Shor, R. (2017).

Difficulties Experienced by University Students with Severe Mental Illness

Who Participate in Supported Education Programs. Community Mental Health Journal, 53(3),

281–287. doi:10.1007/s10597-016-0026-2

[Ron Shor]. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2018, from ​http://en.sw.huji.ac.il/people/ron-shor

The title of this article is Difficulties Experience by University Students with Severe

Mental Illness Who Participate in Supported Educational Programs. It is part of Volume 53 of a

peer reviewed article titled Community Mental Health Journal The author of this article is Ron

Shor, a professor at The Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare who is currently

studying health programs for people with mental illnesses. This article is aimed towards

researchers studying mental illnesses and how they affect people with them. This is because Shor

uses a more formal tone and language than in the previous articles. An example of such language

is “ a study was conducted in Israel with 80 university students with SMI to ascertain their

difficulties and the relationship between those difficulties and their level of recovery” as opposed

to 80 students with mental illnesses were studies to determine their struggles and how they were

taking it. In addition, the article is a research paper that included important statistics like the

mean age of the students studies and the participation percentage. The main topic of the paper is
about what difficulties students with SMI may face, what could be possibly done, and why the

issue is important.

In this article, SMI stands for severe mental illness. Shor begins the article by giving a

brief overview of the paper and discussing the age range in which most mental illnesses are

diagnosed and why it could prove to be difficult for students with these illnesses to participate in

higher education. He then discusses studies on student and how the data suggested that the main

difficulty for these students were learning skills and managing academic tasks. The struggle to

deal with these factors allowed for two main difficulties to appear and in which students could

identify as Barriers to Academic Inclusion and Social Inclusion Difficulties. These difficulties

affected academic and social participation respectively. After they were defined, he discussed

studies on the extents of the difficulties and how students would cope with them and why these

studies were important . Next, Shor explains the purpose of his own study the questions that

drove it and the methods that would be used. In his study, 80 students with SMI were selected

and placed into supported education programs where mentors would help them cope and offer

advice to them. A questionnaire would be used along with other tools to determine the extent of

the difficulties, the perceived recovery rate, and as a background check on the student. The

students in the study were allowed 20 minutes to answer the questionnaire. The characteristic of

the study group was then discussed along with what illnesses they were diagnosed with. The

paragraph afterwards included the frequency of the difficulties the students experienced, which

was recorded on a DSEIN scale, and their perceived recovery level. The data suggested that

students with a higher frequency of social and academic issues believe that they would be slower

recovery rates than students with a lower frequency of issues. Shor closes the paper by
discussing how the study relates to education and possible opportunities that could be given to

students with SMI, such as support groups and how universities could offer help.

I found this article to be overwhelming to read due to the sheer amount of information

and more formal tone. In the previous articles, the information was provided in a way that were

easy for the general public to understand. However, I found myself recognizing the social and

academic problems in my own life when the main difficulties students faced were brought up.

This article relates to my other sources as it goes further into discussing the issues students face

and relates to my inquiry in this way too. A question that popped into my head while reading this

article was how could the information in the study be used to improve the mental health crisis.

Some important quotes I found in this article were:

- “ many psychological disorders are first diagnosed between the ages 18 and 24”

- “ students with SMI who were not able to integrate academically and socially

were more likely to leave the universities.”

- “ a higher mean of difficulties in three of the four DSEIN subscales (except for

the accessibility subscale) is related to a lower mean level in subscales of the RAS

measuring the perceived level of recovery.”