I used to find it difficult that teachers used to assume that I was upset because someone had said something hurtful. They had been informed I had depression, it used to make me feel wrong for "just" being upset because of my thoughts.
Other students would often say my panic attacks were for attention, it would have been helpful if they had been pulled up on it and given some information on anxiety.
After a while my teachers worked out when I needed to talk, when I needed a quiet 5 minutes and when I needed distracting with school work. Not every thing needs to be talked out.
Just because my exams were making things more difficult didn't mean it was all due to the pressure of exams. It would have been helpful if they acknowledge that things were difficult and xyz must be making it more difficult but please don't assume that xyz is the sole cause. It made me feel so much weaker than my other classmates who were coping so much better, in reality there was other stuff underneath and exam stress was just the icing on a very miserable cake.
I was over 18 for my most difficult period of school and didn't want my parents informed and the school used any loop hole they could to contact my parents and it really broke my trust in them. They never explain why they were concerned or what they wanted to say to them, why they thought it would help. It was just "fine you don't want us to talk to your parents but we will find any reason we can to do so. have a nice day"
If you want a student to open up to you, threatening to put on their uni application that they aren't well enough to do a degree really isn't going to work!
I would like to say my school-health liaison officer and some of my teachers were brilliant and I owe most of my adult achievements to them as they got me through school however ugly it was at the time.
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