Weekly reminder, support, and engagement transcript

Hi everyone and welcome to week three of REC 251. I hope that you enjoyed our first two units which were a sort of introductory in terms of orienting you to TR practice more generally and a bit of a reminder of the work that you've done in REC 151 around the TR process just making sure that that still rings a bell and you're familiar with it moving on in the term. As you'll see in your textbook, the API is prominent in each of the chapters - most if not all of the chapters anyway – and an exemplar provided for you to give you a sense of what API might look like in relation to the particular diagnosis that that were examining that week.

So I wanted to touch base with you before you get into psychiatry and mental health, there'll be two units on this topic, to talk a little bit about the kind of language that's going to be used in this course and how it is useful and then how it is not as useful. In REC 151, you talked a lot about language and so I don't want to dwell on this but I do want to raise with you the fact that throughout this course and similarly in REC

252, if you'll be there with me this fall or next, you're going to see that these two courses use a lot of clinical language. So we are very much situated in the medical model in terms of how we talk about symptoms and diagnosis and disabilities and the use of the DSM. So the DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual that's used to describe a huge range of disorders and disabilities and this is the language that's used really commonly in practice. And it is a bit of a common vocabulary that you may need to employ in Interdisciplinary Center, and certainly when you are writing your certification exam and that that kind of thing so it's useful for us in that it provides us with a foundation: an understanding of

what we mean when we use particular diagnostic labels, and the kinds of... I don't want to say assumptions. I don't want you to make assumptions based on diagnostic labels. I guess it's essentially that we get to have a common understanding about what a particular label means we know the definition of that. We can have some insight into the kinds of things that that we might expect to see or to encounter in our work with an individual. But what I really don't want you to do is to think that knowing somebody's diagnostic label tells you everything that you need to know about that person.

You know if you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism, for example. People are diverse and have a real range of the way that aspects of their diagnosis or disabilities can manifest or play out or be impacted or impact their physical social mental health and well-being the way that they move through the world the way that they're perceived by others. The relationships they have, the jobs that they have their academic performance. I mean there is a really big range within these labels and so I want you to, as we move on through the remaining lectures in this class – now that you've been set up and we dive into diagnostic labels, I want you to take what's useful about those, empowering yourself with an understanding of what those labels mean where they come from and the start that they give us in understanding what the people we work with might be experiencing and the supports that might be useful for them. But at the same time I want you to retain that critical eye that remembers back there that people are more than just a label and that the extensive listing and the DSM is not enough to tell us how to work effectively and meaningfully with the people who come into our care.

So there is going to be a lot of medical language employed in this class. You need to know it: technical things like the forms that you're going to learn about the Ontario Mental Health Act documentation in this unit. You need to know it later in the term when we talk about your final exam. I'm going to tell you that there are some things that I'm not going to expect you to know off by heart because when you're in practice. You'll be able to look it up or have time to think it through, but there are other things like diagnostic labels and attain Mental Health Act forms that you just need to know and it's not very fun and it's not a very sexy way of learning. But ultimately you need to memorize them because in an interdisciplinary situation in a fast-moving work situation, you don't have time to Google what those things are and what they mean. You need to know it. So it is a slightly different way of learning and understanding and knowing than I typically teach, may be a bit of an adjustment for you, but you have quizzes online to help check your comprehension.

I encourage you to take those things and if there are gaps things that you're struggling with things that you are having trouble learning or understanding, please please please do reach out. I feel kind of far from you, too.  I'm on the other side of a screen and I know that can be challenging but I am here, I'm watching your progress. I'm paying attention. I'm checking emails and my discussion boards and I do want you to feel like you can reach out. So this is a videos getting along six minutes.

I really try to keep these under five minutes to keep them kind of snappy and moving, but I just I really felt it was important to in a sense warn you or set you up for success and understanding that we aren't going to be talking about and disabilities from a pretty medicalised perspective in a lot of ways and this is to help prepare you for the practicalities of certification and working inside of the medical model but I really want you to think about that ethic of care that we talked about in REC 151 and your own TR philosophy that you're starting to develop and not lose sight of that inside of this work that we're gonna do in this class because both of those things are really important both inside of your degree but especially outside of your degree, so yes, people are going to be called clients and patients and we're going to talk about symptoms and disorders and use that kind of language that typically we try to resist. Take what's useful and retain your critical lens and I think you will be just fine. So I hope you enjoyed this unit. Stay in touch. I love to hear from you. And I hope you're enjoy the spring term spring is the best the weather has been pretty good since the long weekend. So hopefully you're feeling rested and rejuvenated and ready for the work to come.