CMHC - Clinical Mental Hlth Counselng

This class provides an overview of the field of professional counseling. By participating in the course, students will accomplish the following learning objectives: (1) students will become familiar with the nature of the profession and its relationships to other human service professions; (2) students will become broadly familiar with the major theories of counseling and the techniques and strategies associated with each theory; (3) students will identify the various work settings where professional counselors are employed, and the roles and functions of counselors in each setting; (4) students will become acquainted with the major elements of the professional counseling process, from initial assessment through evaluation of services; and (5) students will identify the major issues and problems in the field at this time. (6) Students will also be exposed to multicultural counseling content.

The goal of this course is to provide mental health counseling students with the clinical and technical foundation needed to accurately conduct assessments, make diagnoses, provide case conceptualizations, and determine treatment recommendations in a professional setting. Using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, as our guide, we will explore not only the diagnostic criteria for each disorder, but also the biological, social, cultural, and environmental factors that contribute to its development and expression. This course will incorporate first person narratives, scholarly articles, writings from popular publications, and video to present a broad picture of the current theory and understanding of mental illness. We will also assess and critique the tools and strategies used in the differential diagnosis process, to better understand the ways that clinicians can account for cultural, racial, and gender bias in those methods, with the goal of developing the capacity to overcome these barriers to a holistic understanding of the person.

This course prepares students to learn about the prevalence of different types of trauma. This course will equip students with the diagnostic criteria for trauma across populations and the fundamental aspects of trauma informed care as a best practice philosophy to counseling and service provision. This course will also ensure that students complete the online Psychological First Aid course to build capacity around crisis management skills.

The major goal of this course is to provide students with an understanding and experience in the fundamental methods and techniques commonly employed in counseling and psychotherapy. Emphasis is placed on the counseling relationship, attending and listening skills, cognitive, affective, and behavioral counseling interventions, role-playing activities, and the concerns commonly expressed by beginning counselors.

This course focuses on current ethical and legal concerns in professional counseling. Counselors face ethical issues on an ongoing basis. The course includes ethical decision-making processes; a variety of ethical and legal critical skills necessary for the professional counselor for protection of clients, success in the work place, and professional accountability of all counselors.

This course is designed to provide an overview of substance abuse counseling and psychopharmacology for mental health counselors. Topics discussed include addiction issues, diagnosis, treatment planning and individual and group counseling strategies with diverse populations. Additionally, students will be exposed to the fundamentals of psychotropic medications. Basics of pharmacology, adverse effects, indications, and drug interactions will be discussed. Boundaries of practice and practical issues of assessment and referral will be covered.

This course explores biological, psychological, and sociocultural aspects of human development from conception through late adulthood. The primary focus of the course is on what is referred to in the literature as "normative development" that we will examine in the context of culture. This includes addressing adaptive processes in language, cognition, self-regulation, personal identity and social relationships that inform behaviors and concepts relevant to counseling and clinical practice with both children and adults. The course will be taught utilizing Blackboard functions for discussions and course documents including supplemental readings in addition to the primary text and we will meet one weekend a month over the 10 weeks of the course. We will utilize a variety of teaching methods including brief lectures, discussion boards, breakout small group work, and additional interactive formats. The basic structure of the majority of classes will include a reflected practice exercise to start class, a lecture and slide presentation, and in-class exercises applying developmental concepts to clinical cases.

This course expands on the Counseling Theories course by providing a further evaluation of the theories, techniques, and strategies especially helpful when working with school aged populations and their families. The course explores counseling issues and provides specific techniques and strategies with emphasis on supervised practice sessions. Discussions include methods for designing and evaluating treatment plans and the application of ethical standards and legal requirements with young people.

The major goal of this course is to provide students with the basic concepts of statistics including central tendencies, standard scores, and variability and discuss how they relate to clinical practice. Students will practice administering comprehensive assessment interventions. Moreover, this class reinforces active listening skills and challenges students to reflect on their own judgments and biases - conscious and unconscious. Different types of tests will be discussed along the legal and ethical guidelines for test administration.

This course provides an overview of human behavior including diversity and cultural pluralism. Multicultural theories and models of counseling and consulting are presented and examined.

The major goal of this course is to provide students an introduction to career development and career counseling with an emphasis on counseling populations with special needs, career decision-making, career adjustment, and changing careers. A comparison between career and personal counseling will be made. Practical techniques and real-life examples will be presented in order for the student to effectively counsel clients about career issues.

This course is a graduate-level introduction to group counseling and group work. Students explore the application of various group approaches to specific client populations and clinical settings. Students are introduced to the influence of the social environment on an individual's beliefs and behaviors. The course also provides an experiential opportunity for students to develop self- and other-awareness through participating as both members and leaders.

This course surveys family counseling theories and techniques with special emphasis on family relationships, assessment, intervention, treatment, and a gender, cultural, and ethnic sensitivity to families.

In this class, students will engage in online discussions, participate in exercises and role plays, review videos that show the translation of theory to practice, and attend lectures on the importance of theory for prevention and intervention. We'll look at research that has supported different theories, engage in rich discussions with information to augment your readings, and even role-play some applications of the theories during our class meetings.

The focus in this course is on the development of micro and foundational skills necessary to complete counseling interviews. Emphasis is placed on applying techniques through role-playing and practicing skills in classes. This is a practice-oriented course with major emphasis on applying counseling techniques, considering multicultural issues and analyzing counseling style and performance through a reflection and self-evaluation process.

This course is designed as a group supervision experience where the faculty supervisor provides the opportunity for students to present and discuss cases from their clinical field placement and to receive feedback from the faculty supervisor and counseling student peers. In addition to discussing assessment and treatment related clinical issues, students are encouraged to process the many ways in which counseling personally informs them about the roles and functions of a clinical mental health counselor. Time is also spent examining systems issues that impact treatment and intervention processes.

This course is designed as a group supervision experience where the faculty supervisor provides the opportunity for students to present and discuss cases from their clinical field placement and to receive feedback from the faculty supervisor and counseling student peers. The emphasis of this course will be on case conceptualization, the application of theory to your cases, and the use of clinical evidence to guide assessment and treatment decisions. We will focus on 1) using theory to understand clients' presenting problems and symptoms; 2) obtaining relevant information to support or refute clinical hypotheses; 3) identifying appropriate interventions/techniques; and 4) ascertaining the degree to which the clients' problems and symptoms are decreasing and their functioning is improving. In addition to discussing assessment and treatment related clinical issues, students are encouraged to process the many ways in which the practice of counseling personally informs them about the roles and functions of a clinical mental health counselor. Time is also spent examining systems issues that impact treatment and intervention processes. This course is designed to complement field training supervision rather than be in lieu of on-site supervision.

The major goal of this course is to provide students with an understanding and experience in research methods and techniques commonly employed in counseling and psychotherapy. Emphasis is placed on the ethics, methodology, and study design.

This course examines the practice and application of clinical supervision. Students will explore empirical literature on clinical supervision including, models, approaches, techniques, relationship and process issues, and ethical and legal considerations