Assessment Item 2 – Recovery Mini-Journey

Course Coordinator: Trudy Atkinson
Length: 750
As for references here, please include at least 8 in the Essay part of the assessment – with 5 of those being up to date mental health consumer journal articles.
Objectives and Outcomes
A common frustration of mental health nurses is the perception that consumers are not engaging with their own Recovery. When little changes in someone’s life, despite supports and services, it can become more difficult to empathize with them. However any change, even positive change is often more complicated than it might seem from the outside, particularly when you’re a mental health consumer.
The goal of this assessment is to give you a personal understanding of some of the challenges in identifying an area you wish to change and realizing that change (ANXIETY is my chosen recovery) (Recovery). You will enlist supporters and use your personal experience of the Recovery mini-journey and being supported to understand the importance of consumer perspective in the Recovery approach, consider the effectiveness of Recovery in promoting wellness and develop increased empathy and a better understanding of what it feels like to be a mental health service user. Ultimately increasing your ability to use the Recovery approach effectively to assist health consumers.
The Task – Part 1.
Supporters: Enlist two supporters to assist you as you decide what area of your life to focus on and to help you stay on track. Your supporters can be people in your life outside of Uni or other students. If you would like the challenge of supporting or being supported by a fellow student (which will add to your assessment) put a thread on the assessment forum asking for supporters. (I am using my friend and my husband here)
Identify issue for change: Next, you will identify an area in your life where you would like to make positive change. Some people choose to work on substantial issues like anxiety, or depression while others choose issues like weight-loss, quitting smoking or cutting down on alcohol. The important thing is that you identify something that would be meaningful to you but that you wouldn’t usually find time for. Choose something you are comfortable to address and will enrich your life.
Format of Plan: Be creative in the development and style of your plan. Power point, word documents and PDF files are commonly used.
Journal: Keep a detailed journal to refer to while writing Part 2 of the task. There is no requirement that anyone else reads your journal entries. (I will sort this out after you write my assessment.)

READ ALSO : Wittgenstein/Logic

Fears:
• Flying
• Crowds of people >15
• Heights
• Large amounts of traffic
Should you require anything further, please send me a message and I will response a.s.a.p. I leave for Brisbane the day I have requested this assessment, but will check my messages often.
Commonly asked questions for Assessment 2
RECOVERY PLAN
You must create your own Recovery plan to work on. You have to discuss your Recovery mini-journey in your assessment so you will need to have a plan that you’re working towards as well as one to submit.
THE ISSUE YOU WORK ON
The assessment is not specifically asking you to work on a mental health challenge you are having. You can work on anything in your life that would add meaning. Some people choose spending more time with their family, cutting down alcohol, losing or gaining weight – it just has to be something you never normally have time for. Some people do choose to work on mental health related issues but that is totally up to the individual.

There is also no directive for you to focus on something negative – on the contrary it should make you feel uplifted and positive as you’re working from a strengths perspective.
If you do ever find the course material and discussing mental health issues triggering in any way you are always welcome to email or phone one of your lecturers.
JOURNAL
You don’t have to hand your journal in – it is for your use only. Your journal should not be a general record of your life at the time, instead it should focus on your recovery journey (as opposed to general daily concerns). It is to allow you to refer back to what occurred on your recovery journey and in your support relationship when going to write up the assignment.
SUPPORTERS
If you choose a supporter that is also a student they won’t be marked for their support so don’t worry about getting someone in trouble if they weren’t very reliable or helpful. You don’t need to give your supporter’s name in the assessment item unless you want to. Either way it won’t impact on their grade.
TURNITIN SCORES
Because there is a limited amount of good credible research in this area and it’s okay to use course provided resources, people are using the same references a lot which appears as a ‘similarity’ and can create high turnitin scores
Keep in mind that similarity is all turnitin gauges, it does not determine if someone has plagiarised, your lecturer will do that. If you haven’t plagiarised you will be fine.
There have been long delays due to traffic on the system so submit as early as possible to get a chance to check your turnitin scores.
REFERENCES
The main thing you’re demonstrating in assessment 2 is your internal understanding of the concepts and how your understanding of the consumer experience has grown. Referencing is important but less weighted than your overall ability to understand the concepts.
Refer to your assessment criteria marking matrix for expected numbers of references at different grade levels.
IF YOU ARE HAVING TROUBLE FINDING REFERENCES:
Remember that credibility is important, it’s fine to use course provided articles. Also use the course provided resources as a starting point, check out the reference list of articles provided and find authors and other articles that have been cited.
For ‘grey literature’, try going to some consumer run sites like; ‘our consumer place’ or ‘Mad in America’. You might not find journal articles for all the points you want to reference but as long as you have some journal articles you can use blogs and other consumer sources like position papers and news articles. You can also reference videos you’ve watched from consumer sources.
For all these sources, refer to the APA referencing guide for details on how to reference.
CONTRASTING AND COMPARING
You are comparing and contrasting your experience to that of a mental health consumer – not to your support person. Your perception of what mental health consumers experience will have developed over the weeks in your readings and the video links provided.