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Why Students "Drop Out"...
Clinical Depression... or Philosophical Depression
[COMMENT: Speaks for itself....
Dysfunctional societies breed dysfunctional citizens. Societies which
promote a warped worldview, such a secular materialism will breed citizens who
have little or no hope about their lives. Philosophical depression is
different from psychological depression, and is caused by thinking that one lives in a cosmos in
which there is no meaning, no good ending, no reason for the stupidity and
ugliness, no light at the end of the tunnel. Only the Biblical Gospel is a
secure antidote for this.
Some people think life was always like this. These
conditions would have been unthinkable in my childhood. The loss of moral
consensus in a society leads always to moral chaos and toward a social
nervous breakdown. We are in the midst of that right now.
E. Fox]
HERE'S A
CLUE ON WHY MANY DROP OUT
Trying to get an education in the L.A. public schools is
starting to feel a lot like attending class at the O.K. Corral.
A survey of 6,008 South Los
Angeles high school students shows that many are frightened
by violence in school, deeply dissatisfied with their
choices of college preparatory classes, and -- perhaps most
striking -- exhibit symptoms of clinical depression.
"A lot of students are depressed because of the conditions
in their school," said Anna Exiga, a junior at Jordan High
School who was one of the organizers of the survey. "They
see that their school is failing them, their teachers are
failing them, there's racial tension and gang violence, and
also many feel that their schools are not schools -- their
schools look more like prisons."....
In fact, the student
organizers said they don't like to use the word "dropout" to
describe their many peers who leave school. They prefer "pushout,"
because they believe the school system is pushing students
to fail....
Cheryl Grills, a
professor of clinical psychology at Loyola Marymount, said
that she was struck by how many students volunteered answers
to one question about why they sometimes skip school. More
than half hinted at depression, saying they were tired, had
trouble sleeping, felt helpless or hopeless, were bored or
felt lazy, among other responses.
She compared those responses to the symptoms of clinical
depression from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders. "Much to my horror and shock, they almost
completely matched up," she said.
That led her to conduct a follow-up survey among 52
students. Of them, 67% reported that they had "felt sad or
hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more," and had
"stopped doing some of their usual activities" as a result.
"That's clinical levels of depression," she said....
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-survey26apr26,0,2139687.story
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