The Community Support Professional (CSP) Certification Training Program consists of a 20 week curriculum (running from 2/7/13 through 6/20/13). Although this certification training is designed for direct service behavioral health case managers and other direct service staff working in the State’s licensed community behavioral health organizations, the topics covered in these trainings may be of interest to other people working in the Behavioral Health field as well.
There are a limited number of additional seats available in most of these classes for people who are not part of the CSP certification training but may want to increase their knowledge of a particular topic. (Please note: Unless otherwise indicated, CEUs are NOT provided and the cost to attend is $20. per class, NON-REFUNDABLE).
The following is a listing of the CSP classes and a description of each. Please contact Christine Newton at RICCMHO (401.228.7990) for registration information.
CSP CLASS LIST
2/14/13 9am – 4pm #17: Cultural Awareness
“Cultural competence is the ability to acknowledge the impact of oppressive histories, life experiences, language, values, beliefs and customs, including traditional healing approaches, on an individual’s behavioral health illness and their recovery process.
The overall goal of this cultural awareness training is to reduce disparities across cultural groups and provide quality care to all persons seeking behavioral health services regardless of their cultural background. Through this training, participants develop more culturally appropriate treatment strategies and better identify, as an integral part of treatment planning and service delivery, cultural factors including cultural barriers that are related to treatment outcomes.
Through this training participants gain a better understanding of demographic variables, history and current socio-political factors, cultural values and beliefs, social network systems, and acculturation styles, better understand the role that culture plays in defining, recognizing and understanding mental health and substance abuse needs, as well as attitudes toward accessing care and following treatment recommendations, and develop effective and culturally appropriate treatment goals that are compatible with the client’s understanding of his/her illness.”
2/21/13 9am – 4pm # 5: Ethical & Liability Issues *($25. fee – 6 CEUs provided.)
This training provides a comprehensive overview of the ethical and liability issues related to working with clients in the behavioral health treatment system. Topics include: boundaries, privacy and confidentiality, negligent intervention, impaired professionals, the importance of consultation and supervision, client records and termination of treatment. Emphasis will be on strategies for preventing ethical dilemmas and liability risks.
2/28/13 9am – 1pm # 7 : Suicide Prevention
For many, psychiatric, addiction and co-occurring illnesses can be fatal in the sense that these disorders are closely associated with extraordinarily high rates of attempted suicide and suicide. Preventing suicide, clearly, is an especially difficult and sensitive responsibility for all those who work with behavioral health clients. Clinicians, as the service providers most closely in touch with the day-to-day life circumstances of clients, carry a particularly heavy burden in this area. This session provides clinicians with the information and the “rules-of-thumb” that will help them bear that burden.
In order to deal with potential suicidal situations, clinicians must know the warning signs that may precede a suicide attempt and be familiar with the resources available in their system or the community that can be brought into play to support the client. The clinician must also have a thorough understanding of the risks he/she takes and when an immediate intervention is clearly indicated.
Through this training, participants learn the warning signs of suicide differentiating between facts and myths about suicide, learn new approaches to dealing with suicidal behavior, and become familiar with the fundamentals of active emotional support during suicidal emergencies.
3/7/13 9am – 12pm #14: Methods for Affecting Change
This training presents a Stage of Change Model, the Interviewing Strategies associated with each Stage, the process of Motivational Interviewing and Counseling and the “Rules for Understanding Change”. The concepts of confrontation, denial and ambivalence are explored relative to supporting change, and participants have opportunities to practice conducting a Motivational Assessment and evaluating the results.
3/14/13 9am – 12pm #12: Focus on Families
In this session, family members who belong to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Rhode Island (NAMI-RI) present a focus on families which brings a distinct perspective to behavioral health diagnoses and symptoms. This workshop presents the family experience as a foundation of information – both practical and emotional – which can be useful to clinicians. Clinicians learn to understand and empathize with the family experience and to approach communications with family members in ways which aid them in doing their jobs.
3/21/13 9am – 1pm #15: Recovery Through Work
“Employment is nature’s best physician and is essential to human happiness”. This quote by Galen in 172 AD may be a broad one, but then most of us usually define ourselves partially by “our job”. We are often asked, after being introduced to a new person, “What do you do?”, and this is a question about our employment. This training discusses the use of vocational planning strategies to use when working with persons diagnosed with behavioral health disorders.
