Peer Counselling Training
With Ms. Diksha Tyagi, Johns Hopkins University Almuna
Cohort 5 dates: 10th February 2024 to 6th April 2024
To expand on Citta's mission to make mental health more accessible, we strongly believe it is important for us to further the cause by training psychology students in communication, listening skills, assertiveness, ethics of peer counselling, issues of confidentiality and breach of it, boundaries regarding helping others, and basic counselling skills.
What are the objectives of Citta's Peer Counselling ?
1. Helping students of psychology gain practical skills to become first respondents to mental health
2. They will be able to use counselling skills such as attending, listening, exploring.
3. They should be able to articulate the integrated three-stage module of counselling
4. They ultimately should be able to demonstrate an understanding of the interactional sequences of helping, including their own intentions with the people they are interacting with.
What does this course not do ?
1. Make you a qualified counselling or clinical psychologist
2. Make you a mental health professional
3. Allow you to charge for your service
4. Give you any sort of formal recognition from any governing bodies of mental health
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Peer counsellors do not offer diagnoses, but they can lend an ear, offer feedback, and refer students to mental health professionals if need be.
Who can apply to this course?
Any student pursuing or planning to pursue a bachelor's or masters in psychology can apply for Citta's Peer Counselling Course.
Course details
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2-month long course with live interactions on the weekends
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A cohort of 20-25 students to ensure high engagement
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The course is designed keeping in mind the practical uses of counselling
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Highly interactive - includes classroom discussions, role-plays & case studies
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A set of individual module summaries to take away
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Participants can get a real-life experience of the counselling world
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Certificate of completion by Citta
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An experimental AI component to provide instant feedback in some aspects of counselling
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An internship with Citta on the successful completion of the course
This 2-month course is priced at 6999/- and at ₹6499/- for groups of 3 or more.
The proceeds will be used to provide free therapy services to individuals in need.
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Modules
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Module 1: EXPLORING THE SELF
Being a successful helper requires three basic things - helping skills, self-awareness, and a facilitative attitude. This module will help you understand yourself more and how to separate yourself from the client.
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Module 2: THE EXPLORATION STAGE
Establishing rapport and developing a therapeutic relationship. Learn the basic skills of Attending, Listening and Observing. -
Module 3: THE INSIGHT STAGE
Facilitating deeper understanding of self and bringing awareness by various techniques such as Challenging, Immediacy, Open questions, and probes -
Module 4: THE ACTION STAGE
Help clients explore possible new behaviours, decision making and development of actions. -
Module 5: INTEGRATION
Learn how to use the previously learnt skills together in a therapeutic set up. Skills to help you navigate though difficult clients. -
Module 6: ETHICS AND ONBOARDING
Discussing various professional limitations, preparing to come on board with Citta and talk about Supervision
What happens after the course?
The participant of the course can enlist themselves as a peer counsellor with Citta and can provide support to the students availing Citta's peer counselling services.
Instructor and developer of the course
Diksha Tyagi - an MS Degree holder in School Counselling from the esteemed Johns Hopkins University, a Psychology Graduate from Sophia College. She has also worked at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, New Delhi.
Assisted by
Anshula Suresh
Head of Outreach
Sneh Deora
Strategy
Syed Muztaba Ali
Head of Strategy
Devshri Trailokya
Strategy
Testimonials
Kishan Gusani
Through Citta's Peer Counselling Course I was able to learn the necessary skills in a way that was engaging, fun, and open all throughout the duration of the sessions. The application of the skills and their real time usage in my future practice were well laid out. We were able to adequately practise the skills in real time and get familiarized with the ins and outs unlike any other skill-based course that I have attended.
Vaishali Jaikrishnan
I thoroughly enjoyed the course material and the examples given to explain and discuss each skill we learnt. The practicum of the course is what makes it very unique to all other psychology courses available to this age group. Role play and practice of these skills were given adequate importance and time during sessions.
Meera Jhalani
The course is excellent. For psychology students especially, it helps a lot with gaining confidence with regard to your abilities. The best thing, however, about the course was it was very participative. I believe the learning was much better because it was so. Personally, I have not seen a distance learning course being so collaborative.