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School Refusal Program

Closed for Referrals

The School Refusal Program is unfortunately closed for referrals.

New research

While the program is no longer accepting referrals, a new research project has commenced which aims to explore the experiences of young people and their parents in relation to school refusal. While this new project aims to better understand school refusal and how to help families, it does not provide treatment. If you are interested in participating in this research and would like to know more, please click on this hyperlink.

Please note that this program below is not current, as mentioned above, and is provided for informative purposes only.

School Refusal Program

The program offers a comprehensive assessment and treatment of young people aged between 11-16.5 years who are experiencing school attendance difficulties. School refusing children typically suffer from anxiety and sometimes depression, and become severely emotionally distressed when taken to school or at the thought of school. They often complain of feeling unwell, they may cry, resist efforts to get them back to school and become quite distressed. Left untreated serious short and long-term consequences are associated, such as interfering with a young person's social and emotional development, academic achievement and vocational opportunities, and leave them at risk of psychiatric difficulties later in life.

Our program investigates whether treatment outcome can be improved by augmenting counselling specifically (cognitive behaviour therapy) which helps over half of school refusing children, with anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication compared to placebo (sugar tablet).

The School Refusal Program is funded by beyondblue: the national depression initiative and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NH&MRC). The program aims to investigate the adjunct use of anti-depressant medication and counselling to treat children who refuse to go to school due to anxiety and/or depression.

Chief Investigators

Program Co-ordinator

Further Information and Referrals Options

Additional Information

Media

A joint initiative between
 Monash University
 and BeyondBlue

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