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Information for higher education institutions on helping students with personality disorder or personality difficulties
- Author:
- YOUNGMINDS
- Publisher:
- YoungMinds
- Publication year:
- 2006
- Pagination:
- 9p.
- Place of publication:
- London
This paper is intended for heads of student support services, student counselling service managers, mental health co-ordinators, disability support teams, hall managers, wardens, heads of academic departments and academics. It has been written in order to help Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) deal appropriately and helpfully with students who can be described as having significant personality difficulties or who have a diagnosis of personality disorder. The information in this paper has been geared towards this wide audience because of the nature of the problems that personality difficulties can give rise to. Wardens, academics and student support service staff can all be affected by the problems (and sometimes uproar) that can result when people with these difficulties are struggling to cope with everyday situations and relationships with others; and it is hoped that this paper will provide some insight into managing and helping students with these problems. Although this paper employs a psychiatric model, it does not set out to medicalise or pathologise people’s behaviour; rather, the model is merely being used in order to describe particular behaviours and experiences. There is considerable debate within the mental health community as to whether the concept of personality disorder adequately captures the experience of people identified as personality-disordered, and some question what relevance the term has in non-medical settings, such as Higher Education; some people have reservations about using the term at all.
A work in progress: the adolescent and young adult brain: a briefing paper
- Author:
- YOUNGMINDS
- Publisher:
- YoungMinds
- Publication year:
- 2006
- Pagination:
- 8p.
- Place of publication:
- London
Until recently it was thought that the structure and make-up of the human brain was largely fixed from early childhood onwards. However, research on post-mortem human brains and the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanning technology have demonstrated that the human brain does, in fact, undergo changes after this early sensitive period and develops throughout adolescence, young adulthood and even beyond. Since neuroscience is confirming what mental health professionals working with this age group have long observed – that adolescence and young adulthood is a time of great potential for change and development – then policymakers need increasingly to focus on the opportunities for helping and influencing young adults that this crucial stage presents. This paper summarises some recent findings from the field of neuroscience into adolescent and young adult brain development. It explores these findings, discusses the links between brain development and mental health, and concludes with some implications for mental health service policy for the 16-25 age group.