Statistically speaking, those who go to school and suffer from depression are not alone. Thousands of students in Bavaria suffer from depression, and the number of cases rose again during the pandemic. The pandemic also triggered many instances of numbness and anxiety. Many became addicted to gambling, some despaired of the crumbling family, in the psychiatric patients sometimes slept on the floor because the need for help was so great.
The pandemic had not even broken out when a group around 21-year-old Luca Zug made a film on the subject and in the education committee of the Bavarian state parliament auditioned to demand more publicity for the topic. The students demanded that teachers learn about mental illnesses such as depression as part of their training. In addition, the topic should be firmly anchored in the curriculum and more school psychologists and social workers should be hired. “Education creates prevention” is the motto the petition signed by 44,000 students. Surprisingly, the Education Committee gave this the benevolent rating of “appreciation”. An order to the state government to turn to the topic again.
Three years later, Luca Zug is dissatisfied. “In our view, what has been done is by no means enough,” he says. There is still room for improvement. That’s why the FDP used a legal trick to put the issue back on the agenda of the state parliament. On Tuesday evening, the student petition is to be dealt with again in the plenary session. A process that has probably never existed in this form, as a spokesman for the state parliament explains.
Documentary filmmaker Luca Zug (left) with his comrade-in-arms Alex Spoeri.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Indeed, the Ministry has three years ago a hurry Ten point program launched to raise awareness about depression. Among other things, the topic should be taken into account in the teacher training course. Teachers should be provided with appropriate materials and individual overviews of help offers in the region should be created on site. But that was not enough for the petitioners. They wrote an open letter to Ilse Aigner (CSU), President of the State Parliament. This letter was signed by the parliamentary groups of the Greens, SPD and FDP as well as the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry and the Munich Alliance against Depression.
An acknowledgment does not necessarily mean a one-to-one implementation, but Luca Zug and his colleagues remained stubborn. They pricked up their ears when the Ministry of Education presented its final report in February. The Ministry points out that it has asked the schools to create a list of contact points. It also mentions modules in the field of educational science, advanced training courses in Dillingen, an educational magazine, long-term goals in expanding the number of counseling hours and the “School opens itself” top-up program. The counseling capacity of the school psychologists has almost doubled since 2018, to 8020 hours across Bavaria – this corresponds to one hour per 200 students. “That’s not enough for sensible advice,” complains Matthias Fischbach, education policy spokesman for the FDP.
The work of the 975 school psychologists is further complicated by a chaos of responsibilities with the youth social workers and counseling teachers – and by a Bavarian peculiarity. School psychologists in public schools are not experts from the outside, but teachers with a state examination in psychology. The idea is that the practical proximity to the students should make it even easier for them to be approached and to know their problems. In schools, this often means that they spend most of their working time in the classroom and only have a few hours for counselling.
Hans-Joachim Röthlein, chairman of the Bavarian Association of School Psychologists (LBSP), speaks of a “poorly performed double role”. It is “inefficient nonsense” when school psychologists only have a few credit hours for counseling. “You can’t do a bit of counseling between classes in the morning.” Compared to other federal states, there is an appealing number of jobs in Bavaria – but these have to be implemented more efficiently. For example, school psychologists offer psychological counseling at least half of their working hours. “Otherwise you have to keep putting the students off,” says Röthlein.
He also sees a need for improvement. It would make sense to introduce a health-focused subject for all types of schools, where physical and mental health are thought of together, he says. The Ministry of Education avoided the students’ demand for compulsory teaching content and referred to the pedagogical responsibility of the schools and a website with educational videos. “No student looks at the materials on the ministry’s website,” complains Luca Zug.
He is now studying political science in Munich and continues to make films with his creative collective. The state government has recognized a certain relevance for the topic, he says. Now he hopes that more will happen.