The goals of this training are to learn strategies to increase clients’ appreciation of the value of work as a tool for recovery, to explore the clinician’s role in facilitating employment, and to develop skills necessary to assist the clients in employment/career planning.
3/28/13 9am – 4pm #4A: Healthcare Issues & Prescription Drug Abuse
People with disabilities get physically sick like anyone else. Persons with behavioral health diagnoses are at a higher risk for medical problems than the rest of us. Research indicates that individuals with behavioral health issues may live 25 years less than the general public.
This training introduces clinicians to the common medical problems of behavioral health clients and ways to integrate medical services into treatment plans. Clinicians learn methods of identifying symptoms of physical illness that can mask, trigger or exacerbate psychiatric and or addiction syndromes (i.e. diabetes, heart conditions, and hypertension). The use and misuse of prescription drugs and the associated consequences is also discussed.
4/4/13 9am – 4pm # 9: Recovery & the Effects of Trauma
This training has been created for clinicians who are working with clients living with serious behavioral health diagnoses in addition to being survivors of trauma to include: sexual abuse, exposure to domestic violence, caregiver separation, physical violence, placement impermanence, etc. Recent brain research findings will be reviewed relative to the effects of the trauma response upon the brain. The objectives of this training include the ability to name the different forms of trauma and to identify the effects upon the brain, describe the Triune Brain structure and identify functional strengths, and develop strategies to assist the individual in recovering from the effects of trauma. Medication considerations in the treatment of trauma are also be considered.
4/11/13 9am – 12pm #10: Mental Health Examination
The ability to perform reliable mental status examinations is a critical skill for all clinicians. The Mental Status Examination, the “physical exam of psychiatry“, provides for a “systems check “on how a person is thinking and feeling. It also serves to provide clinicians with a better understanding of a client’s concerns regarding his/her difficulties and symptoms.
This training teaches specific procedures for obtaining needed mental status and symptom information. It also helps clinicians organize their thinking, structure questions, and evaluate the resulting data. The trainer presents an overview of those aspects of the client that can be assessed through observation such as speech, gait and physical appearance, as well as those aspects of intellectual functioning that can be accessed through more formal procedures such as though content, insight, and capacity for abstraction.
4/18/13 9am – 4pm # 3: Treatment of Persons with Co-Occurring Disorders
Providing services to clients with co-occurring psychiatric illness and substance use disorders obviously presents special challenges. Successful treatment requires a belief in and understanding of behavioral health and substance abuse as interactive illnesses with both as primary, and an integrated treatment technology that incorporates relevant theory and practice strategies from both fields.
The purpose of this training is to raise the “index of concern” and awareness of clinicians regarding the presence of substance abuse among clients, and to develop skills in the identification of specific signs and symptoms. The session also explores how clinicians can effectively engage their clients in discussing problems with psychoactive substance use, to accept treatment for both illnesses, and to access community resources to assist with ongoing recovery.
4/25/13 9am – 12pm #19: Integrating Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors with Treatment
This course provides participants with the skills and strategies that effectively incorporate wellness and holistic health practices into traditional mental health and substance abuse treatment. This training includes an overview of the basic principles of stress reduction, abdominal breathing and relaxation techniques in reducing physical and emotional illnesses, nutritional, exercise and communication practices that facilitate healing and recovery, and the incorporation of meditative exercises such as Chi Kung into existing treatment activities.
5/2/13 9am – 4pm #18: Medication Assisted Therapy / Addiction Pharmacology (Day 1 of 2) *($50. fee – 12 CEUs provided.)
Medication Assisted Therapy is the use of medications in the treatment of addictive disorders. This includes medications for medically-supervised detoxification, antagonist medications such as Antibuse, partial agonist medications such as Buprenorphine, and full agonist medications such as Methadone. In addition, the use of Vivitrol, Naltrexone, and Campral/Acamprosate in the treatment of Alcohol Abuse/Dependence will be presented. This training provides participants opportunities to explore attitudes, values and beliefs associated with the use of medications in the treatment of addictive and co-occurring disorders.
