Online Self-Study Trainings

You’ll find me in the following lessons:

1. Founding History of IDHA with Dr. Peter Stastny

2. Division in the Field (Of Psychiatry)

3. A Transformative View of Mental Health Experiences

4. Being With Experiences Labeled Psychosis

5. Mental Health and Chronic Illness

6. Integrating a Transformative Mental Health Lens: Putting it Into Practice

What You’ll Learn

IDHA’s Transformative Mental Health Core Curriculum draws upon knowledge and traditions across a range of disciplines, social movements, geographies, and perspectives to advance approaches to mental health care rooted in humanity, care, and support.

Over the course of eight modules, you will be introduced to asystemic, historical analysis of mental health, including how racism, ableism, and other forms of oppression intersect with mental health;diverse narratives of lived experienceand the powerful impact of grassroots movements, past and present; a variety ofcommunity-based and peer-led practicesthat support healing; and atransformative mental health lensand how to apply it to your life and work.

What you’ll learn:

• How power dynamics play out within helping relationships

• The ways in which professional and non-professional helpers can be complicit in causing harm

• How to identify personal values in order to create a personal ethical framework that can be mobilized in daily life and work

• Intentional strategies for allyship in helping relationships

• Self-preservation rituals to resist burnout

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Cultures of professionalism in mental health are upheld and maintained through standardized codes of ethics. While these frameworks can aid swift decision making in times of supposed emergency, they can also reinforce cultures of liability that restrict the rights and autonomy of those experiencing distress. In the case of mandated reporting, for example, disclosure of suicidality can lead to forced treatment; although this may guarantee a temporary reprieve for a person in crisis, such measures have also been shown to exacerbate the problems they purport to solve. For those of us who are often caught between personal value systems and the codes of ethics from our fields, these experiences can also leave behind a trail of moral injury.

What you get

• Access to an online portal to take the self-paced online class

• 7 videos full of history, research, and unique perspectives (80 minutes of content)

• 3 bonus articles written by our faculty and other leaders in the field

• Discussion with a creative community of professionals and advocates inside the course

• A reference and resource list to aid ongoing learning and exploration on the course topics

What you’ll learn

• An overview of the political and social landscape that bolstered the biopsychiatric model from the 1980s until now

• The widespread impacts of big pharma, the marketing of psychotropic medication, and cultural reforms in response

• Alternative frameworks for understanding mental health (e.g. social, trauma-informed, and generative)

• A brief history of the mad movement and human rights reform in mental health

• The power of lived experience and listening to the voices of survivors of trauma and adversity