors

- Gene- environment correlation: increased genetic liability for lifetime traumas 

- Gene- environment interraction: responding differently to situations of stress

- Traumatic life event increases probability in depression for certain family members

- Interplay between environment and genetic makeup in depression 

Development and depression

Sex and Pubertal effects on depression

- Difference in cognitive processing 

- Greater exposure or sensitivity to psychosocial 

- Hormonal mechanisms- girls who start menstrual cycle earlier are more likely to have depression 

Continuities, homtypic:

- Childhood depression does not predict adult depression 

- Anxiety- early on anxiety precedes depression

- Alcohol- an "internalising" pathway to depression 

- OCD

Behavior problems and depression 

- 40% of depressed young adults have had serious disruptive problems

- What exactly explains the transition between irritability and depression? 

Neurobiology of depression

- Depression is probably a heterogeneous syndrome

- Negativity bias and missing the bias 

- People who suffer from depression are more likely to pick up the negative 

- Miss positive parts of life due to negativity caused by depression 

- Money is People who don't expose effort to get a reward 

- Unable to see why something rewarding is positive 

- Processing reward in brain is important but people who have depression have low activity in this area

- Does treatment change reward processing? 

- Can we target our treatments on reward processing 

Diagnosis 

- Diagnosis will take longer of parents focus of irritability and oppositionality 

- Teachers focused on academic performance 

- Cannot bring oneself to speak about it 

- (In ex) Christina only diagnosed after she took first overdose 

- Awareness is key to diagnosis 

- Screening only in high risk situations 

- Diagnosis should address: presence of manic problems, underlying medical causes, risk assessment 

Downstream effects of genes and environment 

- Medications and psychological treatment are trying to target behavior, feelings, and thoughts 

Treatments 

- Pharmocology

- Psychological therapy: CBT and IPT 

- in mild cases start with psychological treatment

- Combining may be better 

- 60% of young people respond to an antidepressant 

- 50% respond to placebo

- The higher the severity of depression the lower the placebo response 

- 10 antidepressant needed to treat person and 112 needed to harm ( important when talking about suicidality)

Mental Illness Guest Speaker 

What is a mental disorder?
- Affect's a person's thinking, emotional state, and behavior
- Disrupts the person's ability to work or attend school
- Unable to carry out daily activities
- Have stable relationships

What is anxiety?
- Normal response to stress
- Anxiety can be good & keep you on your toes, make you want to succeed
- Anxiety disorder- persistent fear or worry, can't manage with it
- Need symptoms for 6 months to be diagnosed by doctor

Symptoms of anxiety
- unsocial, restlessness, feeling tense, trouble concentrating, fatigue, insomnia, sweating, pounding heart, dizziness, shortness of breath, muscle tension

Types
- panic disorder, specific phobia, social anxiety, generalized anxiety, ocd, ptsd

Causes
- school, life events, abuse, high stress, violence, heredity, brain chemistry, medical conditions

Statistics 
- 32% of teens will experience anxiety
- 80% will not receive treatment
- Average age when anxiety starts is 6 years old

Depression
- mood or loss of interest in favorite activities
- change in sleep and activities
- guilt, worthlessness
- thoughts of death and suicide

Causes
- trauma, environment, stress, hereditary, medications, alcohol and drug abuse

Statistics
- 20% of teens will experience depression before reaching adulthood
- Teenage boys report suffering from depression more than teenage boys

Suicide and self harm
- suicide, attempt to die
- suicide is second leading cause of death in ages 10-24
- self-harm is a negative coping tool

Warning
- threats to kill or harm him or herself
- making a plan for suicide
- abusing substances
- current talk of suicide

QPR 
- Q- question
- P- persuade
- R- refer
- Do not wait! Always ask question.

Eating Disorders 

 Binge Eating Disorder:

• Eating disorder characterized by eating large quantities of food in a short amount of time until point of discomfort and then feeling shame and guilt and even the need to begin purging                                   
• Most common eating disorder in the U.S. affecting 3.5% of women, 2% of men and 1.6% of adolescents                                                                                                                                       
• Symptoms and diagnostic criteria include: Recurrent episodes of binge eating, Marked distress regarding binge eating, the binge eating occurs at least once a week for 3 months, the binge eating is not associated with anorexia or bulimia                                                                                               
• Behavioral Characterisitcs- secretive eating habits, disruption in normal eating behaviors, periodic dieting or fasting, has periods of impulsive eating without purging, creating schedules that include binge eating                                                                                                                                                
• Emotional and Mental- anger, anxiety, worthlessness, depression, avoiding conflict, working hard to please others                                                                                                                                     
• Health risks- high blood pressure and cholesterol, heart disease, type II diabetes, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea                                                                                                                                       
• Causes- unknown but genetics, biological factors, long-term dieting and psychological issues increase your risk                                                                                                                                           
• Psychotherapy and medication used to treat binge eating 

