Advanced Group & Family Systems Counseling

Catalog description

This course will focus on the basics of systems intervention with a specific focus on families and groups, and a second focus on diversity and racial stress and literacy in systems. The purpose is to develop more advanced knowledge of practical therapeutic problem-solving skills at the graduate student level using ecological, systemic, and cultural perspectives. Students will be exposed to basic group therapy strategies with children and youth, with family interventions across various school-based emotional health diagnostic populations, and how to intervene within groups and families in which cultural differences and styles are key themes. The student will be required to demonstrate a working knowledge of the key concepts in systems intervention, to make preliminary judgments about how to apply various strategies to specific problems in a variety of naturalized and formal therapeutic contexts including schools, homes, and community centers, and evaluated on the ability to react spontaneously to moment-by-moment shifts in group and family therapy processes. Students will also be challenged to develop a preliminary rationale for a systemic theory of behavior change. Given the diversity of clients that counselors see professionally, some demonstrated knowledge of how cultural differences will be addressed in the counseling session and in the relationships of larger societal institutions will be expected. Prerequisite: Enrollment in the Executive Program in School and Mental Health Counseling.