SW 6401 - Mental Health Practice I: Children and Adolescents

What mental health challenges do children and adolescents currently face, and how can social workers help empower them? Students who take this class learn how to engage in, assess, intervene in, and evaluate mental health practice with children and adolescents, and with their families and communities. A social work perspective is taken, that includes the strengths perspective, multi-cultural competency, eclectic practice, and ecological theory. Students study DSM diagnoses of children and adolescents, through the lens of social work values and theory. This course also considers the interrelationship between mental health and such issues as addictions, criminal behavior, physical health, and evolving local and global conditions. Students will learn to assess the common mental disorders of children and adolescents from an Eco-biopsychosocial-spiritual perspective and to select intervention strategies that differentially fit the needs identified in those assessments. Students will learn to develop and utilize their conscious-use-of-self in establishing effective helping relationships.