Collection: Motivational Interviewing in Theory and Practice

The burgeoning popularity and demonstrated effectiveness of motivational interviewing (MI) as a therapeutic approach are ample reasons to explore its therapeutic essence and ever-widening set of applications to real-life counselling issues. In this collection you will find the course, Motivational Interviewing: The Basics, introducing you to the chief principles, techniques, and skills of MI. Two additional courses, Treating Anxiety with Motivational Interviewing and Treating Depression with Motivational Interviewing, show how practitioners can use MI to work with clients suffering from these most common mental health conditions. Motivational interviewing was first employed in the field of addiction to enhance the motivation of those with substance use disorders to make healthy change, and the course, Using Motivational Interviewing with Alcohol Dependence and Depression, shows how this happens with Sam, an adult male experiencing symptoms associated with alcohol dependence co-morbid with depression. The course, Introduction to Motivational Interviewing: Resolving Ambivalence and Changing Behaviour, cuts to the heart of what MI is about: the understanding that sometimes people wish to make change – or a part of them does – but a part of them is in conflict with the idea. This course goes over some of the chief tools that therapists can use to help move clients from ambivalence about change to resolution to change. For a novel look at how MI is used to treat issues of sexual and cultural identity, go to: A Gay Affirmative and Multicultural Approach to Motivational Interviewing. Finally, if you have been wondering about ways to treat the substance-related disorders identified in the DSM-5, the course Understanding Addiction outlines the criteria for diagnosis and suggests three therapeutic interventions, the first of which is motivational interviewing.