Peer Review

Silent Scream- Reflective Narratives

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Reviewed:: Feb 28, 2023 by Psychology

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

Silent Scream - Reflective Narratives is an open eBook that is described as follows by Editor Munir Moosa Sadruddin.

"This open book is a collection of 23 inspiring stories of people, who believe in empowering others towards mental health. Constant online interaction with around 1000 diverse people for the last eight months has helped me to immerse myself in their world, to understand their lived experiences."

The 23 stories have been collected via an approach termed cyber enthnography. The stories offer deeply personal accounts of depression that engender awareness of its etiology and symptoms while also presenting a perspective that shared awareness and knowledge can be empowering.

Type of Material:

Reference Material

Recommended Uses:

Stories of people dealing with mental health issues make a strong addition to any text material on the topic. These short stories can be added to relevant text/course sections, particularly on depression and anxiety. Discussion of the individual stories can help students relate text material to real people and situations.
This learning material may be prescribed to students to explore the similarities as well as differences in life pathways shared by the individual narratives. For example, students might examine consistent themes that appear in the stories (i.e., abuse, neglect, bullying, etc.). The material would be well suited for a mid-level undergraduate in the field of psychology who has academic credit under their belt for abnormal psychology, psychological theories, and experimental methods. This material would be a great supplement to explore case study examples, but should not be used alone as there is no context nor basic references/support for the disorders described/listed.

Technical Requirements:

This document may be easily viewed using a web browser with a PDF viewer plug-in. It is also available for download and therefore may be saved and read offline.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

The reader will learn that while depression and anxiety disorders are common, there are still challenges when it comes to talking about mental health.
These stories of mental health issues will help the reader/learner put disorders in perspective with real names and real people.

Target Student Population:

College General Ed, College Lower Division, College Upper Division, Graduate School, Professional

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

This collection of reflections from individuals suffering from depression as well as other psychological diagnoses is impactful, and will be most useful for those who have a basic understanding of various forms of depression as well as a general understanding of other psychological disorders. As many of those individuals sharing their stories present with comorbid disorders, a basic understanding of psychological theories, developmental trajectories, as well as abnormal psychology will help students better understand the stories shared in this reflective narrative.
Note: some of the stories might be upsetting to students as they include suffering and thoughts of suicide.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

Individual stories vary – the focus is on depression, but thoughts of suicide, schizophrenia, and anxiety are included.
As this is a material showcasing a collection of individually written essays, the writing style, content, details, and such vary significantly from one to the next. Overall, the variety of narratives included and details provided are informative, useful, and provide a strong set of cases to explore.

Concerns:

This material has many positive uses, but it does not include general content explaining the basics of depression (with supporting references). While this was not the goal of the open book, for pedagogical purposes the material would be strengthened by a general introduction defining depression and describing the frequency of comorbidity (as this is showcased within the individual cases in the narratives). Faculty who use the book for case study purposes will want to couch the stories in the context of a larger lesson pertaining to depression.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

This material can readily be shared with students who are exploring different real-life cases of individuals who have experienced and/or who are currently experiencing different forms of depression.
Given that this topic is rarely discussed, students may have limited experience with it. Even personal experience would be naturally biased. Thus, these examples offer an additional lens for understanding depression and can help students relate to the subject/material.

Concerns:

Some of the stories are painful though the stories are also of survival. Students should be encouraged to see a counselor with concerns.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

This collection of narratives is easy to navigate overall, and it may be downloaded for offline viewing. This allows for additional flexibility as many of the narratives provided are complex and heavy in detail; therefore, it may be beneficial to download, review, and reflect on them as time allows (vs. reading them in one sitting while online).
The material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Concerns:

As there are many different narratives and a Table of Contents (TOC) is already built for this collection, it would be most helpful to readers if the TOC was also linked to the individual narratives to allow easier navigation back and forth to the individual narratives.
It would be helpful to include an index to allow users to easily find stories that include particular mental disorders, although a quick word search can suffice.

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