Free Resources Available to Help Change the Conversation About Mental Health Diagnoses
06/23/2020
Twenty percent of American adults experience a mental health condition every year, and 1 in 25 Americans lives with a serious mental illness. Despite this prevalence, negative stigmas about mental health conditions persist, causing some individuals to avoid seeking treatment and preventing some providers from delivering the most appropriate care. Language is powerful, and certain professionals with large audiences—like healthcare providers and journalists—can be particularly effective in changing the way we talk and think about mental health and mental illness. That’s why a team at the Center for Health Communication has created a whitepaper and curriculum modules—all available to the public for free—around one important question: What are the best ways to train healthcare professionals and journalists about mental health and mental illness communication... and why should we?
With grant support from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, the Center for Health Communication has analyzed existing research around the mental health communication-related challenges frontline healthcare providers and traditional journalists face. The result is “Mental Health Communication: What We Know and What We Can Do Better,” a 43-page whitepaper synthesizing relevant research and introducing five evidence-based recommendations on how to help medical and journalism students think and communicate differently about mental health issues.
“Mental health is a complex topic, and there is no ‘magic solution’ to preventing mental health issues or supporting successful recovery,” said Heather Voorhees, Ph.D., who led this project. “However, from the research we’ve reviewed and synthesized, it seems clear that changing the way we teach students to communicate about mental health—both in their personal and future professional lives—can go a long way toward fighting societal stigma, which can boost treatment-seeking, and improve care.”
In alignment with the whitepaper’s specific recommendations and pedagogical best practices, standalone curriculum modules were created for journalism and pre-med students. These modules offer a broad overview of important topics such as:
- Mental Health Conditions 101
- Understanding, Recognizing and Addressing Implicit Bias
- Non-Verbal Communication in Patient-Provider Interactions
- Structural Competency
- Additional topics to come
The modules are short (25 to 45 minutes each), feature an engaging activity along with lecture slides (or recorded lectures) and learning tools, and are designed to be “plug and play” lessons for instructors. The goal is to provide evidence-based and data-supported educational tools while minimizing instructor effort.
Though this whitepaper and curriculum focus on journalists, healthcare providers, and those who train them, the recommendations and lessons can easily be modified for mass communicators of all types: community organizers, religious leaders, coaches, teachers, etc.
“I was excited about the potential of this project, even recognizing as we started that we weren't going to uncover any simple ‘right’ answers for how to talk about mental health,” says Mike Mackert, Ph.D., CHC Director. “Over the course of the year I have come to appreciate how much value there is in simply highlighting the importance of being more thoughtful about how we talk about mental health, particularly for healthcare providers and journalists. There are a lot of strong and valid views on the use of various terms—mental health, mental illness, mental health condition, etc.—that even allies in supporting mental health can disagree on. I hope our work can contribute to broadening the conversation and helping more people be conscious of the ways they communicate about mental health.”
The whitepaper and mental health resources are part of the CHC's 2-year theme on mental health and health communication.
For more information about the CHC, these resources, or the Mental Health and Health Communication theme, e-mail Director Michael Mackert.