SWK 460 Mindfulness in Clinical Practice
This is a three-credit course and primarily focuses on practicing mindfulness, self compassion, and self care while working in the helping and clinical profession. The goal of this course is to increase students’ awareness of their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that impact themselves and their work as a clinical practitioner. Students will examine how they manage their mental health wellbeing and how they carry out their ethical responsibilities while creating a healthy and trauma-informed caring environment with individuals, families, groups, and communities. Incorporating mindfulness practice in micro-level, mezzo-level, and macro-level will be covered as well.
Practicing mindfulness can be used as a therapeutic approach. Several mindfulness-based interventions including Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and other mindfulness theories will be examined and how they are beneficial for diverse populations. These mindfulness-based interventions will be discussed on how they are used for: clinical practitioners in supervision, individuals with mental health (depression, anxiety, and trauma), individuals with substance use, individuals who are in end-of-life and palliative care, children in the foster care system, and many more. Ultimately, mindfulness is a critical aspect of developing effective therapeutic relationships with individuals, groups, families, and communities which leads in creating a compassionate and trauma-informed caring environment.
Through lectures, case studies, readings, evidence-based research studies, and role-plays, students will be taught to evaluate how they practice self compassion and how they can apply mindfulness in their professional practice. Students also are given the opportunity to do self-assessment and reflective assignments to examine their self regulations, ethical decision-making processes, and healthy boundaries.
Distribution
Hybrid, Undergraduate