PY 6750 – Crisis and Trauma Informed Interventions

PY 6750 – Crisis and Trauma Informed Interventions

Develop a Crisis Intervention Plan and Determine Your Role Within It.

Format: Online
Duration: 16 weeks (Fall)
Credits: 3
Prerequisites: Must be admitted to the Antioch Online Clinical Mental Health Counseling graduate program

Managing and responding to crises and trauma is now an integral part of a mental health counselor’s role.  Counselors need to be prepared to inform, develop, or actually carry out the key elements of effective crisis management in situational, developmental, or natural disasters. Your position in the plan may be to work one-on-one with victims, or in a less direct role, yet you will likely be needed to provide immediate help to clients whose normal coping skills have been overwhelmed by a traumatic event. Your goal in counseling may be to help them achieve a level of functioning and stability in order to move forward in their healing process.

Course Description

This course will provide an overview to the theory and practice of crisis intervention and trauma responses. A variety of crisis and disaster situations and appropriate trauma responses will be examined as well as the roles and responsibilities of clinical mental health counselors in providing appropriate interventions in both individual and group settings. Students will be exposed to a variety of counseling treatment modalities with the objective of helping them to develop an integrated approach to a range of trauma responses.

What Kind of Work Will I Complete?

A career in counseling will likely involve some level of crisis and trauma intervention. This work demands a strong ability to develop and follow a Crisis Intervention Response Plan and determine the most effective role for yourself within it. The course project outlined below is broken in four distinct parts that are completed throughout the duration of the course.

Sample Project: Crisis Intervention Response Plan

This is an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to investigate, analyze, and critique an existing Crisis Intervention Response Plan and determine your role, if any, in this demanding discipline. By completing the four project parts, you’ll:

• Identify, describe, and examine the potential impact of crises, emergencies, and
  disasters on sites such as schools, organizations, and communities.
• Describe individual roles that comprise effective interdisciplinary emergency response
  teams.
• Adapt existing crisis intervention protocols and plans to meet the needs of specific
  settings and types of crises and emergencies.
• Evaluate your ability to work in crisis intervention.

Part One: Professional Interview

Select a professional who’s familiar with the crisis plan you choose with the intent of interviewing them.

Part Two: Emergency Plan Analysis

Critique the strengths and areas for improvement of the plan and explore the individual roles that comprise effective response teams.

Part Three: Key Responder Roles and Skill Sets

Identify and describe key responder roles and their responsibilities.

Part Four: Crisis Intervention Response Plan

Think like a counselor and develop a plan for a crisis team called into action.

Sample Course Topics Include:

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

• An Overview of Crisis Intervention & Response
• Your Role Within Models and Skills of Crisis Intervention
• Types of Crisis; the Counselor Role; Grief and Loss
• Crisis: Impact on Victims and Responders
• Ethics and Additional Considerations for Crisis Response
• Burnout, Vicarious Traumatization, and Compassion Fatigue

What You’ll Learn

Crisis and Trauma-Informed Interventions is designed to ensure you have the knowledge, planning ability, and professional-level emotional support and tools necessary to provide appropriate support and assistance. At the end of the course you’ll be able to:

• Summarize counselors’ roles and responsibilities as members of an interdisciplinary emergency management response team during a local, regional, or national crisis, disaster, or other trauma-causing event.¹
• Develop crisis intervention and prevention and emergency management plans that meet the needs of agencies, schools, organizations, or communities.²
• Effectively support the implementation of crisis intervention and prevention and emergency management plans.³
• Select and apply situationally appropriate, evidence-based crisis intervention skills and strategies.⁴
• Evaluate one’s own ability to work in crisis intervention.⁵

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.