“Breathe, its a bad day not a bad life”
Within this online learning course, Young People and their Mental Health, i completed a course of various meetings, lectures, online tests and discussions over a period of five weeks, each week consisted of a two hour study period per week. This entailed key learning aspects such as:
- Topic of mental health, understanding of the various types of mental illnesses
- Means of responding to youth struggling with their mental health
- Understanding learning difficulties and mental health
With the combined core aspects within the course, i was intrigued to fully develop skills and the various offered services and coping mechanises when struggling. As someone who struggles with their mental health, i though that this online course would not only be beneficial for myself, but to help others and provide an overall understanding of how mental health can affect individuals in various ways.
In today’s society, social media is used vastly within young adolescents, professionals and adults, with every growing statistics showing that it has a large impact on an individuals mental health, if that be via using social media platforms professionally or for personal use.
My feedback and intake of the MOOC
Overall, i throughly enjoyed taking the time to complete this course, it opened my eyes to the extent of various ways others can be effect both with disabilities and not. I feel that the overall course was successful, as it provided an insight into various techniques and means of responding to others, it introduced the website Young Minds, it entails various courses, quiz’s and personal blogs that people struggling with their mental health uploaded. The extent of the learning was also very interesting, it wasn’t just continuous word after word, they provided graphs, blurbs on how you feel, online assessments and again guest speakers.
With the MOOC available on Future Learn, they offer free courses to individuals wanting to build knowledge on an area of interest, although when selecting this course i was unaware that you had to upgrade to finish the course. This would of cost a fee of £39. This was a negative experience as i was already in due course with my blog posts and had already completed my other MOOC based on Mental Health. In turn i had to start from scratch after completing this online MOOC, for the last five week period. Therefore i had to create a brand new blog, rethink my topic of interest and finally complete two new MOOC’s.
Since completing what i could of this MOOC and taking into perspective the various options available, i decided to set small but achievable targets to help myself and also have set a period of time that i gain access to my social media, i.e 1 hour for professional use, 1 hour of personal use each day.
Kirsty Burnside 