Multi-media topic

A. The multi-media topic I've chosen is mental illness and what I'd like people to learn is the prevalence of mental illness in society.

B.
1.) Introduction of the brief history of mental illness as a condition. I would like to inform the viewer of the development of psychology into an organized science and who were the thinkers that influenced psychological thought and what their concepts and observations were. This brief history will provide some background to people familiar with figures like Freud.

2.) Statistics will serve as the basis for science and data to the reader to look at. I would inform the reader to look at the percentages of the population in the (United States and Europe) who have mental illnesses or have been treated for mental illness. The statistics portion will serve to increase awareness of how many people are affected in our society.

3.) Introduction of different treatments to mentally ill patients throughout western history up to current methods with medication therapy. I would use this area to inform to the viewer how relatively new these methods are and how humanely they were carried out.

4.) Care for mentally ill patients. I would use this area to inform the reader how people who suffer from mental illness area treated in society, how they are cared for in the public health system and address issues including homelessness.

5.) This portion will serve to address future issues facing people with mental illnesses. Future concerns addressed will be cost of effectiveness in drug therapy and changing attitudes in mainstream society about mental illness.

C.)

1.) The brief history of mental illness would best be explained through the media of graphics in a time line. I chose graphics because reading the history of anything can be trying for the casual reader.
I plan to obtain that information by using pictures and making a timeline would help explain the history in a series of events more comprehensible than a long body of words. I would use available pictures of philosophers, doctors and book covers in the time line to break up the text into chunks of digestible information snippets.

2.) The statistics module would be explained through the media of text and video. Text would recite the statistics I've learned and read into smaller chunks. There is wealth of short videos available on the Internet concerning different mental illnesses that are concise and show real people living with illnesses. This area is ideal for video because it makes the viewer feel a human element to it rather than dryly reading information or case studies.

3.) The treatment module would be explained with text since therapies have changed so much over time and would necessitate description. Photos of drawings of treatment in history would also be effective to break up text, however copyright might make this difficult.

4.) The care module would benefit from personal audio clips, I could have links to different sites for videos and short personal stories from sources like "This American Life" where mental illnesses have been featured.

5.) The future concerns/changing attitudes module would include some text and include links to many films that have featured mental illnesses throughout the previous century and the current one. I would like to compare those films with the mainstream attitude towards mental illness and how they can illustrate how the attitudes have changed.