Postgraduate Course: Counselling Across Borders (CNST11095)
Course Outline
| School | School of Health in Social Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The changes, both advances and challenges, in the current global circumstances have an impact on mental health as well as on what we understand health or illness to be. This course reviews the role of counselling in addressing mental health in the light of this changing landscape. To this end, it will explore in depth 1. the appropriateness and limitations of counselling considering its meaning as, predominantly, a one to one, face to face talking therapy; and 2. What it can learn from alternative approaches within counselling and from other disciplinary approaches and practices that are concerned with questions about suffering and wellbeing. |
| Course description |
Current changes occurring on a global scale, e.g., migration/mobility, growing spectrum of diversity (gender, neurodivergence), climate crisis, health and economic precarity, ask for evermore critical and innovative approaches to mental health. Counselling (predominantly understood as one-to-one talking therapy) is socially recognised as one of the means that supports people through emotional challenges and life upheavals. However, historically and across different cultures a wider range of systems of knowledge and practices have assumed this role, some of which are increasingly met in the Western world informing and/or challenging the predominance of one-to-one talking therapies. The course will explore alternative ways of thinking and working with human suffering across different disciplinary fields and socio-cultural contexts. Its aim is to challenge as well as inform dominant notions of counselling through examining notions of suffering, mental health and healing across different borders. By borders, we mean the geographical borders as well as socio-political, cultural and disciplinary borders that shape and produce different approaches to mental health and subsequent helping practices.
The course is designed to develop around different approaches to suffering and healing within counselling as well as across other disciplines and geo-political locations. Keeping counselling at the centre of each lecture, we will review how existing and developing approaches, within and outside the counselling field, can inform the practice of counselling. The course will critically review the contribution that approaches outside of counselling can make to suffering and healing, namely: 1. decolonial, 2. queer, and 3. spiritual approaches. The course will also review and critically explore existing or developing approaches within counselling, namely: 4. creative, 5. existential/philosophical, 6. ecological, 7. community based, and 8. virtual approaches. The lectures will focus on how each of the above approaches holds different assumptions about what constitutes suffering and healing.
The course will run for 10 consecutive weeks and will consist of weekly lectures directly followed by group seminars. The lectures will explore in critical depth the above approaches and how they challenge and/or advance existing approaches to counselling. The course materials will include theoretical papers and case studies from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds to ensure students critical and practical engagement with the topic in its breadth. The group seminars aim to offer an experiential and collaborative space of learning by inviting students to engage with the materials from the place of their own practice/experience in their helping roles.
Aims of the course:
- To develop critical perspectives that broaden the conceptualisation and practice of counselling as a one-to-one talking therapy.
- To foster a critical awareness of how difference and diversity can be addressed through alternative and interdisciplinary approaches to counselling.
- To critically examine how power dynamics shape dominant notions of suffering, mental health and helping practices.
- To apply alternative approaches to healing and mental health to enhance and broaden helping practices such as counselling.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 15,
Formative Assessment Hours 5,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
166 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Summative assessment:
Written assignment 3,500-4,000 words (100% of course mark)
Drawing on a particular context or situation you have experienced (professional or personal) *, choose one or two of the approaches to counselling covered in the course and critically explore and develop how it informs your perspective on suffering, health and healing.
*When thinking about a particular context or situation you have experienced, please consider your own experience in a helping role (e.g., counsellor, mental health practitioner, social worker), or your lived experience in a situation relevant to suffering and health (e.g., lockdown, migration). |
| Feedback |
Formative assessment:
Students will be invited to engage in a reflective activity that involves choosing and engaging critically with one or two themes presented in the lectures and discussing how it pertains to their individual professional or personal context. Students will have the option to present their reflective activity on their chosen theme(s) orally and/or creatively (by means of journaling, images, objects/artefacts) in their small group seminars that follow from each lecture.
Feedback will be offered from peers and seminar tutors directly after the formative assessment presentations.
Written feedback will be provided for the summative assessment.
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| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Identify dominant notions of suffering, mental health and healing in counselling literature.
- Discuss alternative approaches to suffering and healing.
- Question how existing narratives of suffering and healing are conceptualised in the literature across geo-political, disciplinary and socio-cultural borders.
- Appraise how difference, diversity and power permeate and shape helping practices.
- Apply alternative approaches to counselling or to helping practices.
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Reading List
Anzaldua, G. (2015). Light in the dark = Luz en lo oscuro: rewriting identity, spirituality, reality (AnaLouise Keating, Ed.). Duke University Press.
Fanon, F. (2008). Black Skin, White Masks. Pluto Press.
Fromm, E. (1984). The Fear of Freedom. London: ARK paperbacks
Laing, R. (1965). The divided self. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Malchiodi, C. (2022) Handbook of Expressive Arts Therapy. Guilford Press.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
The course will contribute to the development of students as reflexive, critical, ethically aware and culturally mindful practitioners. |
| Keywords | Counselling,mental health,suffering,culture,interdisciplinary,critical approaches |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Karen Serra Undurraga
Tel:
Email: jkaren.serrau@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Krystal Hanley
Tel: (0131 6)51 3969
Email: Krystal.Hanley@ed.ac.uk |
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