[MUSIC] Hello, my name is Charmaine Williams. I am a professor at the University of Toronto and I am your instructor for the course, The Social Context of Mental Health and Illness. Welcome. It gives me a lot of pleasure to tell you that you are joining thousands of students who have taken this course so that they could have a chance to think about, and talk about, and learn about how things in our social context affect the way that people experience mental health and mental illness. I'm imagining you're in this course because you have your own questions. Why do some people get mentally ill, and others are able to stay mentally healthy? Why is it that some things get treated as mental disorders, and other things don't? How is it that decisions are made about why we treat mental illness, or how we treat mental illness, or when we treat mental illness? All of these things have relations to our social context, the attitudes around us, the institutions around us, the ideologies that surround us and that's what we're going to be talking about in this course. So I'm looking forward to going through that process with you over the next six weeks. [MUSIC] One thing I want to tell you before you get started is that there is lots of help on this website to help you figure out how to navigate the course, how to get through the assignments, how to get your completion certificates and all of that. So definitely take a look around to make sure you can find the things you need. The other thing I want to tell you is that every week there are discussion forums and I've posted discussion questions, but I know also you will be posting discussion questions for each other. And there are no marks associated with participating in discussion forums. But if you don't participate in discussion forums, I think you'll really be missing out. One of the really exciting things for me in teaching this course is that I have a student group from all over the world and you have the chance to be in a students group that includes people from all over the world. It'd be a shame not to get into the discussion forum and try to get to know them and find out about what things are like where they are. I know for me, that's been one of the richest parts of doing this course. So with that, I wish you well on your journey to be with the social context with mental health and illness and I look forward to seeing you in the lectures. Bye! [MUSIC]