 Anorexia:

• excessive weight loss and self- starvation
• Warning signs: dramatic weight loss, preoccupation with weight gain, refusal to eat certain foods, binge/purging, excessive exercise 
• 90-95% of anorexia sufferers are girls and women, 5-20% will die, one of the highest death rates of any mental health disorder 
• Treatments: therapy and medications to treat anxiety and depression as well 

 Bulimia:

• Symptoms: consuming very large amounts of food followed by vomiting, feeling out of control during these episodes
• Warning signs: evidence of purging behaviors (frequent visits to bathroom after meals), excessive exercise regimen, calluses on back of hands and knuckles from self- induced vomiting, unusual swelling of the cheeks and jaw area, tooth decay from staining of stomach acids 
• Health consequences: electrolyte imbalance, inflammation and possible rupture of esophagus, tooth decay from frequent vomiting 

Brain Anatomy Lab Narrative

                                                             Brain Anatomy Lab

Description: For this lab we were given a cauliflower that represented a brain. We first had to research then label each part of the brain onto the piece of cauliflower. Once all pieces were labeled Mrs. Neto gave our group the situation of our cauliflower brain having a stroke in the left frontal lobe. After giving us the situation we were told to write a narrative as the patient, doctor, or family member of the patient. I chose to write my narrative as the child of the patient that suffered from the stroke.

Narrative

I should have been more observant and cautious when it came to my mom’s health. After the doctor had explained what the symptoms are for an oncoming stroke, I knew that I could have tried to prevent it, or at least received  help earlier. With a history of health problems such as high blood pressure and a heart attack that had only occurred a year earlier, my mom was a likely candidate for a stroke in her left frontal lobe, especially because she had been so caught up with trying to keep a roof over our heads, that taking care of herself was not one of her top priorities.

Mom had been complaining of having trouble seeing through her left eye, and numbness in her arms and legs a few days earlier. It worried me because she did not usually complain unless something had been really bothering her, but when I had asked her if she needed to go to the doctor, she brushed me off saying that she would be fine and that she must have only been tired. Two days later, when I went to wake her to start getting ready for work, she started to speak in a very quiet, non- comprehensible manner. I tried to help her get out of bed only to have her crash to the floor. Her body became completely stiff as she layed on the ground slowly becoming unconscious, while still trying to speak through her slurred words.

By the time I had reached the hospital the doctor was already prepared to speak to me, he explained that my mom had just had a stroke in the left frontal lobe of her brain, “You are both lucky you found her when you did, there was a significant amount of bleeding, if you would have waited any longer she would have died.” If only the doctor knew that the mom I had grown up with, and loved so dearly, had actually died that day. She was never the same after her stroke, and  I will never forget the first words she spoke to me after waking up, “Do I know you?” My heart broke in that moment, but the doctor was quick to try and comfort me, “I know it’s hard but memory loss is very common with stroke patients. I want you to be prepared to help her deal with the long-term effects of a stroke, such as a choppy speech pattern, weakness in the left side of her body, and changes in her behaviour and personality.” I was prepared to do whatever it took to nurse my mom back to health, even if it meant dropping out of school and getting a job to be able to pay the bills and keep her healthy.

After a two week hospital stay, my mom was released. During those two weeks I had watched the one person I once felt so connected to, become someone completely unrecognizable, and I now had to take this stranger home with me. She was my mom and I still loved her more than anything in the world, but no amount of information or help from the doctors had prepared me to take care of her. She became extremely antisocial, some days she would not even look at me. I would wake up in the middle of the night to her cries, and without thinking I would run to her room but she would not accept my help. I could tell she was constantly in pain, it hurt me so much to see the one person that mattered so much to me in so much pain.  She was suffering, and I felt so helpless. She did have good days though, we would sit and watch movies and laugh until we cried, but those days were rare. She was starting to complain of headaches, but when I asked the doctor about them, he had said she would be fine and that they were very common. I guess it was common for stroke patients to have another stroke too, because that is what happened to my mother. This time I didn’t get to her on time though. My mom died only two months after her first stroke. The only thing I have left in life is hope, I have hope that she is in a better place and no longer suffering.