Introduction I’m about a year (8 courses in fact) away from wrapping up my Bachelor of Professional Arts in Human Services from Athabasca University. This has led me to explore potential graduate schools on my path to becoming a therapist in the future. One thing I’ve discovered is that there’s a lot of confusion around…
Year: 2017
Active Listening Process on Crisis Lines
Introduction The Active Listening Process (ALP) is a set of skills, or what is called by Ivey, Ivey & Zalaquett in their 2014 book Intentional Interviewing and Counselling as “microskills“ are the fundamental skills used to perform the basic skills of displaying empathy and understanding what your caller or client is saying. The ALP is one…
SIMPLE STEPS Model for Suicide Risk Assessment
Introduction The SIMPLE STEPS Model (McGlothlin, 2008) for suicide risk assessment provides a simple mnemonic similar to others like SADPERSONS (Patterson, et. al., 1983) or IS PATH WARM (from the American Association of Suicidology). Each of these is correlated with increasing suicide lethality and so this can be a useful short-hand to remember these items. Suicide…
Coping Skills Therapy for Managing Chronic and Terminal Illness
Introduction I recently had an opportunity to read this excellent book written by Social Worker Kenneth Sharoff. It presents a model of therapy he calls “Cognitive Coping Theory” (CCT) and applies this model to working with individuals who have chronic (or life limiting) and terminal illnesses. Below I present some of the content from the…
Introduction to Social Media for Non-Profits
Introduction Social media has become an important part of outreach for nonprofits as well as customer/client/donor relation management for nonprofits and for-profit organizations. Social media provides agencies with a way to connect with their clients in a real-time way to provide updates, address complaints, and continue to engage stakeholders. (Young, 2017) Before exploring social media…