The goal of the Wellness Centers’ Continuing Education program is to promote education and ongoing learning to those working in the social sciences and to provide mental health resources to our CCC faculty and staff.
The City Colleges of Chicago Wellness Centers are approved Continuing Education Sponsors through the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) to provide Continuing Education for licensed psychologists, licensed professional counselors/clinical professional counselors, licensed social workers/clinical social workers and licensed marriage and family therapists.
Brief informational videos, put together by our Wellness Center staff and interns, will be updated regularly on this page and are available for viewing at any time.
Introduction to Mental Health
The Wellness Centers will be providing live Continuing Education (CE) courses each semester. These will be provided in both virtual and in-person formats and are open to the community. The cost and schedule for each course may vary.
Course information, including Zoom links for virtual courses, will be e-mailed to you prior to the event.
Please contact Dr. Cossu at ncossu@ccc.edu if questions arise.
CCC faculty and staff ONLY can view virtual courses provided by PESI at any time, for no cost. Continuing Education (CE) credit is available for these courses on a limited basis. For information on how to obtain CE credit for these courses, please contact Dr. Cossu at ncossu@ccc.edu.
Suicidal Clients and Self-Harm Behaviors: Clinical Strategies to Confidently Address Two of the Most Daunting (and Potentially Lethal) Scenarios You’ll Work With (Digital Seminar)
Suicidality is one of the scariest scenarios we work with. Your job literally becomes a life-or-death situation …one in which you hold a great deal of responsibility. Suicidal clients under extreme distress can leave you feeling overwhelmed and questioning your next move, and revelations of self-harm have you searching for answers they didn’t teach you in school.
Given the high probability of encountering a client considering suicide or engaging in self-harming behavior at some point in your career, the preparation of graduate programs is not enough. With so much as stake you need to be ready to skillfully assess and manage suicide risks and self-harming behavior!
Watch this candid recording and leave feeling fully equipped to address the intricacies that affect your clients’ choices to live or die. Beneficial to both seasoned and fledgling mental health practitioners, our experienced instructor will provide you with comprehensive approaches to effectively work with clients who present with suicidal and self-destructive behaviors.
Key Benefits of Watching:
Go beyond grad school curriculum and get the practical real-world strategies and advice you need to confidently and capably treat suicidal and self-harming clients!
Outline
Clients at Risk:
Co-Occurring Disorders and Special Populations
The Relationship between Suicide and Self-Destructive Behavior
Legally Sound Suicide Risk Assessment
Manage Self-Harm Behaviors and Build Functional Coping Skills in Your Clients
Suicidal Behavior Treatment Strategies: CBT, DBT and Crisis Management Skills
When (and How) to Hospitalize Clients
Please Note: PESI is not affiliated or associated with Marsha M. Linehan, PhD, ABPP, or her organizations.
Objectives
Target Audience
Integrated CBT Treatment Techniques for Depression, Suicidal Ideations, & Other Co-Morbid Conditions (Digital Seminar)
Enhance Your Skills and Improve Outcomes with Depressed and Suicidal Clients
The ongoing treatment of the depressed and suicidal client is an enormous clinical challenge. Clinicians often state that they feel well-trained in assessing and intervening when their clients initially have suicidal ideations, but feel at a loss when the client returns for treatment, still depressed, and possibly still suicidal.
Dr. David Pratt has worked with this challenging population for over 35 years and brings his expertise to share practical CBT techniques for clinicians to use with their depressed and suicidal clients. He will help you integrate “Third Wave” CBT Therapies such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with “First and Second Wave” CBT therapies you may already be using. In addition, he will share practical interventions you can use for on-going depression and suicidal ideation, as well as evidence-based treatments for other common co-morbid conditions such as anxiety disorders and PTSD.
Objectives
Outline
“FIRST AND SECOND WAVE” APPROACHES
“FIRST AND SECOND WAVE” CBT TECHNIQUES FOR THE DEPRESSED AND SUICIDAL CLIENT
“THIRD WAVE” ADVANCES IN CBT FOR THE TREATMENT OF DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE PREVENTION
EVIDENCE-BASED TREATMENTS FOR COMMON CO-MORBID CONDITIONS
INTEGRATING TREATMENT OF DEPRESSION AND CO-MORBID CONDITIONS WITH THE COMPLICATED CLIENT
Target Audience
Suicide Assessment and Intervention: Assess Suicidal Ideation and Effectively Intervene in Crisis Situations with Confidence, Composure and Sensitivity (Digital Seminar)
Losing a client to suicide is your worst nightmare. And there inevitably comes a time when the suicidal client is more than just an intangible dread. When an actual person, suffering and sitting in your office, reveals they are having suicidal thoughts. Many clinicians are left feeling unprepared, frightened, and unsure what to do next. The weight of keeping someone alive can steer you in the direction of avoidance. Desperate and alone, suicidal clients can find themselves passed from one therapist to the next. And that’s not care.
Don’t let fear push you away.
This training will transform how you view and work with suicidal clients and give you the clinical tools you need to save lives.
Full of thought-provoking lecture, engaging case studies, and guided instruction on a host of powerful clinical applications, this training will provide you with the tools you need to:
Leave this training feeling confident and capable to work with suicidal clients and guide them out of the darkness and back into the light!
