Course Catalogue 2025-2026

This course supports students to develop collaborative team-based skills to practice effective spiritual care in healthcare and other settings. It enables students to build interdisciplinary knowledge, skills and relationships to work in the complex dynamics of multi-service healthcare contexts. The course is strongly recommended for students seeking to serve in health care contexts. Learning modules are taken from the Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare & Education (CACHE) program of Interprofessional Education (ipe.utoronto.ca/u-t-ipe-curriculum) alongside students in medicine, nursing, social work, occupational therapy, etc. Each required module is offered remotely (with some in-person options) ranging from 1.5 to 3 hours each. Elective modules provide many options for students to choose from that vary in length and weight. Required and elective modules enable excellent opportunities for building competency in client-focussed interprofessional collaborative care.

This course supports students to develop collaborative team-based skills to practice effective spiritual care in healthcare and other settings. It enables students to build interdisciplinary knowledge, skills and relationships to work in the complex dynamics of multi-service healthcare contexts. The course is strongly recommended for students seeking to serve in health care contexts. Learning modules are taken from the Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare & Education (CACHE) program of Interprofessional Education (ipe.utoronto.ca/u-t-ipe-curriculum) alongside students in medicine, nursing, social work, occupational therapy, etc. Each required module is offered remotely (with some in-person options) ranging from 1.5 to 3 hours each. Elective modules provide many options for students to choose from that vary in length and weight. Required and elective modules enable excellent opportunities for building competency in client-focussed interprofessional collaborative care.

This course examines the social determinants of addiction and considers the past and current influences on addiction counselling and approaches to treatment. In doing so it expands the biopsychosocial perspective of the field of psychology and addiction to include spirituality and cultural sensitivity as important determinants in assessment and treatment choices. The course will introduce students to specific assessment, interviewing and treatment modalities that are used in addiction counselling. Students will gain an understanding of the experience of addiction and the importance of the motivation to change. Students will gain an overview of relapse prevention as well as crisis intervention and the contexts of therapy for addiction treatment. Students will practice motivational interviewing and gain a basic understanding of how Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT) is used in treatment programs in the greater Toronto area. Students will also wrestle with spiritual and theological understandings of addiction. This course has been designed for training professionals who will practice in institutional contexts (including addiction treatment centres, hospitals, hospices, schools, and prisons) and in congregational or social ministry contexts.

The Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, developed by Richard Schwartz, is a psychotherapeutic modality that has proven useful not only for trauma work, but for a wide variety of mental health issues. While IFS is relatively new, it builds on a model of the psyche/soul with deep roots in the history of psychotherapy. The idea that the psyche is composed of an internal family of autonomous parts, many of them unconscious, goes back to C.G. Jung and the French schools of hypnosis that came before him. It also has resonances Freudian object relations. But Shwartz’s method of identifying and working with these internal parts sets his modality apart as innovative, elegant, and transformative. This course offers a comprehensive overview of Schwartz’s basic theoretical orientation with a heavy emphasis on clinical practice through case studies, personal exploration, and role playing. We will pay particular attention to the spiritual dimensions of IFS and their potential use in spiritual care and spiritually integrated therapy.

This course examines diverse models for assessing the acute and chronic distress that stems from the psychological, emotional, social, and/or spiritual dimensions of life. In this program, students are equipped to assess various forms of distress and to develop plans for providing therapy that are based on evidenced-based research and best practices. Students will explore theories in the field of assessment (spiritual assessment, psychological assessment, DSM-V, MMSE, and so forth) and they will engage in experiential learning opportunities (case studies, role plays, and so forth) that develop their assessment and care planning skills. This course has been designed for professionals who practice in institutional contexts (hospital, hospice, schools, prison, and so forth) and in congregational or social ministry contexts.

