Don't jump ship! : new approaches in teaching mental health to undergraduates

Harper, David and Cromby, John and Reavey, Paula and Cooke, Anne and Anderson, Jill (2007) Don't jump ship! : new approaches in teaching mental health to undergraduates. Psychologist, 20 (5). pp. 302-304. ISSN 0952-8229

Abstract

We hope that the articles in this special issue have convinced you of the need to move beyond diagnosis. Peter Campbell and Rufus May have outlined some alternative approaches in practice with service users; in this final article our emphasis is on another good place to start in effecting change, namely our students. Mental health teaching on undergraduate psychology courses is often structured according to psychiatric diagnoses and categorisations (Cromby et al., 2007). Here, we question the value of this approach to teaching and propose an alternative to the tendency for psychology educators to ‘jump ship’ by giving psychiatric rather than consistently psychological explanations of mental distress. We discuss recent theoretical and empirical advances within psychology; review some of the policy developments which might bear upon mental health teaching; and offer pointers to a range of resources which teachers might find helpful.