Great psych class learning assignment

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Specializes in Psych, ER, OB, M/S, teaching, FNP.

I am not a full time educator, but was asked to teach just the psych-mental health portion at the local college (I graduated there). I had to come up with an assignment and wanted something that they would learn from (obviously), would not be too hard (they are almost done) and be fun.

This is what I came up with and we have just completed the quarter and it went so well:

Divided the class into groups of 3-4 (we had 27 total) and they all picked one of the following movies: As Good As It Gets; Sling Blade; A Beautiful Mind; Girl Interrupted; Reign Over Me; Leaving Las Vegas; Rain Man.

They had to do a presentation (skit, powerpoint, poster, discussion, whatever) on the chosen diagnosis (it could be any of the diagnosis in the movie, for instance Sling Blade had depicted Mental Retardation and Antisocial Personality Disorder and Girl Interupted had several different diagnosis as well).

They had to cover, etiologies, statistics, treatment modalities, etc. and then discuss why they felt the movie accuarately depicted the diagnosis. Then the class had to evaluate the presentations and each of the 3-4 evaluated how they worked as a group.

It went better than I could have thought, they all learned so much and I even learned things (especially about Autism) foom the presentations. Just thougth I'd share this. I am sure this could be adapted for larger classes, use more movies (there are several more out there with mental health themes).