Theory and Practice of Addiction Counseling
A newly revised and updated 15 hour overview course that reviews the fundamental problems of addiction in society today and identifies the various theories of addiction and treatment options available today. This course includes a basic history of the various drugs of abuse.  An excellent course for both beginning counselors or any helping professional seeking to work with the chemically dependent population.

Goals/Objectives

This course provides the participant with an in-depth overview of the chemical dependency profession, providing the trainee with insights in the problems, the population we serve, and the variety of treatment options that the counselor might be involved with. This overview can help the trainee to critically look at the educational needs they will have based on the type of treatment service they might be involved with, as well as the population they might serve.

By participating in this Distance Learning Course, the trainee will:

  1. explore the basic issues of addiction and the need for treatment;
  2. review the predominant substances of abuse and their history;
  3. examine the relationship of addiction to crime, health, and other social problems;
  4. learn about the current theories related to the causes of addiction and the various modalities for treatment;
  5. identify the major needs and approaches to effective screening and assessment;
  6. learn about the importance of patient-treatment matching in increasing positive treatment outcome;
  7. review the issues and needs of various special populations that are impacted by chemical dependency;
  8. increase their awareness about substance abuse-related infectious diseases and the implications for care;
  9. explore the latest approaches in pharmacotherapy;
  10. review theories and approaches to effective relapse prevention;
  11. identify the major issues related to client confidentiality and ethical practice.

Your Course Instructor:
Kevin R. Scheel
MS, MAC, LMFT
Co-Founder, DLCAS

Kevin R. Scheel is a Masters prepared chemical dependency counselor with more than twenty-three years of experience in the human service field. He has served as the director of programs in the public sector as well as in private care facilities, both in the profit and not-for-profit arenas. He has been involved in the delivery of education services to the field since 1986 as an instructor at McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas, and as a private training consultant with Hazelden. Mr. Scheel is the author of "Alcohol: Chemistry & Culture," as well as a series of education videotapes on the various drugs of abuse, published and marketed by WRS Group, Inc. He has also created a preparation and review manual that is currently in use by a variety of colleges and universities in Texas, designed to aid students preparing for their Texas chemical dependency credential.

While in Texas Kevin served as the Texas Coordinator for the federally funded Project for Addiction Counselor Training (PACT) program. For this project Mr. Scheel designed a 270 hour curriculum for beginning counselors, delivering over 45,000 hours of classroom training to 415 minority students. As a result of his efforts, 268 of these students have gone on to obtain their credentials to practice chemical dependency counseling in Texas.

Kevin also served in the position as Coordinator for the Texas Addiction Training Center (currently the Texas Addition Technology Transfer Center), a federally funded project from the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment in Washington, D.C. The goal of this project has been to increase the level of addiction education to the various disciplines offering counseling services to drug and alcohol affected clients. In Texas this project worked with 8 major colleges and universities.

In addition to his role as a co-founder of DLCAS, Kevin is currently serving as the Director of Educational Services.