PY 6660 – Family Counseling Approaches Addictions Treatment

PY 6660 – Family Counseling Approaches Addictions Treatment

Understand The History Before Developing a Treatment Plan For The Future.

Format: Online

Duration: 16 weeks (Fall)

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: Must be admitted to the Antioch Online Clinical Mental Health Counseling graduate program

As a counselor working with  clients struggling with an addiction, you’ll discover how childhood patterns, including myths, rituals and spirituality, impact adult functioning and decisions. You may see clients with or without the rest of their family, but you’ll learn to identify the six models of addiction within the family dynamic. This, and the factual knowledge you gain in this course, will help you to apply a system’s approach to your work with the client and family that’s culturally sensitive and ethically appropriate.

Course Description

This course will provide an understanding of the structure and dynamics of marriage and other committed relationships, and families, and look at a variety of systemic interventions including structural, strategic, and Bowenian approaches. Special attention will be given to understanding of and intervention with shame based family systems including families with addictions, domestic violence and other family problems which require broad based as well as dynamic interventions.

What Kind of Work Will I Complete?

When you work with clients struggling with an addiction, it’s imperative to understand and be sensitive to family dynamics and history. Within this course, you will have the opportunity to reflect on your own family history and ways that it has influenced you.

Sample Project: Childhood Factors Paper

You will write a paper that reflects on your own childhood development, noting significant events, family patterns, substance use/abuse, and how these aspects have influenced your decisions into adulthood. This exercise serves to develop a personal understanding of how family relationships shape the choices we make and our reasoning in making them.

Sample Course Topics

Throughout the course your studies will focus on a core set of topics that coincide with the course’s learning objectives. Sample topics are:

• Models of Addiction and Couples Treatment
• Family Addictions and Sequential Family Addictions Model
• Systems and Postmodern Approaches
• Adult Children of Alcoholics and Special Treatment Situations
• Special Topics Within Families Struggling With Addiction
• Myth, Ritual, & Spirituality

What You’ll Learn

In Family Counseling Approaches to Addictions Treatment you’ll study the deep context of family history and how it affects the behavior and treatment of those struggling with addiction issues. By the end of the course you will:

• Design an overview of two family systems models appropriate for addicted and substance-abusing families’ developmental stage and cultural context.
• Understand the legal and ethical issues in family addictions treatment.
• Develop a working knowledge of the major tenets of family therapy theories: solution focused, narrative, cognitive behavioral, structural and Bowenian family systems, and the practical implications for each.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the effects of culture and use of culturally appropriate interventions in the family presenting for addiction treatment.

Final Paper

Your final paper is a demonstration of your ability to synthesize knowledge and complete a systemic assessment and treatment plan for a family case study.  Each student will analyze an instructor-approved film with content surrounding families with addictions. Using the perspective of a family-therapy approach studied in class, the analysis is to describe the system and be supported by in-depth reading of at least one original source and journal articles regarding your chosen theoretical approach.

For more information about this course, or other courses in the Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Antioch Online, please call (855) 792-1049, or request more information.