Effective Psychoeducation for Individuals with Serious Mental Illness

Course overview

Psychoeducation is an integral part of a comprehensive intervention for people diagnosed with behavioral health disorders. Generally, psychoeducation provides information about the diagnosis, but it often also includes strategies for living with the diagnosis. There is a wide variety of information that can be helpful to share with people who have been diagnosed with a behavioral health disorder. There is also a range of formats and features that can be utilized in a psychoeducation intervention, which allows providers to "meet clients where they are" and tailor the intervention to clients with specific needs. In the fast pace of modern healthcare, it can be an easy part of the intervention to neglect, as there can be pressure to move expediently to other parts of treatment. The pressure can come from the payer, your employer, the client, or an internal pressure to provide potential relief as soon as possible. These pressures can come from legitimate needs, but it is often up to us as providers to organize treatment activities, determine priorities in treatment, and empower clients to speak up about their needs and wants. Psychoeducation can have value for any diagnosis, but for the purposes of this course, we will focus on strategies for providing psychoeducation to adults with serious mental illness (SMI). Serious mental illness refers to any mental health condition that significantly and persistently interferes with functioning. For the purposes of this course, we will focus on the most common DSM-5 diagnoses that fall in the category of serious mental illness. This includes schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, and mood disorders such as bipolar disorders and severe major depressive disorders, both of which can occur with features of psychosis. As with any intervention, challenges can arise when trying to offer the intervention. We will discuss strategies for increasing effectiveness of your intervention and for managing challenges that come up when facilitating the intervention. The goal of this course is to provide addictions, behavioral health counseling, marriage and family therapy, nursing, psychology, and social work professionals working in the health and human services setting with education around providing effective psychoeducational interventions.