Advanced Counselling and Psychotherapy Studies

This online module offers theoretical and experiential learning opportunities to explore the topic in a sensitive and respectful learning environment. Contemporary theories are presented by a range of counselling practitioners with a wealth of experience and specialised knowledge in the field. The module offers an excellent opportunity for participants to enhance their awareness of their own responses to bereavement and loss as well as deepen their understanding of the people they live and work with.

Module Leader – Maria Kefalogianni.

This module will facilitate your development of advanced ability to evaluate critically current research and to evaluate research methods used by others. The module will support you in developing a comprehensive understanding of a range of research techniques that can be applied to a variety of research or scholarly situations, and in strengthening your ability to critically appraise the purpose, process and products of research activity, with reference to the politics and ethics of research. The module will offer you opportunities to gain the ability to select, apply and critically appraise applied research techniques to explore identified questions, and will strengthen your capacity to reflect critically on your competence as a researcher and the implications for the development of this part of your role. A major change in the revised programme is making this module an option. We would strongly recommend taking this module if you plan to do primary research for your dissertation but if you intend to do a literature review then this module is helpful but not essential. This module is the School’s shared research methods module and the sessions are shared with a range of health and social care masters students. This module can be taken either in semester 1 or in semester 2.

Module Leader – Alison Brettle. 

The purpose of the module is to help you reflect on your prior personal and professional experiences, utilising frameworks and tools to capture and record these experiences and develop a portfolio of evidence demonstrating your development.

Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT) was developed by a team led by Professor Paul Gilbert based in Derby specifically to help clients with deep-seated issues associated with shame. Since then the approach has been found to be helpful in a wide range of mental health contexts including trauma, anger and addiction. CFT offers a structured approach to help clients cultivate compassion for themselves and for others. This is within a neuro-psychological framework that is intrinsically de-shaming. The module offers training in how CFT approaches can be integrated into therapeutic practice. 

Module leader: Elaine Beaumont. 

This module offers both cognitive and experiential learning opportunities and offers ‘taster experiences’ of a range of different art therapy approaches. A number of psychotherapies exist that offer more than just the verbal interchange of ‘talking therapies’. These approaches invite other channels of communication, as well as verbal interchange, as a means of accessing core or organismic experience. There are obvious advantages of such approaches to client groups who may not have the necessary verbal skills to describe their experience e.g. children, people with learning disabilities. There may be further advantages of using expressive therapies, compared with purely verbal therapies, in enabling exploration with clients who may overly depend on verbal means of structuring their lives and experiences. In order to support students in learning about each expressive approach outlined opportunities will be provided for students to experience the ‘theory in action’, in this way students can find personal meaning from the particular theory being examined.

Module Leader – Leigh Gardner.

This module will facilitate your development of advanced ability to evaluate critically current research and to evaluate research methods used by others. The module will support you in developing a comprehensive understanding of a range of research techniques that can be applied to a variety of research or scholarly situations, and in strengthening your ability to critically appraise the purpose, process and products of research activity, with reference to the politics and ethics of research. The module will offer you opportunities to gain the ability to select, apply and critically appraise applied research techniques to explore identified questions, and will strengthen your capacity to reflect critically on your competence as a researcher and the implications for the development of this part of your role. A major change in the revised programme is making this module an option. We would strongly recommend taking this module if you plan to do primary research for your dissertation but if you intend to do a literature review then this module is helpful but not essential. This module is the School’s shared research methods module and the sessions are shared with a range of health and social care masters students. This module can be taken either in semester 1 or in semester 2. 

Module Leader – Alison Brettle.

It is increasingly being recognised that, while the cultivation of mindful awareness is helpful across a wide range of professional contexts, specific mindfulness practices can be disturbing or even traumatising if not tailored to individual needs. This had led to a trauma-sensitive mindfulness movement that aims to ensure mindfulness practices are accessible and appropriate to those who have or are experiencing trauma. 

On this clinically focused, online module you will have the opportunity to learn how mindfulness can be integrated into professional practice in a way that meets the needs of each individual. 

Module leader: Tim Duerden.

The purpose of the module is to help you reflect on your prior personal and professional experiences, utilising frameworks and tools to capture and record these experiences and develop a portfolio of evidence demonstrating your development.

Enhance your knowledge, skills and interpersonal awareness in order to provide CBT for children and young people. You will be required to use CBT within your work/ voluntary placement setting and you will need to access CBT supervision for at least one hour per month. 

This module will support you in developing a critical understanding of the nature and impact of issues relating to social justice on the emotional well-being of children and young people and their access and use of counselling/ psychotherapy. The module will facilitate your development of an informed and applied understanding of the relevant research and professional literature, will present opportunities for you to develop a critical understanding of the particular developmental issues involved in providing counselling and psychotherapy for children and young  people e.g. emotional, physical cognitive and sexual, and will enable you to critically analyse the ethical, legal, professional, therapeutic and contextual aspects of working with children and young people. 

Module leader - Helen Millar 

On successful completion of this module, you will be able to critically identify and apply knowledge of research/ inquiry techniques applicable to your own discipline to enhance research and advanced scholarship. You will be able to evaluate research/inquiry methods with due consideration of research, governance, project management and ethics frameworks at local, national and international levels. You will also gain skills in critically appraising and debating key concepts, methods and technical paradigms related to research. The module will support you in developing your ability to apply creative thinking and problem-solving strategies within your discipline to address the challenges of research and inquiry within a discipline and justify your chosen approaches to research and professional inquiry. The module will offer you the opportunity to critically evaluate current research evidence, policy and reflect upon your role as a researcher/change agent within professional, educational, clinical or organisational practice.