PSY 554 - Trauma and Self-Care: Compassion Fatigue

Catalog Year: 2019-2020

This course is designed for students who wish to learn of methods used to work with and coach professionals and volunteers working with the traumatized. These practitioners are especially vulnerable to developing compassion fatigue or other negative consequences of their work. This course is designed to guide students in the theoretical background preparation needed to be in a position (once further qualified) to treat those practitioners requiring counseling and therapy who already have compassion fatigue and related problems. The course will focus specifically on the assessment and treatment of work-related Acute Stress Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, clinical depression, substance abuse, and profound burnout in the context of the transformation toward wellness. Specifically, the course provides guidance in effectively building a therapeutic alliance and focusing on the professional’s current self-care status, building a commitment to wellness and the motivation to fundamentally change her or his work life style toward a transformation. This transformation to wellness includes but is not limited to both teaching effective stress management methods for both containment/control of unwanted distress and finding and having knowledge of research on effectiveness of these methods. This course will not train students to do the counseling as that is part of the Masters in Mental Health Counseling curriculum but rather prepare them in the theoretical and research grounding for an evidence-based, informed approach to this issue.

Prerequisite: PSY 290, PSY 350 or CPS 310; Graduate Standing or instructor permission.

Offered: Irregularly
Credit: 3