AP Psychology students step into the shoes of the mentally ill

Every year, AP Psychology students have the opportunity to present their knowledge of mental illnesses. In the mental illness journal project, students write journal entries from the perspective of a patient who suffers from a mental disorder, and in doing so, get to view life through a different perspective. “This is a really great project,” Katie Liu (12A) a former AP Psych student said. “There is a lot of taboo in Chinese culture about mental issues, and I think this is a great opportunity for students to explore topics we don’t usually talk about in daily life.”

The mental illness journal, followed by a poster presentation, makes up the two-part final project for the course. Students are assigned the task of turning in ten journal entries in ten consecutive days, but the entries themselves can follow an entirely different timeline. The goal is “to show how the disorder progresses…the individual’s various thoughts and reactions to good or bad events as the symptoms…become more and more pronounced,” Gracier Dai (12C) explained. The journals themselves can stretch across months, if not years.

Students often find themselves taking away from the project a greater sense of awareness and a better understanding for those who are afflicted with mental illnesses. For Gracier, who focused on social anxiety disorder, and is naturally shy, “reading about social anxiety disorder has allowed me to be more empathetic towards those with the disorder… [The journal] is definitely an interesting and meaningful project to do.” Another AP Psychology student, Ginny Choi (12A), who has chosen attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), admitted that “it is very difficult for me to ‘be’… a person with ADHD. However, I believe it is a great opportunity for me to understand and feel empathy for those people.”

Mr. David Osborn, who teaches AP Psychology, and came up with the idea of a mental illness journal, said, “I wanted to give students an opportunity to become experts on one specific disorder.” He added that the purpose of the project is to “increase awareness for mental health.” Through the journal, students will be able to use the skills and knowledge they have learned from the course to demonstrate their understanding of the human psyche. 

Featured Image – The human psyche Photo Courtesy of Bing

by Esther Wu