Browse Hierarchy SUM701T: The Impact of Trauma on Mental Health

This course will address the mental health impact of trauma as a lifelong process interrupted in some significant way by the pandemic of COVID-19. The work of researchers to understand mental health conditions will be supplemented by case studies that provide opportunity for students to glimpse examples of the life stories behind diagnoses. This course will address the challenge of mental health to the field of medicine as a whole. In a recently published book The Myth of Normal, leading trauma academic Dr Gabor Maté suggests society is built on a hidden assumption of trauma passed through generations and presented visibly in the individual as physical and psychological conditions diagnosed by doctors. While diagnostic labels help individuals understand mental health problems, the interactions between doctor and patient may be limited should there not be a parallel effort to recognise the societal factors that contribute to ill health. Through a combination of theory and reflective accounts of ill health the module will illustrate the mechanisms by which life experiences impact the mind and reflect on whether the pandemic modified these. In respect to addressing the problem of trauma in the individual and society, the module will feature guest lectures from the Wolfson Institute of Population Health experts in building resilience in the mind and the community.