Increasing child and adolescent mental health content in undergraduate occupational therapy, social work and nursing programs: Lessons learnt

Abstract

Abstract:This paper investigates the perceived usefulness of a CD-Rom based child and adolescent mental health workbook amongst educators from undergraduate nursing, occupational therapy and social work programmes and identifies the barriers to getting specialist mental health content into comprehensive degree-level courses.Specially selected educators from throughout New Zealand responded to a recent questionnaire about the workbook. Results from their feedback indicate that the workbook was generally well received and perceived to be useful. However, three main issues currently appear to be hindering embedding the workbook in the relevant undergraduate programmes: the workbook's content did not readily integrate into the various existing courses; there are several practical and other barriers that impede the up-take and use of the workbook; and incorporating a self-directed multi-media based teaching resource into a range of degree level programmes was problematic.Recommendations are offered to assist in overcoming these difficulties, with the ultimate aim of increasing the amount of child and adolescent mental health teaching delivered at an undergraduate level.