Description
Course Summary:
This course is designed for substance abuse counselors who work with clients who are experiencing depressive symptoms. Topics in the course range from the relationship between depressive symptoms and substance use disorders to screening/assessment and treatment planning. The course also provides useful information for dealing with depressive symptoms for professionals with advanced degrees or clinical experience.
Course Goals/objectives:
After completing this course, the student should be able to:
• Understand the nature of depressive symptoms
• Understand the relationship between depressive symptoms and the toxic or withdrawal effects of substances
• Understand the relationship between depressive symptoms and substance use disorders
• Understand the effect of substances on recovery from depressive
symptoms
• Identify suicidality among clients in substance abuse treatment with
depressive symptoms
• Understand how depressive symptoms affect treatment participation
• Understand the concept of integrated care for substance abuse and depressive symptoms
• Identify approaches and psychosocial interventions for working with depressive symptoms
• Understand special considerations related to the substance abuse
treatment setting in which you work
• Identify special considerations related to the cultures of your clients
• Understand your professional role and responsibilities
• Understand how to prepare yourself to work with clients with depressive symptoms
• Understand screening and assessment
• Understand treatment planning
• Understand treatment
• Understand continuing care and treatment termination
Your Course Instructor:
Robert Shearer, PhD
Dr. Robert A. Shearer is a retired professor of criminal justice in the College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University. He has been teaching, training, consulting, and conducting research in the fields of criminal justice, human behavior, and addictions for over thirty-six years. He is the author of over sixty professional and refereed articles in criminal justice and behavior. He is also the author of Interviewing: Theories, Techniques, and Practices, 5th edition published by Prentice Hall. Dr. Shearer has also created over a dozen measurement, research, and assessment instruments in criminal justice and addictions including Law Enforcement Strategies Scale (LSS), Correctional Strategies Scale (CSS), Probation Strategies Scale (PSS), Correctional Treatment Resistance Scale (CTRS), the Comprehensive Substance Abuse Counseling Orientation Inventory (CSACOI), and the Substance Abuse Consequences Scale (SACS).
He has been a psychotherapist in private practice and served as a consultant to dozens of local, state, and national agencies. He has taught courses in interviewing, human behavior, substance abuse counseling, drugs and crime, and correctional counseling. He is currently developing an Interrogation Tactics Scale that measures levels of approval of coercion in interrogations with suspected offenders.
He has been the president of the International Association of Addictions and Offender Counseling and editor of the Journal of Addictions and Offender Counseling. Recently, Dr. Shearer completed a survey of the beliefs of over 300 substance abuse counselors in a large correctional system in the southwestern U.S. He is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma.