PSYC9007 Counselling and Professional Issues

The aims of this topic are to help students achieve competence in counselling and basic clinical practice, develop a critical awareness of a variety of therapeutic interventions, and gain knowledge about practical aspects of therapy, including ethics, confidentiality and record keeping. These have been selected to provide students with a foundation for placement training and subsequent work as clinical psychologists.

Since some class members may already have been exposed to microskills counselling training, the topic begins by developing and tuning these skills. From here, students apply these microskills to diverse areas, including the initial interview and genograms, assessment of suicide risk and acute intervention, and motivational interviewing. Ethics and cultural aspects of psychology will also be presented.

This topic aims for students to learn a range of interviewing and counselling skills that can be applied to the clinical setting.

1. Demonstrate appropriate and effective interviewing and counselling skills
2. Demonstrate sound knowledge of ethics applied to clinical psychology