Assess the creations of your peers to evaluate if they have met the activity objective and rubric criteria (I have uploaded it). Use the rubric to provide an appropriate score for each criterion, and leave a constructive yet motivational written evaluation for your peers that contains specific examples of what they did well and where they could improve.
This is what there suppose to do:
Step 1: Review the assigned material and the Townsend Centre website. Think about what they are saying in the table comparing the Chief Medical Officers’ advice to the alternative. Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research (bris.ac.uk)
Step 2: Search online for an article giving advice on health or well-being. You are looking for a popular, well-read, wide-reaching article that could be found in a magazine, or linked to a social media influencer. Not a research or peer-reviewed article, but one that anyone in your life could read. It can be on any topic related to health or well-being.
Step 3: Read the selected article with a careful, critical sociological mindset. Consider what message they are trying to send (think about the Chief Medical Officer), but also consider what social message (Alternative) they are sending to their audience.
Step 4: Write a critical analysis of the article using terms and ideas from class (lecture, text, and other sociological resources). Consider the impact of this type of messaging sociologically as well.
It should be brief (250-500 words)
Link to the article that you selected formatted in APA style.
Here is there work:
The message that this article is trying to send would be that it’s acknowledging the factors that could have major impacts on people’s mental health and the possible negative outcomes that could result from these factors. Examples that are listed in the article, some that were mentioned in lecture as well, are: childhood abuse, the environment, biology, and lifestyle. Even then, however, these factors may not be evident towards individuals, hence why there are small shifts in a person’s character that may help create a sort of acknowledgement. Such shifts include: being more reclusive, overeating/under eating, mood swings, difficulty performing regular daily tasks, unexplained negative emotions, etc. While it’s important to become aware of these factors, it’s also important to get the help and/or make changes in your life that will help with the healing process, or with making tasks less difficult for yourself. Now with alternatives we all need therapy at the end of the day (in my opinion) but it may not be preferable for some people whether it’s because of their living situations, uncertainty of the sessions, or even that there’s a belief that they don’t need it. Consider the Impossible Triad: quality of care, affordability, accessibility (Week 8). However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t find ways to better yourself and your life, because there are benefits of having good mental health. Not just to you, but outside aspects of your life. Hence why there are regular activities that are listed in the article that you could incorporate into your day to day life that will help with your general wellness: exercise, meditating, communicating with others, etc.
Going back to how people believe that they don’t need therapy, or do anything beneficial for themselves, it was mentioned in this class’ lecture that people often feel that they have to act ill in order for people to believe that they’re actually ill, taking on the “sick role” (Week 8). This is the social construct that society has created. Since, “how we ‘interpret and organize our lives’ as a system is important” (Week 8) therefore, how did we, as a society, ‘construct’ what a patient looks like? (Week 8) There are people who tell people with mental illness that they simply “don’t look depressed” and “they look fine to me”, but how does one look mentally ill? “Imagine how we construct how people ‘act out’ illness” (Week 8), people must dislike being sick and do their best to heal, meaning that they must seek help from medical professionals (Week 8). Do people have to be crying constantly or threaten themselves/others for people to acknowledge that they aren’t okay? The encouragement to get professional help afterwards is good, but not every person can or wants to get the help they need. In the end, it’s good to listen to people when they open up to you and you can encourage them to get help but don’t force them to.
Plumptre, E. (2023, February). The Importance of Mental Health. verywellmind.
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-importance-of-mental-health-for-wellbeing-5207938