| A mental health professional degree program requires demonstrated mastery of these things: |
In other words: |
| Understanding of the biological, psychological, and social aspects affecting the development, function, and variability of human mental and interpersonal processes, |
Why we think, feel, and act the way we do, including
- biological explanations,
- explanations based on the culture and social environment we live in,
- and explanations based on personal experiences.
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| including pathologies associated with addiction, stress, trauma, adjustment, disability, loss, and interpersonal conflict. |
How various challenges in life (like those listed to the right) commonly affect our patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. |
| Assessment and diagnosis of dysfunctions in individual mental health, interpersonal relationships, and group dynamics. |
Figuring out if a person, a couple, a family, or a group is not doing as well as they could in some important way.And, if there is an important problem, figuring out how to best explain it – in terms of biology, social and cultural patterns, and/or as a response to some particular challenging experiences. |
| Counseling and psychotherapy methods for group, family, couples, and individual treatment. |
Effective ways to help people address the particular problems they are experiencing.And how to effectively provide help in a therapy group, while working directly with a couple or a family, and one on one. |
Christopher H. Anderson, LCSW 