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Project Goals | Real-Kid
Health Videos | Additional Curriculum | Upcoming
Phases
Welcome to the DEHPP!
This site is a work in progress, so we encourage you to
check back soon to find growing amounts of educational information.
Kids, Parents and Teachers know that life isn't just "happily
ever after" but don't always know how to recognize and
prevent depression. Or how to find help when someone is
depressed.
The Depression Education and Health Promotion Project gives
Kids and Adults information about depression and ways to
stay healthy and happy in a sometimes stressful world.
The Depression Education and Health Promotion Project
of the Department of Psychiatry provides mental health education
and total health promotion via an educational program that:
 Acknowledges
normal stressors children deal with, and normal problems
they experience due to stress- Provides
factual information on the importance of mental health and
ways to maintain it
- Emphasizes
health promoting experiences that can enhance preteens'
overall health and well-being, and help inoculate them against
stressful life events
- Distinguishes
real depression from normal sadness, stress or anger
- Alerts
children and adults to early warning signs that stress is
interfering with someone's life
- Provides
information on when, where and how to find help
for a child
struggling with depression
- The UConn
study team has conducted meetings and focus groups with
teachers, parents, and children to assess needs and learn
how to best support existing efforts to optimize childrenís
mental health.
- Needs-based
information has been combined with valuable health-care
information regarding normal stressors, health promoting
options, symptoms of depression, and depression prevention.
- Videos
(offering a combination of acting, first-person experiences,
narration and graphics) are being developed (almost finished)
to deliver age-appropriate health information to adults
and children.
- 20-page
workbook for 5th graders, combining depression education
and health promotion.
- "Depression
Ed's" website, a great health promoting information for
kids, parents and teachers, and featuring students,
school
work, contests and curriculum successes from collaborating
schools.
- Cross-curriculum suggestions, materials and supplies for health promoting activities.
- A short novel for 5th graders that weaves in a success story of one family dealing with depression.
- Materials (video, written materials) in Spanish (and eventually other languages)
- Reference lists for books, agencies, web sites and other sources of help.
- The videos
will be piloted tested (with fifth graders, their parents
and teachers) for audience comprehension and acceptability.
- An evaluation
protocol will assess the effectiveness of the video presentations.
- Printed materials and guides for teachers, school counselors and parents will be available.
- Videos will be distributed to schools, communities and private businesses, and will be made available for viewing on public television networks and on videotape.
- A long-term follow-up is planned to develop and field-test the video curricula and additional materials.
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