This unit was pretty horrible. I was so excited to learn about the DSM and all the disorders because it felt like we were finally going to learn about actual psychology. To be fair, the actual content was interesting, there's just A LOT of it. The entire unit is memorisation. The assignment was literally so harshly marked for no reason and most of the cohort only passed whcih sucked because it was worth 40%. If you're trying to get the marks for honours, just beware that this unit will probably really mess your WAM up, so be prepared for the assessments, and be prepared to potentially have to work really hard to get your WAM back up through your other subjects. Personally, I didn't find my tutor Jonathan very helpful at all. I would suggest asking past students for advice/tutoring for the assignment, and make sure you start preparing for the final exam early. If you don't have to do this unit, please don't put yourself through the pain and stress!!

I have never taken a unit that just felt so purposefully set up to make me fail in my entire life. The written assingment is an absolute joke. A lot of people failed, the average was a low pass and most people who typically sit within the D/HD range got passes and credits. The assessed quizzes were fine though. The level of content is pretty intense, and interesting if you're into the DSM and disorders, but the pre-recorded lectures are just outdated and feel lazy. I hate that MQ has become a uni that allows professors to just recycle their covid recorded boring lectures with zero energy in them for us to use now. Also, the DSMV-TR came out last year so some of the information is outdated, and most of the statistics given were from years ago. The assessments are essentially route learning which becomes really boring really fast, but necessary to do to do well. Ultimately, unless you nail the assingment, this unit will sink your WAM for sure. Also, Melissa is more interested in telling you about what TV she just started watching than actually helping any of us – and was incredibly rude to a lot of students on the forums. I hope they make this an elective again with the degree changes but there is no way I would recommend anyone to take this unit if you have the choice.

The greatest question of our existence: Is Professor Norbeg a psycho? In my opinion, no. She was ok. The content for this subject is probably THE BEST content you will touch on in third year. So many disorders and illnesses to cover, I loved it. The three compulsory quizzes were relatively easy BUT the case study was marked horrifically! Be wary of this. This is the one thing that messed us ALL over! Only 6% got a HD and 19% with a D. AND IT WAS 40%! They made us believe we could speak about ANY model that supported the individual's diagnosis in the case study. However, to our shock, apparently they only wanted us to speak about ONE model. So a lot of us ended up with passes (54%) or credits (32% or something around that). The final exam was ok - 50MC in an hour. Just make sure you LEARN the content because there is a lot to remember. I give it 4 stars because of the content alone. Also, tutorials are a waste of time - they are not examined in any way and only serve as a tool to 'support' the content. Additionally, do not get the textbook. All exam questions come from the lectures, and the textbook has 70 pages of reading per chapter.

Great unit with relevant, interesting content.

Great unit! The content is easy to follow, and Professor Norberg goes beyond the role of a convenor to look out for her students and share her own great stories about managing mental health struggles while pushing forward to achieving success. It's true that the textbook is quite in depth (not necessarily a bad thing) but it's there mainly to supplement the lecture content (which it overlaps with quite a bit) and not the main focus of the final exam (same for any other unit). Don't mind the whingers at the bottom giving bad reviews - students who get bad marks always have to find a way to blame others for their own mistakes!

Professor Melissa Norberg helped me a lot during my undergraduate year. The unit was very interesting and she was very helpful whenever I had any questions. Tutorials were engaging, and I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of it. When I wanted to seek additional feedback for my essay, she personally met up with me one on one to go through every single feedback, so that I would not make the same mistake again in the future (without her help, I would not be able to achieve first class honors). You can tell she is an excellent professor who wants the best for her students. I was extremely lucky to have Melissa as my honors supervisor- she was very hands on, and consistently checked in on me to make sure I was making good progress on my thesis. She provided extremely detailed feedback for my thesis draft, and even encouraged me to go out of my comfort zone to learn a new statistical method. Professor Melissa Norberg is a very down to earth, personable supervisor to me. She puts time aside to get to know all her honors students, and arranged weekly meetings to help us de-stress and collaborate ideas together. I would encourage all students to study this unit. This unit made me realize that it is important to seek treatment for our own underlying issues before we can be a confident psychologist. Remember, we cannot help others until we have helped ourselves.

