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From the course by University of Toronto

The Social Context of Mental Health and Illness

93 ratings

University of Toronto

The Social Context of Mental Health and Illness

93 ratings

Learn how social factors promote mental health, influence the onset and course of mental illness, and affect how mental illnesses are diagnosed and treated. This course explores how our understanding of mental health and illness has been influenced by social attitudes and social developments in North America and around the world. The course begins by situating our contemporary mental health practices in historical context, then looks at different aspects of mental health, mental illness and mental health services and their connections to what’s going on in our social environment.

From the lesson

Welcome and A Brief History of Madness

We begin with a quick orientation to the course and continue with our first lecture topic: A brief history of madness.

Welcome to the course!2:33

Meet the Instructors

Charmaine Williams
Associate Professor
Faculty of Social Work

[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]

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