Depression, Bipolar Disorder and ODD at School, Decoded

Your child has a diagnosis: depression, bipolar disorder, ODD, or something close to them. The school has a different word for it, or no word at all. Maybe you have been told the behavior is a choice, or that your child is socially maladjusted and the category does not apply. Maybe there is a 504 plan on file while the grades slide and the calls to come and pick him up keep coming. Maybe a therapeutic placement has been mentioned, or your child is coming home from a hospital stay and nobody has said what Monday looks like. This guide explains how the federal rules work at each of those moments, the way a good advocate would on the phone: steady, specific, and in order.

The law's category is emotional disturbance, and it names no diagnosis. This guide decodes what the five characteristics in the regulation actually say, where depression, bipolar disorder and ODD sit against them, and what the socially maladjusted clause does and does not do; the second door, other health impairment, and what the Department has said about it; what the evaluation must cover, who decides, and what your own records and your child's outside providers add to it; what an IEP can hold for a mood disorder, from counseling and the behavior factor to functional goals and supports for the adults, and where the medical line sits; the discipline rules, the manifestation meeting, and the protections a child who has not yet been found eligible keeps when the school had reason to know; the Section 504 route and the rules of construction that matter for a condition that comes and goes or is managed with medication; therapeutic day schools, residential programs, what the district must cover and what you take on if you place your child yourself, and the return after a hospital stay; and ten states' own rules for the category, its criteria, and the placement routes, read from their own statutes and regulations. Every timeline, right and requirement carries its citation in the sentence where you read it, so you can check each one yourself. Written for the United States special education system under IDEA and Section 504.

Who it is for: a parent, usually a mother, of a school-age child with depression, bipolar disorder, ODD or a related condition, who has been told it is a choice, handed a 504 plan while the child is failing or being sent home, told a separate placement is next, or is bringing a child back after a psychiatric stay. Your alternative is an educational advocate at 100 to 300 dollars an hour. This guide costs less than a quarter of one of those hours.

62 pages, US Letter, instant digital download (PDF). Print the worksheets and the letters as many times as you need.