1. Psychiatric Disabilities
2. It’s Time for Counselors to Modify Our Language: It Matters When We Call Our Clients Schizophrenics Versus People with Schizophrenia
3. Combating Opioid Abuse and Understanding Substance Use Disorder
4. Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for Substance Misuse

Learning Objectives:

• Examine strategies for conducting group counseling with persons diagnosed with serious and chronic mental illness
• Analyze the benefits of group counseling for dually diagnosed individuals
• Explore group therapy as an intervention for post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders
• Consider humanistic and social justice implications of language used by professional counselors and trainees
• Learn why practitioners and trainees should refrain from referring to a client/student by diagnostic labels, such as "schizophrenic".
• Explore alternative terminology intended to empower clients and reduce stigma
• The vastness of the nation’s opioid epidemic
• How the opioid epidemic started
• What needs to be done to slow the epidemic
• Describe the public health model as it applies to high-risk substance use.
• Identify and use screening tools to determine the level of risk associated with alcohol and/or other drug use.
• Develop and practice basic motivational interviewing skills that support the implementation of SBIRT.