Objectives
Outline
Suicide: Who, When, How and Where
Elicit Key Information from Suicidal Clients: Assessment and Level of Risk
Formulate Treatment Plans that Help Clients Regulate Emotions and Make Them Feel Valued and Connected
Confidently Handle Crisis Situations
Suicide Grief Support and Innovative Suicide-Specific Care
Target Audience
School Administrators
High Risk Clients: Effective Clinical Interventions for Client Emergencies Related to Suicide, Substance Abuse Disorder, Violence & More (Digital Seminar)
Crises are never scheduled, convenient or easy. But they do happen and you will face them. Clients at risk for crisis often present with so many symptoms and issues, it’s hard to know where to start. Many clinicians, anxious about how to proceed, often miss or avoid asking the right questions to effectively intervene and keep clients (and themselves) safe.
As a clinician, have you ever felt:
Watch Paul Brasler, LCSW, as he navigates you through five of the most difficult scenarios in mental health today. Through real-life examples and live role plays, Paul will share the concrete strategies that he’s used over the last two decades to safely and effectively intervene in the challenging, urgent, and sometimes alarming situations that mental health professionals face.
Full of practical tools and tips, this live webcast will teach you to how to make crises situations more manageable, overcome your worries, and improve your readiness to handle mental health emergencies related to suicide, violence, substance abuse, trauma, and medical issues.
Better still, instruction on professional liability management techniques, tips for documentation, and detailed reproducible assessment forms will have you feeling confident that you can focus on doing what’s best for your clients without fear of litigation. And, Paul’s guidance is applicable to your work regardless of your setting or clinical background.
Leave this seminar equipped to help your most vulnerable clients with the real-life skills and knowledge they don’t teach in graduate school!
Objectives
Outline Client Assessment: Ask the Right Questions
The Suicidal Client: Recognize Suicide Risk & Effectively Intervene
The Violent Client: Confidently Manage Dangerous Situations
The Addicted Client: What ALL Clinicians Need to Know
Medical vs. Psychiatric Problems: Recognize the Difference
The Traumatized Client: When Trauma Becomes High Risk
High Risk Clinicians: After the Crisis
Target Audience
2-Day: Depression and Mood Disorder Certification Training: New Assessment and Treatment Techniques for Lasting Recovery (Digital Seminar)
Your clients with depression, bipolar, and other mood disorders are counting on you. But successful treatment can feel like an impossible task.
Diagnosis is tricky, first-line treatments often fail, poor treatment compliance and destructive impulsivity feel like the norm, and recurrence seems the rule and not the exception. And you frequently need to work around medication use that comes with serious side effects, but often fails to offer real benefits. The litany of challenges can leave you feeling exhausted, ineffective, and troubled about the potentially devastating outcomes of treatment failure.
This training is exactly what you need to help your clients achieve a fuller recovery from depression and bipolar disorder, all without resorting to potentially risky and ineffective medication use.
Watch depression and mood disorder expert and author Chris Aiken, MD, and get cutting-edge therapeutic techniques, skills, and practical guidance so you can assess for and effectively treat mood disorders better than ever before. Attend and discover:
Best of all, upon completion of this live training, you’ll be eligible to become a Certified Mood Disorder Professional (CMDP) through Evergreen Certifications.
Certification lets colleagues, employers, and clients know that you’ve invested the extra time and effort necessary to understand the complexities of treating depression and other mood disorders in clients. Professional standards apply. Visit www.evergreencertifications.com/CDMDTP for details.
*We partner with Evergreen Certifications to include certification with some of our products. When you purchase such a product we may disclose your information to Evergreen Certifications for purposes of providing services directly to you or to contact you regarding relevant offers.
Purchase today and leave confident that your treatment toolbox has the right combination of clinical interventions so your clients can find relief and live the lives they deserve!
Objectives
Outline The Mood Spectrum: Diagnosis in the DSM-5™ Era
Assessment: Practical Tips, Evidence-Based Tools, and Subclinical Features
THERAPY FOR MOOD DISORDERS: FROM EVIDENCE-BASED TREATMENTS TO A PERSONALIZED PLAN
Mood Disorder Must-Haves for Every Treatment Plan
Behavioral Activation: More Than Building a Busy Schedule
Rumination-Focused CBT (RF-CBT)
Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP)
Social Rhythm Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia
An Antidepressant Lifestyle
Medication
Crisis Intervention
Clinical Considerations
Target Audience
Suicide & Self-Harm: Stopping the Pain (Digital Seminar)
Your client just revealed that she’s having suicidal thoughts … what do you do?
Does she have a gun? Has she written letters? Picked a location? Have hope something will change and doesn’t want to hurt family and friends?
Asking your client, “where do you hurt?” often reveals the focus of the suicidal intent or the purpose of self-harm behaviors. As a clinician, it’s important to remember that even though you view suicide and self-harm behaviors as dysfunctional and maladaptive, your client views them as purpose-driven means of eliminating or managing unbearable levels of pain. For your client, these behaviors are beneficial, attractive, and helpful.
Even the most seasoned therapists struggle to develop an empathic view of their client’s devastating methods of managing emotional pain. Learning how to help clients discover the sources of their pain and providing them with healthy options for solving and managing these struggles in their lives is the key to hope.
Through case studies observed in his 45 years as a counselor and suicidologist, Jack Klott brings to life the ideas, theories, and concepts you need to help your clients:
Watch Jack and learn how to help your clients confront the darkness of suicide and self-harm behaviors. Purchase today!
Objectives
Outline
The Guiding Principles
Research on Suicide and Research Limitations
The Neurobiological Basis of Suicide
Who Is At Risk?
Non Suicidal Self Injury (NSSI) – The Self-Harming Population
The Suicidal Population
Assessment of Risk
Treatment Considerations for NSSI and Suicidal Populations
The Therapist as A Survivor of Suicide
Target Audience