Home - ACU (The Australian Catholic University)

Site Navigation

COUN629 Drug and Alcohol Counselling

10 cp
Prerequisites COUN626 Counselling Practice Skills and COUN601 Counselling Theories and Techniques
Teaching Organisation Two contact hours per week via lectures, tutorials, seminars and skills-based workshops.

This unit introduces students to the theories and interventions that underpin addictions counselling with a particular focus on drug and alcohol. Students will learn the theories of addictive behaviours and the shift from a disease model of addiction to the social learning theory perspective and the contemporary stages of change model (TTM). The unit discusses the stages of addiction in the context of this model and examines the similarities and differences between addictive behaviours. An introduction to pharmacology relevant to the topic will be explored providing students a grounding in the nature and effect of the drugs studied. There will be an emphasis on understanding the wide variety of treatment approaches applied to drug and alcohol problems and on the evaluation of their effectiveness. The benefits of risk management techniques such as harm minimisation and harm reduction will also be explored.

Sub-site navigation

Units 2012