Okay we're at the end of lecture 2. So what have we covered?
Some really big questions. What is mental health?
And what causes mental illness? So what did we learn about mental health?
We learned that mental health, generally at this point in our history, is
referring to an overall sense of positivity, wellness, well being, and we
see that is something that is implicable to everyone.
That it is something that, no matter what other things are going on in your life,
we can always talk about whether or not you're in a state of positive or mental
health. We distinguish that from mental illness
which we, which is now being talked about as if it's on a separate dimension.
And so we can talk about when people are experiencing mental illness and sort of
have a sense that if somebody is experiencing mental illness there's
something going on with them that's affecting them biologically, but
manifests as things that we're seeing in terms of the way that they're feeling,
the way that they're thinking, that's cognitions and the way that they're
behaving. So that's mental illness.
What turned out to be a bit more complicated, although it's all pretty
complex, is when you determine that somebody has passed from a, a state of
being okay, functioning normally into a place where we start to think about them
having problems with their mental health or having a mental disorder or mental
illness. And there are many different perspectives
on that. We, what we all seem to agree on, or
everyone seems to agree on, is that there is some point at which we start to think
of somebody as not being mentally well anymore.
But how that gets determined is a very complex thing and it's not just about
what's going on with them biologically, psychologically.
It's also about what we as a society think is so called normal behavior and
acceptable behavior. And it has to do with things, there are
all kinds of complexities that get added in terms of our thinking about social
control and the use of power and privilege and et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera. Things that we are going to be talking
about throughout the rest of the course. So those were the some of the big ideas
we talked about. And then in terms of what causes mental
illness we looked at that from the biological perspective.
We looked at that a bit from psychological perspective and we'll do
more on that later. And we also talked a great deal about
that from a social perspective in terms of the social determinants of health and
then pulled that all together in the end by looking at the bio psycho social
perspective on mental health and illness. I thought that was pretty interesting
[LAUGH] so we're going to be carrying on with that as we move forward and I will
look forward to seeing the discussion that comes up in the forums based on the
questions that have come from this lecture.
So, what's going to happen next? What happens in the week in between?
You know that, next week, we're going to be talking about the social context of
diagnosis and treatment. So that's going to be pretty interesting.
It's going to bring us, and you're going to be building on the information from
this week to move into that week. you don't have a new homework assignment
this week. Because your homework is to mark the
other assignments, to mark the assignments from last week.
So I do want to take a moment to say that this is really important.
I hope that you are submitting your homework.
And I hope that you are also following through on marking other people's
homework because this is how we get more people to be able to complete the course
and I have an agenda here. I would like to see lots and lots of
people complete this course, both because I think it's a very interesting topic and
because I just want Coursera to know that the most committed learners in the world
are in the social context of mental health and illness.
So let's do that together. [LAUGH] So, so make sure that you're
marking homework and make sure that you, you get your own homework because,
because it'd be great to see people completing the course.
And then the other thing is the discussion of forums.
I've already mentioned those. So we have some questions there about the
bio psycho social perspective and social determinants of mental health.
Wherever you are, you know, we've got the whole world in this course.
I know I'm looking forward to seeing how these things are dealt with or thought
about in other places. so I'll be in the discussion forum and I
look forward to seeing what you guys post there and maybe we'll get to even talk
about it somewhere in between. So until then I'll see you next week.
Bye.
Charmaine WilliamsAssociate Professor
