Two years ago, fourth-year College student Anand Jain enrolled in an Education class on mental health with Professor Robert S. Brown. At the time, the class was simply an opportunity for Jain to explore an academic field of interest.
Today -- several semesters and budget cuts later -- Jain is the Executive Administrator of the Echols Seminar, overseeing a seminar series on mental health that is based on his second-year class, which had been dropped shortly after due to budget cuts.
In his newfound position, Jain found himself finally able to reintroduce Professor Brown's mental health class to the University curriculum -- something he had been attempting to do for an entire year.
"We wanted a syllabus and a class [for the seminar]. That stuff was already in place with Mental Health," Jain said. "The response to that was so great that we decided to make it the topic for the incoming first years."
The Echols Seminar, which is a voluntary one-credit course for first-year Echols students, explores a chosen topic of interest over the course of a semester. Topics and lecturing professors tend to vary each semester, as enrolled students vote on the area of study they would like the seminar to address. For the past two semesters, mental health has been the seminar's topic -- largely due to the enormous popularity of Professor Brown among students, Jain said.
"When he gets up there, he's not lecturing to them, but sharing experiences with them. The students really respond to it," Jain said. "He has a really good personality, and he's very sharp."
Although today he is a well-known professor and practicing clinical psychiatrist, Brown once was a University student. After spending nearly two decades at the University, Brown amassed a Bachelors degree, Masters and PhD in Education and an M.D.
Brown's extensive knowledge base emerges during his seminar lectures on mental health, which cite a wide variety of disciplines beyond the field's traditional topics, Jain said.
"Professor Brown paints the picture of mental health with a very broad brush, so that people see it's not just about being happy or stable, but about enjoying life to the fullest; and having a balanced approach on life can help you do that," Jain said.
Brown's 30 plus years of clinical practice also have been an asset to the class, according to Jain, who said the mental health seminar's debut introduced the unique feature of patient interviews into the class.
"In that small group we felt comfortable bringing in patients of his into the class and interviewing them about their illness," Jain said. "It was a very powerful experience. I think it removed the stigma from mental health. It put a face to vague concepts."
While the students witnessed patients with extreme medical conditions like schizophrenia, Jain said they also were exposed to the more common cases of mental health -- depression, attempted suicide and eating disorders for example -- that helped them sometimes relate personally to the material.
"It helped clarify urban myths, and brought things to a level they could understand and apply to their own lives," Jain said.
From his varied levels of interaction with Dr. Brown -- ranging from student, to T.A. to "liaison between Dr. Brown and the students" -- Jain is able to speak readily of Professor Brown's expansive, and unique, expertise.
"Dr. Brown's approach to mental health is different from other psychiatrists," Jain said. "He focuses on mental, physical and spiritual health when dealing with his patients -- and that's not something you find in textbooks."
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