This unit is challenging but you learn a lot. The information is super useful as well. When I was on my practical placement (a mandatory requirement of psych degrees at MQ) I was very glad I did this unit. I needed to use the information about different diagnoses, treatment styles and underlying causes. This unit helped me in a real world context, and I think that is just about the best thing to get from a university unit. I disagree with comments that the marking was too hard or unreasonable. The tutors and unit convenor provided detailed, direct feedback about what to improve on. This may have offended some students but I personally really appreciated this. I don't like when tutors give a grade and you are left wondering what needs improvement. I used the comments on my assignment to improve and actually referred back when I was doing other assignments in compulsory second semester, third-year units. The textbook was super interesting, organised into lots of subsections and had lots of graphs/pictures and real world examples to aid understanding. This made it easy to read if you were willing to set aside time. If you turn up to any unit expecting to watch a weekly lecture only, you will perform poorly. As another reviewer has said, many students taking this unit probably want to go on to be clinical psychologists. Doing this unit, I was motivated by my desire to learn information that could help me support people experiencing mental health issues, rather than just getting easy good grades. I achieved highly in this unit, I believe due to this motivation. I would encourage any future students to keep your purpose for choosing psychology in mind while you study. I also disagree with the comments reviewers have made about the unit convenor and tutors. The unit convenor is a very knowledgeable person who has extensive experience in the clinical realm. Also, she did not "threaten" to report students with mental health issues to the board! In ALL of the third year psych courses I did that were convened by clinical psychologists, the lecturer stated in the first lecture the requirement of registered psychologists to protect vulnerable people by reporting anyone who had UNTREATED mental health issues... i.e. if there was an incident where someone in your cohort was being antisocial/displaying concerning signs that they need to seek professional help themselves before they can help someone else, then a registered psychologist would have to report that (which is a good thing!). Overall this is an enjoyable unit and I highly recommend it. Take it as an opportunity to build confidence that you can be an effective researcher and self-motivated learner, which will be so crucial in your honours year!

All of the below comments have really shed some light on the individuals completing an undergraduate Psychology degree. Yes, this unit may be hard work but being a Psychologist is hard work. The convener of this unit is an intelligent woman who is very highly ranked in the field of Psychology. The convener has taken on board a lot of critical feedback in turning this unit around, however only so much can be done to make the unit 'easier' for students without depriving them of the skills and knowledge required to be a clinical psychologist. By the third year of your degree, you should all be getting into the habit of purchasing and reading your textbooks daily as lectures and assignments don't give individuals a comprehensive amount of information to understand each concept thoroughly. At the end of the day, the Psychology degree at MQU is recognised quite highly by employers, and it pains me to think that students are badmouthing conveners and tutors over their own inability to manage time appropriately. Further, in regards to critical feedback on assignments you should be taking these comments on board to help you improve your writing in preparation for your career. Writing horrible reviews on a unit over a pass or credit mark in an assignment is quite a selfish way to express your concerns. The convener is an experienced researcher who has published numerous papers over the years, so maybe you could reorient your opinions positively, take on board the feedback and excel in future writing. At the end of the day, most of you will be extending your degree into MRes or MClin so it is beneficial for you to be able to write comprehensive reports on client diagnoses. Anyway, this is a very interesting unit so don't be discouraged by the negative reviews written on this page. In the last year, the unit has been turned around I hope you all find the content as thought-provoking as I did! :)

This unit is HARD WORK, but thanks to the complaints of previous students it has been turned around quite a bit and assignment guidelines are far more clear. So much of the unit relies on you reading your textbook though, and even if the lecturer says you don't need to read it, I strongly recommend reading it anyway because a huge portion of what you are going to be assessed on in tests and exams is going to be based on the textbook. The lecturer threatened any students with mental health issues with reporting them to the psychology board (while the cohort was still third year, not even practicing!) which was a bit discriminatory and hypocritical I think because she later goes on to talk about stigma. So if you're going through something, go to campus wellbeing instead and do not tell her anything, even if she comes across as nice initially! (and please apply for any extensions through ask.mq) Overall really interesting unit and I would recommend it for sure, but still probably one of the most time consuming study and assessment wise I've ever done - as previous reviewers have stated, the textbook is just way too much reading The word count limit on the assignment was also way too few words to meet the requirements - definitely allow yourself more time than you'll think you'll need for the case study in order to have enough time to edit lots because meeting the criteria of the assignment in that few words is tough

Terrible unit! I went into it already knowing most of the content so I disregarded previous bad reviews and thought I would be fine. I did ok on the discussions and exam (ONLY because I already knew the content!!!!!) but THE ESSAY WAS TERRIBLE!!! The online discussions were worth next to nothing (2% each) for the amount of work they were, we had NO guide on how to write them, and we didn't get any feedback throughout the semester. The "essay" (I got marked down for writing it like an essay even though it was called an essay in the unit guide) was atrocious and marked severely. The textbook is interesting but it's got way too much content and it's the only info we got (there were a few videos each week, but the bulk of the content was through "self-directed learning", ie, reading the textbook only). It's interesting in your own time, but not when you have to remember EVERYTHING. I liked the tutorials, but the tutors seemed just as scattered as the students and couldn't answer a lot of my questions. Additionally, all the content is very "us-vs-them", as if nobody taking the course could possibly have dealt with any kind of mental illness. Very isolating when one of the main reasons I'm interested in this area is to better understand my own experiences. If you're interested in psychopathology, it's a better endeavour for you to just read the DSM rather than taking this unit (as a student, you can access it for free through the library multisearch). I went into the unit thinking it should be mandatory for a psych degree because the content is very important, and left being so glad it isn't mandatory. Please save yourself the stress and do not take this unit! Update in 2020: I'm so sorry this unit has been made mandatory. I hope some of it gets fixed :(