SOCIOL M148
Sociology of Mental Illness
Description: (Same as Disability Studies M148.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Analysis of major sociological and social psychological models of madness. Study of social processes involved in production, recognition, labeling, and treatment of mental illness. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2026 - When I first looked at the roster for this class there were 2 people waitlisted. It was near the end of the first week of class. One day later there was no waitlist and 14 seats available. I understand completely why so many people dropped the class in the span of a day. It being an async online course is a trap. You take it to be able to save time since it's asynchronous, then discover that the syllabus is 20 pages long, there are hundreds of pages of reading, strictly monitored quizzes with questions that test whether you can regurgitate random unimportant information instead of apply your knowledge, and discussion posts that are more worried about whether you can perfectly cite every single sentence you write rather than engage in genuine intellectual discussion. I started to wonder whether my own thoughts belong to me or if I have to cite those too since they were thoughts birthed from what I learned. When taking a quiz, I feel like I took longer trying to prove that I wasn't going to cheat to the two proctoring cameras by showing my entire room than I spent actually thinking about the quiz content. Even though this class did not seem to have any written assignments, the syllabus spent a long time making it clear that all written assignments must be composed and traceable in Google Docs otherwise you will be accused of using AI. I wanted to learn in this class, but the environment did not seem tailored to friendly and genuine learning. Regarding the actual content; the amount of reading expected is ridiculous for a class on Sociology. I am a former Psychology major and a current English major, yet THIS is the class I take with the heaviest amount of reading? I expected the quizzes to at least test on your application of knowledge as I experienced in previous Psychology classes, yet instead I got asked things like whether generalized anxiety disorder was first named at a dinner party and the exact global estimation of people afflicted with mental disorders in 2011. Does this really matter to the bigger ideas of the course? Again, the discussion posts would be okay if not for the insane citation requirements. I feel like I don't have the room to truly think and answer the questions meaningfully because I have to spend all my time citing every little piece of information I write down. As someone with mental disorders and disabilities myself, I would normally be very interested in learning about the sociology of mental illness, but this course is not the place to engage in that curiosity freely. All in all, don't take this class unless you want to spend a crazy amount of time on it while facing constant obstacles to your learning.
Fall 2026 - When I first looked at the roster for this class there were 2 people waitlisted. It was near the end of the first week of class. One day later there was no waitlist and 14 seats available. I understand completely why so many people dropped the class in the span of a day. It being an async online course is a trap. You take it to be able to save time since it's asynchronous, then discover that the syllabus is 20 pages long, there are hundreds of pages of reading, strictly monitored quizzes with questions that test whether you can regurgitate random unimportant information instead of apply your knowledge, and discussion posts that are more worried about whether you can perfectly cite every single sentence you write rather than engage in genuine intellectual discussion. I started to wonder whether my own thoughts belong to me or if I have to cite those too since they were thoughts birthed from what I learned. When taking a quiz, I feel like I took longer trying to prove that I wasn't going to cheat to the two proctoring cameras by showing my entire room than I spent actually thinking about the quiz content. Even though this class did not seem to have any written assignments, the syllabus spent a long time making it clear that all written assignments must be composed and traceable in Google Docs otherwise you will be accused of using AI. I wanted to learn in this class, but the environment did not seem tailored to friendly and genuine learning. Regarding the actual content; the amount of reading expected is ridiculous for a class on Sociology. I am a former Psychology major and a current English major, yet THIS is the class I take with the heaviest amount of reading? I expected the quizzes to at least test on your application of knowledge as I experienced in previous Psychology classes, yet instead I got asked things like whether generalized anxiety disorder was first named at a dinner party and the exact global estimation of people afflicted with mental disorders in 2011. Does this really matter to the bigger ideas of the course? Again, the discussion posts would be okay if not for the insane citation requirements. I feel like I don't have the room to truly think and answer the questions meaningfully because I have to spend all my time citing every little piece of information I write down. As someone with mental disorders and disabilities myself, I would normally be very interested in learning about the sociology of mental illness, but this course is not the place to engage in that curiosity freely. All in all, don't take this class unless you want to spend a crazy amount of time on it while facing constant obstacles to your learning.
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