Courses in Disability Studies are taught by Texas Center for Disability Studies faculty and staff and are currently offered through the School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin. The course number for each course is SW 387R for the graduate level and SW360K for the undergraduate level class.

Text:  
You will have readings for the course made available to you by the Texas Center for Disability Studies. They will be uploaded on the Blackboard Web site. You can either read them online or print a copy.

Format:
This course will be conducted entirely on the Web, using software called “Blackboard.” This software is fully accessible, but if you have difficulty in using a screen reader to access any information on the Web site, please contact the instructor as soon as possible. According to university policy, if you need any accommodations to successfully complete this course, you must notify the instructor of your needs in advance.

Course Objectives:
The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the world of individuals with severe mental illness. This course is not designed to show you to how to work with people with severe mental illness, rather, the goal is to enhance your ability to BE with people with this diagnosis.  To that end:

• The student will learn and critically evaluate current definitions of psychiatric disabilities.

• The student will understand psychiatric disabilities as a socially conferred status, not a fixed attribute of the individual.

• The student will identify how attitudes and beliefs about mental illness may impact the personal and social view of disability.

• The student will identify and discuss some of the specific issues that influence individuals with psychiatric disabilities.

• The student will examine the complex interplay of social, political, and economic forces as they relate to psychiatric disabilities.

• The student will examine the impact of cultural values in conceptualizing psychiatric disabilities.

• The student will understand the longstanding social oppression of the disability community, and in particular individuals with mental illness, and consider ways to initiate social change.

Schedule:

Syllabus lesson: This lesson will orient you to the structure of the course, the software we'll use for the course, as well as elements of learning online.

Lesson 1: In this lesson, we work to understand different models and ways of viewing mental illness, as well as explore personal perceptions and feelings about mental illness. We begin to re-conceptualize mental illness in terms of “recovery”, by focusing on a recovery model.

Lesson 2: We focus on schizophrenia. We examine the "facts" about the illness as well as explore personal experiences and accounts of living with the illness. We re-conceptualize schizophrenia in terms of recovery.

Lesson 3: In this lesson, we focus on Bipolar Disorder. Just as before, we examine the "facts" about the illness and consider those facts in relation to the experience of living with the illness. We use a recovery model to understand how to re-conceptualize Bipolar Disorder.

Lesson 4: This lesson focuses on Major Depression in the same manner as the other disorders. We continue to use a recovery model to develop a new understanding of managing and living with the illness.

Lesson 5: This lesson focuses on the very difficult topic of suicide.  We consider how suicide impacts the lives of individuals with mental illness, as well as family members and friends.

Lesson 6: We end the course focusing once again on recovery by being very specific about what helps and what hinders the recovery of people with severe mental illness.

Requirements:  
This course is designed in a Web-based environment that gives us a certain kind of flexibility in creating learning opportunities for you. The course is designed to give you some flexibility in choosing how you best learn, and what topics are of primary interest to you, within a structure. There are six lessons in this course (not counting what you will do the first week). Each lesson will last two weeks. There is one "project" that will last one week. At the beginning of each lesson or project, there is a "map" to tell you all of the learning activities for that lesson.  Some of the activities will be required, and some will be optional.  The map will clearly state what you need to do to complete that lesson, but if you have any doubt or questions, be sure to ask the instructor.

Grades:
You will acquire points by doing the tasks associated with each lesson.  Each lesson has basic requirements equivalent to the time you would physically spend in a classroom, plus the time you would normally spend outside the class doing readings or working on papers.  Each lesson clearly states how many points you can earn, and the grade per point total. There are different point requirements for the graduate and the undergraduate students. There will be points for doing the project, during the project week. There are no mid-term or final exams, only quizzes at the end of each lesson, and activities to support your learning.