Sault College - Mental Health and Society

Assignment #2

due Saturday, August 3

From the Week 9 Overview:

Assignment #2 would still follow a written format like you did for your previous assignment. I would structure your assignment using headings so that you ensure that you answer the questions attached to this assignment. I've pasted the questions for this assignment below with some tips in bold that should help in writing your paper. You are proposing a campaign to increase awareness about mental illness by addressing the following:

Provide some background about the type of persuasion route used in your campaign. Why will this persuasion be effective? The Unit for Week 8 talks about the different persuasion routes so you need to pick one. Central route would involve facts and logic while peripheral route would involve emotion.

Describe your message to your audience. What aspects make your message effective? Here you need to think about what you want your audience to know about your topic? Are you trying to get new mothers to seek out help for postpartum? Why is getting help so important based on what you have learned about mood disorders or mental illness in general, from our course? What have you learned from specific cases, such as Andrea Yates?

Describe the mental illness or addiction from the perspective of your special population versus average Canadian. Here you need to talk about who is most at risk for the mental illness you are talking about? In the case of postpartum, who do you think is impacted?

How will your campaign be advertised? Here you can talk about how you will get your message out, for example, to new mothers. Is it through social media? Information available at doctor's offices?

Create some type of slogan to help promote your message. Your slogan should be catchy and get people's attention in order to be effective. For postpartum, it could be something like "It's more than baby blues. Ask for help!" 

Provide an explanation of what you hope your campaign will achieve. How will you know your campaign is effective? What impact will it have on families? Here you would describe how you will know if your campaign is effective, such as more mothers getting help, reduction in stigma, more support groups found online for new parents, etc.

Week 11 Instructions:

The purpose of this report is to create an advertising campaign that demonstrates the principles of persuasion in order to reduce the stigma about mental illness or addictions.

Create a written report that includes the following information.

• Provide some background about the type of persuasion route used in your campaign. Why will this persuasion be effective?
• Describe your target audience. Why did you select this special population?
• Describe your message to your audience. What aspects make your message effective?
• Describe the mental illness or addiction from the perspective of your special population versus average Canadian.
• How will your campaign be advertised?
• Create some type of slogan to help promote your message.
• Provide an explanation of what you hope your campaign will achieve. How will you know your campaign is effective? What impact will it have on families?

Some examples of advertising campaign about mental illness or addiction include:

• Reducing the suicide rate among Indigenous communities
• Increasing awareness about postpartum depression among new mothers
• Reducing addiction to opioids among teens
• Increasing awareness about polypharmacy among the elderly

Your written report must contain a title page, introduction, campaign content including slogan, conclusion and reference page. The entire report should be a maximum of 2,500 words, double-spaced, with appropriate headings. This file should be submitted in either PDF, DOC or DOCX format.  After submitting your report, please post your campaign slogan to the online discussion forum to share with the class.