Today, we woke up with the intention of having a class and then focusing on presentations. However, life happened and we got to work on our presentations for a good few extra hours. I loved and needed this, as I am an anxious individual and felt that the more practice we got the better our presentation would be. For my personal presentation, I thought I did very well and I loved our group presentations. Our presentation looked towards immigrants and their treatment and accessibility. I felt that we accurately covered our topic and that we did the presentation justice. Now that I have discussed my group’s presentation a bit, I’d like to focus on what I learned from the other presentations.
The first group presented about mental health access in the UK in comparison to mental health access in the US. Their statistics focused mainly on gender and age. Their data coincide with the general consensus of male suicide and older people have higher rates of suicide. They disclosed that men have a two to three times higher rate of suicide. They also talked about the issues with both healthcare systems when adequately meeting the needs of mental health care. The UK healthcare has a long waiting list currently and they sometimes prescribe medicines that aren’t necessarily the best method of care as people are waiting. In the US, healthcare is private, so access is an issue as well as payment and or coverage. They also covered the need for mental health care access after the prevalence and impact of Covid-19. Covid-19 didn’t created mental health care needs, but it did exacerbate the problems within our respective systems. They also talked about school access to mental health care, being CAMS in the UK and School Psychologists in the US. They also gave some bits of information on the potential of 111 mental health care numbers and or more voluntary services.
My group was the second group, so I’m sure you will read all about them within the other blogs. Hopefully all good things!
The third group presented about racial and ethnic disparities within the education and healthcare communities. They focused on the racism deeply rooted in the systems. In the US, the past legacies of the malpractice towards minority communities run strong throughout our entire history. We are still learning about and finding out more malpractice and inhumane treatment of people of color. The sentiments are similarly felth within the UK, as these populations also report feeling distrust towards these systems. A perfect example that the group used was the disproportionate amounts of deaths of BAME groups as compared to white individuals. There are also discrepancies within the educational approach, as funding for minority areas is less compared to white dominated areas. In the US, we also suffer school-to-prison pipelines where students of color or minority ethnic groups are much more affected by. They mentioned the inadequacies in a healthcare perspective, talking about mortality rates in births. We also heard the story of a faculty member about their oppression by their local authorities withholding funding for her education. Implementing standards like diverse faculty and staff, and creating safe spaces for minorities and people of color,
For the fourth and final group, they covered sexism within the fields of education and nursing. I really liked that they noted that gender is a social construct but for the sake of the data they referred to it as a binary scope. They talked about pink collar systems and the results of the treatment of women within these systems. Their perspective on this topic was particularly interesting, coming from the two males of the trip who are based in a field dominated by women. They talked about how in our systems, women are paid less than men even though we make up the majority of our respective populations. They listed an interesting stat that said the wages of male social workers were actually driving up the average salary so much that the majority of women were making less than the average. They also talked about macho culture and societal standards that drive men away from our fields. There has been a fostering of the idea that a man’s job is to make money and do physical labor is a thing of the past and needs to be stopped. They also gave an interesting take that woman dominated industries are growing while male dominated industries are sinking, and yet women are still trying to infiltrate male dominated fields.
I learned an incredible amount today and I am very impressed and proud of the work that my peers and I produced. I am very thankful for the opportunity BCU gave us. Shoutout to all of the lovely staff members who supported us!
(P.S. Claire, we went to the ice cream place Creams after dinner and it was delicious! I got a Cream Buenot milkshake and it was to die for! Here’s a photo!)
