Psychological Counseling

This Psychological Counselling introductory course provides a basic foundation of key skills for effective counseling. All parts of this training are free, including registration, learning, testing, and a certificate of completion. This course is intended for primary-care physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals in training and in practice. 

This Psychological Counseling course is based on the Counselling Relationship (CR) manual, it was developed in partnership with the Annenberg Physician Training Program in Addictive Disease and the PREMIUM program funded by the Wellcome Trust, in association with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Sangath organization, and the Government of Goa’s Directorate of Health Services. The course was developed by Arpita Anand, Sona Dimidjian and Richard Velleman with additional contributions from Angela Leocata, Sydney Church, Luanna Fernandes, Ajay Kumar, Medha Upadhye and Dielle Dsouza.

For a publication on this course’s efficacy, see “Building Public Health Capacity through Online Global Learning,” (2018), Open Praxis, https://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/746/427; to see more research related to NextGenU.org’s educational model, check out NextGenU.org’s publication page.

There are 17 modules which provide:

  • An introduction to counseling and an effective counseling relationship
  • The skills required to build a good counseling relationship, to prepare for a counseling session, and guidelines for sessions and home visits
  • An overview of how to assess and manage suicide risk and how to involve family and friends

At the end of each lesson, there is a practice quiz. At the end of the course, after you’ve completed each lesson, quiz, and activity, you’ll have access to a final exam, and a chance to assess the training. Once you’ve passed that last test, you will be able to download a certificate of completion from NextGenU.org and our course’s co-sponsoring organizations (listed above). We keep all of your personal information confidential, never sell any of your information, and only use anonymized data for research purposes, and we are also happy to report your testing information and share your work with anyone (your school, employer, etc.) at your request. We hope that you will find this a rewarding learning experience, and we count on your feedback to help us improve this training for future students.

To obtain credit 

  • Complete all requirements listed above for the certificate. 
  • Your learning institution or workplace should approve the partner-university-sponsored NextGenU.org course for educational credit, as they would for their learner taking a course anywhere.  
    • NextGenU.org is happy to provide your institution with:
      • a link to and description of the course training, so they can see all its components, including the cosponsoring universities and other professional organization cosponsors 
      • your grade on the final exam
      • your work products (e.g. peer and mentored activities), and any other required or optional shared materials that you produce and authorize to share with them  
      • your evaluations – course, and self-assessments.
      • a copy of your certificate of completion, with the co-sponsoring universities and other organizations listed

To obtain a degree, NextGenU.org co-sponsors degree programs with institutional partners. To obtain a degree co-sponsored with NextGenU.org, registrants must be enrolled in a degree program as a student of a NextGenU.org institutional partner. If you think that your institution might be interested in offering a degree with NextGenU.org contact us.

We hope that you will find this a rewarding learning experience, and we count on your assessment and feedback to help us improve this training for future students.

Next Steps

  • Complete the registration form.
  • Begin the course with Module 1: Introduction To Counselling. In each lesson, read the description, complete all required readings and any required activity, and take the corresponding quizzes.