FREE Classes by Harvard/MIT for Mental Health Professionals
If you're considering taking up a hobby during quarantine, and you've already started a podcast, why not partake in some free education from some of the best schools in the United States? Whether it's learning about racial disparities in community health or reviewing how neurotransmitters work, check out these free classes below offered by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that are perfect for mental health students and/or practitioners.
*A note about these resources: Both Harvard and MIT have filed lawsuits against the federal government due to ICE recently ruling that international students will be deported if their school turns to online teaching due to COVID-19. International students are invaluable to academia. In my PhD program alone, my classmates who are here on a visa are prolific researchers who continually put our university on the map. Besides this rule being detrimental to universities, it is at its base unfair to these students who are, like the rest of us, still living through a pandemic. Please consider reaching out to your representatives so that these students can continue to help build free courses like these classes.
Harvard
Child Protection: Children's Rights in Theory and Practice - Learn how to protect children from violence, exploitation, and neglect through law, policy, and practice in a human rights framework.
Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs - Learn to deliver high-quality primary health care at scale through national community health worker programs. I don't know about you, but I communicate with primary care providers in community settings on a daily basis and would find more information about this field really helpful.
The Opioid Crisis in America - Learn about the opioid epidemic in the United States, including information about treatment and recovery from opioid addiction.
Improving Your Business Through a Culture of Health - Learn how a Culture of Health can transform your business to improve the well-being of your employees and company, while increasing revenue. Who else feels like so many non-profit agencies could benefit from these practices?
Women Making History: Ten Objects, Many Stories - Learn how American women created, confronted, and embraced change in the 20th century while exploring ten objects from Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library.
Humanitarian Response to Conflict and Disaster - Learn the principles guiding humanitarian response to modern emergencies, and the challenges faced in the field today.
Fundamentals of Neuroscience, Part 1: The Electrical Properties of the Neuron - Learn how electricity makes the neurons in your brain tick.
Fundamentals of Neuroscience, Part 2: Neurons and Networks - Discover how neurons work together to create complex networks inside the brain.
Fundamentals of Neuroscience, Part 3: The Brain - Discover what makes your brain tick in this third course in our introductory series in neuroscience.
MIT
Poverty, Public Policy and Controversy (Fall 2003) - This course covers topics and questions such as: What is poverty? How is it defined and measured in the United States and other countries? What are the different program designs that countries use to relieve poverty?
Human Rights: At Home and Abroad (Fall 2015) - This course provides a rigorous and critical introduction to the foundation, structure and operation of the international human rights movement, as it has evolved through the years and as it impacts the United States.
Riots, Rebellions, Revolutions (Spring 2013) - This course examines different types of violent political conflict. It compares and contrasts several social science approaches (psychological, sociological, and political) and analyzes their ability to explain variation in outbreak, duration and outcome of conflict.
Philosophical Issues in Brain Science (Spring 2009) - This course provides an introduction to important philosophical questions about the mind, specifically those that are intimately connected with contemporary psychology and neuroscience.
Moral Psychology (Spring 2009) - This course is an examination of philosophical theories of action and motivation in the light of empirical findings from social psychology, sociology, and neuroscience.
Philosophy of Love in the Western World (Fall 2004) - This course is a seminar on the nature of love and sex, approached as topics both in philosophy and in literature. Readings from recent philosophy as well as classic myths of love that occur in works of literature and lend themselves to philosophical analysis.
Black Matters: Introduction to Black Studies (Spring 2017) - Interdisciplinary survey of people of African descent that draws on the overlapping approaches of history, literature, anthropology, legal studies, media studies, performance, linguistics, and creative writing.
For Love and Money: Rethinking the Family (Spring 2016) - Through investigating cross-cultural case studies, this course introduces students to the anthropological study of the social institutions and symbolic meanings of family, gender, and sexuality.
Violence, Human Rights, and Justice (Fall 2014) - This course examines the problem of mass violence and oppression in the contemporary world, and the concept of human rights as a defense against such abuse. It explores questions of cultural relativism, race, gender and ethnicity.
A Clinical Approach to the Human Brain (Fall 2006) - This course is designed to provide an understanding of how the human brain works in health and disease, and is intended for both the Brain and Cognitive Sciences major and the non-Brain and Cognitive Sciences major.
The Art and Science of Happiness (Spring 2013) - This seminar looks at current theories on happiness and positive psychology as well as practical implications of those theories for our own lives. It explores the concept of happiness, different cultural definitions of happiness, and the connection between happiness, optimism, and meaning.
Autism Theory and Technology (Spring 2011) - This course illuminates current theories about autism together with challenges faced by people on the autism spectrum. Theories in communicating, interacting socially, managing cognitive and affective overload, and achieving independent lifestyles are covered.