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IS01 Well-being Island - Well-Being and Mental Health

A ten week course, covering different viewpoints on well-being and relationship to health.

Course Material Overview

There are ten weeks, covering different viewpoints on well-being and relationship to health. We think of them as different places on "Well-being Island". They are:

  • Week 1 - Introduction and orientation: Well-Being Island Information Office
  • Week 2 - The philosopher's view-point: Philosopher's Cave
  • Week 3 - The health economist's view-point. Utilities, social capital, and QuALYs (Quality Adjusted Life Years): Health Economist's Market Place
  • Week 4 - The psychologist's view-point: Psychologist's Town
  • Week 5 - The doctor's view-point. Understanding depression and disease: Doctor's Amphitheatre
  • Week 6 - The spiritual view-point. Spiritual welfare and well-being: Spiritual Mountain
  • Week 7 - The psychotherapist's view-point. Emotional well-being, and healthy relationships: Psychotherapist's Grove
  • Week 8 - Values and the narrated self. Changing expectations of health and well-being: Values Spring
  • Week 9 - Psychotherapy as a means of increasing health and well-being. Emotional and relationship factors determining health: Relationships Lake
  • Week 10 - A well lived life: Well-Being Harbour

To access these pages, you need to be a registered user.

If you are registered, you should use the Atlas link above to navigate to Unit 1.

Aims

This 10 week, distance learning unit provides an introduction to issues of well-being and health that are the foundation of an understanding of the role of psychotherapy within an overall strategy of improvement of quality of living. A variety of perspectives on well-being and a range of current research data will be considered and students will be familiarised with different levels of intervention in mental health issues. Learning is flexible and dynamic, taking place via webpages, discussion forums and chatroom tutorials.

Learning outcomes

  1. knowledge of definitions of well-being, health and happiness
  2. ability to evaluate individual problems where well-being is lacking
  3. ability to synthesize strategies for therapeutically intervening in situations where well-being is lacking
  4. ability to evaluate the best method of intervention in relation to these situations
  5. ability to justify evaluations and interventions to peers
  6. update of contemporary psychotherapy/counselling literature and developments in the field
  7. ability to use written expression in conjunction with appropriate academic sources and conventions to present logical analysis and argument in relation to the unit 
  8. skills in use of collaborative eLearning methods and online resources

Resources

You will not be required to buy any books, but you may want to look at the main text for the unit which is:

  • Diener, E. & Suh, E.M. (2000) Culture and Subjective Well-being Cambridge , MA : MIT Press

You may also want to look at the following:

  • Baumeister, R. F. (1991) Meanings of Life, London: Guildford Press.
  • Linley, P. A. & Joseph, S. (eds) (2004) Positive Psychology in Practice. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons
  • Kahneman, D., Diener, E. & Schwarz, N. (eds). (1999) Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. New York : Russell Sage.
  • Orville, G. B., Carol, D. R., & Ronald, C. K. (2004) How Healthy Are We?: A National Study of Well-Being at Midlife. Chicago , Ill. : University of Chicago Press.
  • Seligman, M. (2002) Authentic Happiness. Glencoe , Ill. : Free Press.