Group Reflection Paper

When the requirement for this class was to participate in a group project, I was a little concerned about it. It is not that I don’t like working in groups, it was the fact that the class is an online class and I was not sure how this was going to happen. Another concern that I had was in the past, I had been in groups and there was always a couple people that did the work, while the others just sat by, but took the credit. However, in this group it was different.
Within my assigned group, there was Dawn Smith and Tara Mills. Our topic was somatic symptoms and other related disorders. We met about four times via Zoom sessions. In the first meeting, we discussed the tasks that each one of us would be responsible. Dawn and Tara volunteered

Though I had heard of most of the disorders, it was learning about the history and how names had changed over the years. For example, how illness anxiety disorder was formally known as hypochondria. However, the general population will say that a person is a hypochondriac rather than a person suffers from illness anxiety disorder.
Personally, if I had to choose a disorder within this class that I thought was the most interesting, it would have to be factitious disorder. To me this is someone that is considered a compulsive liar. A compulsive liar is someone that lies and actually believes what they are saying, even if it obvious to everyone else that the statement is untrue. It is in my opinion that we have or will encounter a person like this at some point in our lives.
However, I can’t say that all the research was interesting. I think the hardest part of the research was trying to figure out the neurobiology and etiology components. I found myself talking with my colleagues, classmates and searching the internet about the topic in order for me to get an accurate understanding. The other difficult part was, I believe the mental health encyclopedia is out dated. Most of the terms that are within it, are based on the DSM-IV diagnoses, and does not have the new diagnoses that are within the DSM-V. This can make research

I am not saying that I have not learned from other units throughout the semester, but personally I feel that I learned the most from the group projects. I tend to learn more when I am provided examples, so that I can relate it to a particular identification. Another reason I feel that this unit was fascinating was because many of these diagnoses are perceived as being medical problems, and not a mental health issue. It provided a clarification, that there is also an overlap between medical and mental health