Mental Illness
Progress:
About mental illness
- Mental illness doesn't have to be diagnosed for it to be a problem
- University students are in the age group (16 - 25) that is most likely for people to suffer from mental illness
- Sometimes episodes are one off and do not deteriorate into a full blown mental illness.
- There is a wide scale of knowledge of a range of mental health diagnoses.
- The diagnosis isn’t the be all and end all, also many diagnosis has different understanding points and different presenting problems or issues.
- Self esteem and self perception may be low for students experiencing mental health problems.
- Sometimes the student may not know themselves that they are experiencing mental health difficulties. Individual students may not have social skills.
- Keep student’s issues private and confidential. Questions like “how is your health?” in front of other students and lecturers can cause humiliation and discomfort.
- Some of your students may not be able to think in a rational manner and leap from one topic to another to another that are unrelated.
- Lethargy, memory, concentration, hallucinations visual or hearing voices may be some of the symptoms so the student may not able to concentrate on what is being said and they may be in their own mind.
- Student may be in “Recovery” mode and not have symptoms and are managing their illness well and at other times they may need more support that you can give them in relation to the subject topic in your tutorials and lectures.
- Mental illness covers a wide range of diagnosis and each dignosis has a different set of problems and challenges. For example, depression might affect motivation whereas psychotic conditions will affect hte ability concentrate and develop coherant thought.
- Conditions can vary in intensity and duration. For some students, their condition may be well managed and they rarely experience symptoms. Other students will manage their conditionas best they can.
- Often stress is a trigger and the stress of study and other influences, especially in combination, can cause difficulty.
- If symptoms are accute, this can affect things such as concentration, memory, mental stamina. Even when symptoms are not accute these things can be a problem to some degree. Sometimes other impacts can have the same or similar affectm such as poor sleep, isolation, estrangement, et cetera.
- Medications can also have side affects which can impact on the ability to study
About this Guide
This Guide has been written by University of Melbourne students.
It is intended to provide academics with a student perspective on how their condition affects their studies at the University.
Enquiries
If you have any enquiries about this course or accessibility in general, please contact Andrew Normand, Web Accessibility Program Leader.
Email: anormand@unimelb.edu.au
Phone: +61 3 9035 4867