Program Overview

If you'd like to build a career that makes a meaningful difference, La Trobe's accredited Master of Rehabilitation Counselling and Mental Health will give you the foundations for a rewarding career that supports others through huge life changes.

Develop your professional knowledge, skills and expertise with this unique combination of rehabilitation counselling and mental health subjects.

You'll get hands-on experience and will graduate prepared to work in rehabilitation counselling, as well as broader counselling settings such as mental health and Employee Assistance Program (EAP) counselling.

Explore a diverse range of workplaces and cultures. You'll learn how to support individuals and communities through disability, disadvantage and injury – helping them to reach their full potential and reintegrate into work and the community.

You'll learn:

• Professional counselling practice: Acquire skills that are essential for effective counselling practice through examining professional, ethical and legal issues that affect counselling practice in Australia.
• Mental health counselling: Understand the different types of mental health conditions and how they're diagnosed. Learn how to effectively treat clinical and sub-clinical mental health conditions.
• Rehabilitation counselling: Understand the interpersonal helping process, especially as it applies to rehabilitation and behaviour change. Explore different counselling models and techniques (e.g. Motivational Interviewing).
• Employee Assistance Program counselling: Develop specialised skills to work effectively and ethically as a counsellor in workplace settings.

Specialisation: Advanced Practice

The hallmark of this specialisation is discovery: preparing you to meet an organisational need with innovative ideas where there may be no existing solutions. Previous graduates addressed a specific issue or challenge to enhance patient/consumer outcomes.

In this specialisation, you'll learn how to apply evidence-based practices, deliver high-quality care, and develop leadership capabilities to promote health and wellbeing for individuals, groups and communities. Get the opportunity to specialise in areas that may include extended clinical assessment and evaluation, advanced clinical interventions, case management, therapeutic communication, professional digital literacy, leadership and management, and health promotion and advocacy.