Course
Discontinued
No
Course Code
HCSW 1190
Descriptive
Therapeutic Relationships in Mental Health
Department
Mental Health and Personal Support Work
Faculty
Health Sciences
Credits
3.25
Start Date
End Term
202120
PLAR
No
Semester Length
8
Max Class Size
32
Contact Hours
65 hours per semester
Method(s) Of Instruction
Lecture
Lab
Learning Activities
- Lecture
- Case studies
- Role-Plays
- Group activities
- Communication labs with actors
- May include community service learning and/or participation in community based research projects when available.
Course Description
The focus of this course in the Health Care Support Work Program is to prepare the student to develop advanced therapeutic relationships in the mental health field through the use of communication skills. Empathy, warmth, and respect will be taught as well as confrontation and immediacy. Communication labs with actors are used to develop these skills. Assessment/communication/interviewing skills will be discussed for various mental disorders. Conflict resolution, problem-solving, and leadership skills will be developed. Group therapy and stress management theories and techniques will be explored. The importance of self-awareness will be stressed throughout the course.
Course Content
- Self-awareness: Values clarification, Johari window, understanding self to promote client’s growth, boundaries, and limit-setting
- Therapeutic relationships: Types, phases, and strategies
- Using a Rogerian approach to develop a therapeutic relationship with individuals with mental health issues
- Listening and attending skills: Nonverbal communication, appropriate eye contact and proxemics, SOLER, body posture, and appropriate touching
- Empathy, warmth, respect, confrontation, and immediacy skills
- The problem-solving process and ways to implement client-focused interventions
- Conflict resolution: Identifying resistance, understanding violence, the cycle of violence, and how/when to intervene on the continuum of violence
- Stress management techniques
- Risk assessment: risk factors, assessments, and interventions
- Assessment and communication skills for the following categories of mental disorders:
- Schizophrenia
- Mood Disorders
- Anxiety, Somatoform, and Dissociative Disorders
- Personality Disorders
- Eating Disorders
- Sexual Disorders
- Co-Occurrent Disorders
- Child and Adolescent Disorders
- Empowerment: ways to empower clients and the misuse of power and control
- Strategies to manage difficult situations: Diffuse, de-escalate, and debrief
- Concepts of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD)
- Application of interviewing and communication skills through structured lab interactions with “clients” (actors)
Learning Outcomes
- Understand the concepts and importance of the therapeutic use of self (self-awareness)
- Understand the importance of the therapeutic use of self during interactions with individuals with mental health issues
- Understand the types, phases, and implementation strategies for therapeutic relationships
- Demonstrate active listening and attending skills
- Demonstrate client-centred communication skills of empathy, warmth, and respect, and beginning skills of confrontation and immediacy
- Understand the problem-solving process in working with a client and/or multidisciplinary team
- Understand the concepts and skills for conflict resolution
- Demonstrate an understanding of stress management
- Demonstrate the theory and application for a risk assessment
- Demonstrate the various communication skills associated with the following categories of mental disorders:
- Schizophrenia
- Mood Disorders
- Anxiety, Somatoform, and Dissociative Disorders
- Personality Disorders
- Eating Disorders
- Sexual Disorders
- Co-Occurrent Disorders
- Child and Adolescent Disorders
- Understand the concepts of power and empowerment and their effects on therapeutic relationships
- Identify escalating behaviours and strategies to diffuse, de-escalate, and debrief
- Demonstrate basic interviewing skills
Means of Assessment
Course evaluation is consistent with Douglas College course evaluation policy. An evaluation schedule is presented at the beginning of the course.
This is a graded course and a minimum requirement for successful completion of the course is 65%.
Textbook Materials
Textbooks and Materials to be Purchased by Students
A list of recommended materials is provided to the students at the beginning of the semester.
Prerequisites
Equivalencies
Courses listed here are equivalent to this course and cannot be taken for further credit:
- No equivalency courses
Which Prerequisite