Monmouth University Clinical Mental Health Counseling students may choose from five different specialization areas by working with their advisor to select electives specific to their area of interest.
- Alcohol and Drug Counseling
- Spirituality and Counseling
- Couples and Relationship Counseling
- Ecotherapy
- Child and Adolescent Counseling
Alcohol and Drug Counseling – Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor (LCADC)
The students who complete this specialization are academically preparing for the NJ Alcohol and Drug License (LCADC). In addition to the CORE class of Introduction to Alcohol and Drug Counseling (PC 540) students will complete:
PC 542: Treatment of Alcohol and Drug Counseling
PC 544: Advanced Alcohol and Drug Counseling
PC 510: Community Counseling & Social Justice
Monmouth University’s Clinical Mental Health Counseling graduate program aids students on their path to becoming a Licensed Clinical Alcohol and Drug Counselor (LCADC). The LCADC specialization will help build the skills needed to work in a wide range of treatment programs, or to start your own practice.
As a LCADC, you are qualified to work in a wide spectrum of treatment facilities, serving individuals with substance abuse disorders and their families. The LCADC license also allows you to be a private practitioner and to receive third party payment through a variety of health insurance companies.
Spirituality and Counseling
Students will learn to integrate existential concerns, spiritual healing practices and gain a multi-religious perspective to work with all clients. Students must complete three of the following classes for this specialization:
PC 521: Spirituality in Counseling
PC 517: Counseling and World Religions
PC 522: Self-Exploration: Body, Mind, Spirit
PC 650/651: Transformational Travel, including a trip to India for approximately two-three weeks
Through the spirituality specialization, students are given a basic understanding of philosophical and practical ways to integrate existential, mystical, or other inexplicable issues into the counseling process. Students will examine different spiritual practices with a respectful, multicultural lens and view the practices as possible psychological techniques, pathology, and/or cognitive distortions.
Students will be given the opportunity to develop a personal spiritual theory of how he or she would like to integrate, or not integrate, spirituality into his or her work as a counselor.
Other courses are available through the specialization, including Self-Exploration: Body, Mind, Spirit that allows students to explore the motivation, unconscious drives, anxieties, and spiritual and existential meaning that lead him or her to become a counselor.
This specialization also features a Transformational Travel to India counseling course which offers professional counseling graduate students the opportunity to travel through Northern India on a service learning trip. Joanne Jodry, Ed.D., D.M.H., created the course as a means for students to expand their understanding of multicultural differences and enhance their multicultural competence, as they experience dozens of spiritually enlightening sites in Indian history and culture. Throughout the trip, students spend time at One Life to Love, a nonprofit organization and orphanage that provides resources such as education, nutrition, and health care for children with mental and physical disabilities in New Delhi, India. Additional fees required for travel expenses.
Couples and Relationship Counseling
Students will gain a systems approach to counseling and learn to counsel beyond the individual. There will be an emphasis on relationship dynamics and theoretical orientations to gain capability within systems theory.
PC 528: Family Counseling
PC 516: Counseling & Sexuality
PC 533: Couple & Relationship Counseling
Ecotherapy
Students in this specialization will obtain a firm understanding of the theoretical constructs of Ecopsychology, demonstrate a model of Ecowellness, and obtain applicable skills in Ecotherapy.
Students interested in this focus area will complete PC 502 and PC 504 and either PC 522 or a practicum/internship in Ecotherapy:
PC 502: Ecotherapy: Counseling with Nature
PC 504: Adventure Based Ecotherapy, including a 3-day canoeing trip at the Delaware Water Gap.
PC 522: Self-Exploration: Body, Mind, Spirit
PC 650/651: Transformational Travel, including a trip to India for approximately two-three weeks
Ecotherapy is defined as contact with nature as a method or element of counseling, and addresses the critical tact that as humans we are interwoven with the natural world. Ecotherapists seek to develop and understand ways of expanding the emotional connection between clients and the natural world within the counseling context, thereby assisting individuals with developing sustainable lifestyles and remedying alienation from nature.
Ecotherapy includes a wide range of techniques such as, wilderness therapy, forest bathing, equine therapy, animal-assisted therapy, horticultural therapy, biophilic design, and green therapy.
Child / Adolescent Counseling
Students in this specialization will explore theories and techniques for children and adolescents and family counseling, and will gain knowledge on how to work with a variety of different populations of individuals and families.
PC 672: Advanced Theory in Play Therapy
PC 673: Advanced Techniques in Play Therapy
PC 674: Play Therapy for Children at Risk