This course is part of the UBC Micro-certificate in Mental Health and Substance Use.
Fundamental knowledge and core skills in mental health support are covered in this course.
This course provides a comprehensive foundational understanding of mental health. You will learn how to screen for and describe mental health symptoms, effectively support individuals with accessing specialized mental health supports, respond to mental health crises, and provide mental health care that supports holistic recovery. Additionally, you will learn how to provide mental health care that is client-centered, strengths-based, trauma-informed, culturally inclusive, and anti-oppressive. This course will provide you with the tools and the confidence to effectively support a diverse range of individuals experiencing mental health challenges in a wide range of settings and contexts.
By the end of this course you will be able to:
- Identify and describe basic categories of mental health symptoms, social determinants of mental health, and strategies to screen for mental health challenges.
- Examine current treatment approaches for common mental health challenges.
- Assess and effectively apply skills for responses to mental health crises and for safe outreach work with individuals, while considering the moral distress that can be experienced with people experiencing mental health challenges.
- Describe the mental health services in BC and how to navigate and collaborate with these services.
- Apply culturally competent and anti-oppressive approaches, including recovery-based, strengths-based, and trauma-informed methods to working with people who experience mental health challenges.
- Identify and work with the unique presentations of mental health challenges in children and youth.
- Describe the unique challenges and interventions for concurrent presentations, including mental health and substance use and mental health and neurodiversity.
Course outline
This course is divided into the following modules:
- Understanding mental health
- Screening for and identifying signs of mental illness
- Psychiatric interventions and the BC Mental Health Act
- Responding to a mental health crisis
- Trauma and resiliency informed practice approach
- Strengths-based, client-centered and recovery-oriented approaches
- Outreach work and working with the unhoused population
- Mental health treatment options, making referrals and navigating mental health services in BC and beyond
- Culture, ethnicity, Indigeneity, identity and mental health
- Stigma, discrimination, decolonization and mental health
- Child and youth mental health and reproductive mental health
- Concurrent disorders and neurodiversity
- Moral distress and self-care
- Final assessment
How am I assessed?
Your knowledge will be evaluated through the following assessment methods:
- Quizzes at the end of each module – can be completed multiple times in order to progress to the next module.
- Reflection exercises – reviewed by a facilitator, with feedback provided.
- A final knowledge check (multiple-choice) – can be completed multiple times in order to achieve a passing grade.
- A final case study-based written assignment – reviewed by a facilitator with feedback provided and graded as pass/fail (with an opportunity to redo the assignment if needed).
If you require an extension to complete your coursework, you will be able to contact your facilitator to request one. You will earn a digital badge on successful completion of the course.
Expected effort
You can expect to spend approximately two to three hours per week in addition to any live sessions you might attend.
Course format
This course is 100% online, self-paced, and instructor-supported with optional real-time instructor sessions. Course work is done independently and at your own pace within deadlines set by your instructor. Log in anytime to your course to access the lessons as they become available.
Each course indicates a registration start and end date. Because courses are 100% online and self-paced, you can register and begin the course at any time within the date range.