Component Evaluation: History’s Lessons – Part 2

Timing: 45 Minutes 
Mode: In-class; Online

Students often find policy difficult to understand and can struggle to comprehend how it directly impacts their day-to-day lives.  Health professionals have the same challenge linking policy to everyday professional practice.  The combination of historical documents and audio commentaries in this lesson can help them work through these questions. 

Shape your group discussion with prompts.  First, ask your students to orally reflect on what they have learned from the historical documents and the audio commentaries. Make sure to write down their responses so that the students can refer back to their earlier discussion as you move onto the next part. 

• How do the historical documents make them revise their understandings of the current mental health systems or practices?
   
• Do the “Speaking to History” commentaries by Jayne Whyte, Lucy Costa and Ralph Buckley prompt them to come up with further revisions?

After your students have explored what they have learned, ask them to think about how they can use these points of learning in a practice setting today.  Encourage your students to move from abstract ideas to specific daily or practice examples.  This can be done online using a discussion board.