5/3/13 9am – 4pm #18: Medication Assisted Therapy / Addiction Pharmacology (Day 2 of 2) (Continued from Day 1)
5/9/13 9am – 4pm #4B: HIV / Viral Hepatitis * ($25. fee – 6 CEUs provided.)
This training has been designed to introduce a health education model of HIV/AIDS and Viral Hepatitis prevention. Participants will learn basic HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis information to include the history of the epidemics, demographic trends, modes of transmission, symptoms, screening and testing, the interactions of HIV and Hepatitis C, goals of treatment and treatment strategies, disease progression, medications and side effects, prevention and lifestyle changes, advocacy and resources.
5/14/13 9am – 4pm #13: Helping Relationships/Motivational Interviewing
This training discusses how to build relationships with clients that are characterized by trust and mutual comfort, relationships that have a “caring” dimension but retain objectivity, and an orientation toward the achievement of clearly identified purposes. Participants learn skills that can lay the foundation for the development of healthy clinician/client relationships. Most of these skills are fundamental to all “helping” roles and they include – listening, demonstrating understanding, orienting, requesting information and offering options.
Motivational Interviewing is also defined, Stages of Change are discussed relative to MI, and participants learn the basic Principles and Skills of Motivational Interviewing.
5/23/13 9am – 2pm # 6: Psychotropic Medications
Various categories of psychotropic agents are available for the treatment psychiatric disorders, (i.e., Schizophrenia, Major Depression, Bipolar Disorder and Anxiety, etc.). Although the responsibility for prescribing medication resides with the physician, the clinician’s role is most essential. In the behavioral health field, clinicians are often the primary evaluator of behavior and have great influence once clients receive medication.
Through this training, participants will be able to be able to identify the medications most commonly used to treat persons with psychiatric illnesses and/or co-occurring disorders, recognize typical side effects associated with these medications, recognize the target symptoms and limitations of these medications, gain a greater awareness of the client’s point of view regarding medication, and to understand the basic principles of neurotransmission within the brain and the hypothesis of how alterations in brain neurochemistry cause signs and symptoms of psychiatric illness.
5/28/13 9am – 12pm # 8: Crisis Intervention (TCI)
5/28/13 1pm – 4pm # 8: Workplace Safety
These two sessions discuss techniques for de-escalating and redirecting a potential crisis situation. The purpose of this training is to help clinicians recognize pre-crisis cues and verbal and non-verbal escalating behavior of a client. Participants also learn verbal and non-verbal communication skills effective in dealing with crises and potentially aggressive behaviors, and the fundamentals of safety in crisis situations, including the awareness and use of self and environment.
6/6/13 9am – 2pm # 11: Benefits & Entitlements
This informational session is designed to help clinicians understand the benefits and entitlements that many clients receive or meet the eligibility criteria to receive. It also explores how these benefits may be affected by employment, changes in diagnoses and/or failure t comply with reporting requirements. The benefits and entitlements discussed include Social Security Retirement Benefits, Survivor’s Benefits, Disability Benefits, working while collecting benefits, Medicare A, B, D, and Medicaid. Participants will be able to assist their clients with understanding, obtaining and maintaining their benefits and entitlements.
6/13/13 9am – 2pm # 2: DSM V
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM) is developed and published by the American Psychiatric Association. The current standard version of the manual is the fifth edition of the work; the universally employed shorthand title for the publication has become “DSM V”.
The purpose of the DSM V training is to provide participants with a broad familiarity with the major categories of psychiatric illness and the vocabularies and classification systems that are employed to describe them. Participants are exposed to all recognized psychiatric disorders, and learn how to use it as a guide in making diagnoses by through the broadly agreed upon descriptions of the full range of conditions and symptoms which behavioral health professionals may encounter in their clients.
6/20/13 9am – 12pm #16: Legal Assistance
Representatives from the Executive Office of Health & Human Services, the Mental Health Advocate’s Office, the Disability Law Center, and RI Legal Services discuss legal issues, protections and other considerations that may affect persons with behavioral health diagnoses. Some if these issues include the right to treatment and patient rights, involuntary commitment and court ordered treatment, Tenant Rights, and Eviction Protections.
