Continuing Education Course Catalog

Successful treatment of addictive disorders typically includes various elements and processes that the effective practitioner needs to not only know about, but also to know how best to invoke those treatment elements in a manner that will be the best fit for each individual service recipient. Additionally, there are time-tested, evidence-based therapies with proven positive outcomes that practitioners would benefit from knowing about, either for direct provision or for the purposes of informing referrals. This set of sessions will focus on these learning targets, as well as equipping participants with the professional ethics knowledge and perspectives necessary for working with substance-involved populations.

As behavioral healthcare service delivery has become increasingly concerned with effective treatment for co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, integrated care models, and dual-diagnosis-informed interventions have emerged and become well- established. The more recent acknowledgement of the importance of further integration with physical healthcare treatment services is also highly pertinent to successful and sustainable treatment of substance-involved populations. This set of learning sessions will focus on addictions treatment with individuals having complex and comorbid circumstances and conditions, including mental health, physical health, criminal justice, and trauma issues.

The observed phenomena of individuals pursuing abstinence from a primary addictive substance or behavior sequentially replacing that addictive behavior with another is well-established. Understanding this “replacement addiction” equips treatment providers to more effectively intervene and support optimal recovery outcomes with those demonstrating this pattern. Harm reduction refers to strategies or interventions that are intentionally purposeful for treatment with individuals who are customers for such approaches, when they may be too ambivalent to pursue abstinence-based recovery. This module addresses both of these important topics in significant depth.

Please note that this course is comprised of the content from Module 10 of the newly revised Addictions Certificate Program, Track 1.