POST GRADUATE DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

DEPARTMENTS

FAMILY COUNSELLING

Family Therapy or Family Counselling is a form of group therapy that addresses the behaviours of all family members and the way they affect not only individual family members but also relationships among family members and the family as a whole. The therapy sessions are usually divided between time spent on individual therapy, time spent on couple therapy, and family therapy, as considered appropriate.

The range of behavioural and psychological problems addressed by family counselling include marital and couple conflict, parent-child conflict, alcohol or drug abuse, grief, distress, eating disorders, children’s behaviour problems, and issues with caring for the elderly, such as coping with a parent’s or grandparent’s existing medical condition like Alzheimer’s or dementia. The Family counsellor also works with other mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, or trauma experienced by a family member and the impact these issues have on the family.

Family counselling   is the department add on course provided to the first year MSc Psychology and second year MSc clinical Psychology students by the department of psychology in association with Institute of Counselling and Transactional Analysis (ICTA), Kochi. Family counseling is a program of providing information and professional guidance to members of a family concerning specific health matters, such as the care of a severely retarded child or the risk of transmitting a known genetic defect. The main objectives of the course are Describe the process of family counseling in terms of laying down its aims and objectives, process of assessment and the intervention process in family counseling; Describe the indications and contraindications for applying family counseling; and Critically analyses or evaluate the entire family counseling process. It is a 30 hour programme distributed as 3 hours/ week (last three hours of every Thursday). Fr. Wilson Mulakal from the ICTA, Kochi was faculty in charge for the programme. And the same agency provided the certificate for the 21 students after conducting the assignments at the end of the class. The class was started on 9 January 2020. And completed 30 hours on 5 March 2020.

The students expressed that they are enriched and enlightened by this course. They gave a satisfactory report about course and teacher.