MA THERAPEUTIC COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

This module enables students to consider the issues and difficulties surrounding working with clients who present with more complex and severe issues, including those who have specific mental health diagnoses, for example, psychosis and clients diagnosed as having personality disorders.

The overall aim of this module is to equip students with the necessary skills, knowledge and professional development to enable them to provide competent supervision to counsellors in clinical practice.

Supervision is a formal arrangement for counselling practitioners to discuss and evaluate their work with someone who is external to the counselling relationship in order to maintain the standards of therapy.

This module recognises that the therapeutic relationship is at the heart of counselling and psychotherapy. It will enable students to gain an in-depth understanding of various approaches to working at relational depth in their clinical practice. In addition, this module will assist students to reflect on the clinical, ethical and relational implications in counselling practice of relational various approaches, appreciate issues of power and diversity in the therapeutic relationship, and assist them in articulating their own philosophical and clinical stance with regards to working at relational depth in the therapeutic relationship.

Issues of trauma, abuse and dissociation are quite common in counselling clients and may not always be apparent at assessment. This is therefore an important area in which all counsellors require awareness, knowledge, and skills. This module is designed to assist students to critically develop their knowledge base: theory, approaches and skills.

This module focuses on equipping counsellors to develop their cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) skills and integrate these into their clinical practice. It enables students to gain an in-depth understanding and critical awareness of how to use CBT with a variety of psychological disorders and recognise the complexity of their use in the clinical setting as well as critically evaluate the cognitive approach.

The research dissertation provides an opportunity for students to develop their knowledge and practice by carrying out a substantial research project on a counselling research question of interest and relevance to them personally. Students build on their knowledge and understanding of research methods, critically assess and form a systematic understanding of the knowledge base in their chosen subject area through a literature review, carrying out qualitative empirical research, and demonstrate how their research relates and contributes to the field of counselling and psychotherapy.