This is a course in spiritual theology, it explores theologies and practices of Christian spirituality, i.e., the study of the experience of God; what the Reformed Protestant tradition has called ‘piety.’ The course will look at spiritual theologians in the history of Reformed Protestantism, the themes they wrote about, and the implications for spiritual practices today. Throughout, the course we will examine ‘Reformed’ spirituality in relation to catholic, ecumenical, contemporary and Indigenous spiritualities. The first half of the course focuses on the spiritual theology of the sixteenth century Reformer John Calvin, set against the Catholic spirituality which preceded it, and the theology and practices of the means of grace (the Word, the sacraments, and prayer) which emerged from it in the Reformed tradition, including a discussion of the significance of these practices for people of faith today. The second half of the course highlights key moments, figures, and themes in the history of Reformed spirituality, and sets these in conversation with contemporary spiritualities.

The cross-disciplinary (pastoral and theological) course will help students reflect deeply on pastoral practice through interdisciplinary engagement with emerging issues that challenge the practice of pastoral ministry in today’s world. Issues addressed would include the pervasive impact of climate change on physical and mental health, changing family structures, sexuality, and gender, economic privation, racism, and other systemic injustices that undermine the sense of hope in a better future posing immense challenges for the effective practice of pastoral ministry.

This course provides participants with an introduction to spiritually integrated cognitive-behavioural therapy. At the conclusion of this course, through lectures, discussions, in-vivo exercises, and graded submissions, students will have learned how to assess and treat various mental health pathologies by eliciting and changing clientsˇ automatic thoughts and negative schemas using evidence-based CBT interventions such as case conceptualizations, structuring and psychoeducation, thought records, core belief records, Socratic questioning, behavioural experiments, depression and anxiety inventories, activity scheduling, fear ladders, and graded exposures. Unlike a purely secular CBT approach that leaves no room for clientsˇ spiritual beliefs, this course will emphasize how CBT can be enhanced when understood through the lens of contemporary spiritual care best practices. Participants in this course will first become acquainted with how to understand spirituality and religion through a CBT lens, then learn and practice how to enhance the effectiveness of CBT by integrating a working knowledge of spiritual care issues with established CBT interventions to treat anxiety, depression, grief and loss, panic disorder, social phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Special attention will also be paid to employing established CBT interventions to treat the significant rise and proliferation of viral pandemic-related anxiety and depression.

This course will examine professional ethics in the helping professions (esp. spiritual care, psycho-spiritual therapy and social service) in order to further equip students for competence in their chosen field. We will consider the philosophical/theological moorings for professional ethics and the need for congruence in belief, thought, word and deed. Students will examine their own belief systems in relation to ethical practice and construct means by which to embed ethical practice within theses systems. They will deepen their understanding of the intrinsic link between ethical practice and self awareness and assess areas of growth in this regard. Professional codes of ethics (Professional Practice Standards CRPO, CASC Code of Ethics, etc.) will be assessed as the minimum standard for the profession. These codes as well as best practices in the field will be practiced in class. Attention to ethical practice in contexts of diversity is central to course.

This course provides spiritual caregivers with an overview of essential models of psychotherapy using Peter VanKatwyk's (2003) Therapeutic Strategies Map as an orienting framework. Insights from psychotherapeutic theory, sensitively and responsibly applied, enhance the practice of spiritual care. The overview provides a foundation for students who wish to study a particular model in depth and who wish to integrate these concepts into their practice through a supervised learning process. Knowledge of psychotherapeutic theories will also assist spiritual and pastoral providers in making necessary referrals when client needs are outside their scope of practice.

This course provides spiritual caregivers with an overview of essential models of psychotherapy using Peter VanKatwyk's (2003) Therapeutic Strategies Map as an orienting framework. Insights from psychotherapeutic theory, sensitively and responsibly applied, enhance the practice of spiritual care. The overview provides a foundation for students who wish to study a particular model in depth and who wish to integrate these concepts into their practice through a supervised learning process. Knowledge of psychotherapeutic theories will also assist spiritual and pastoral providers in making necessary referrals when client needs are outside their scope of practice.

This course will introduce central theoretical concepts in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and their importance in effective clinical work. An underlying premise of the course is that therapeutic action occurs within the relationship between therapist and patient, two individuals who struggle together to reclaim and deepen their shared humanity. While theory is essential to the task of providing responsible clinical care, it is understood that it always follows deeply attentive, empathic observation, not only of the patient, but of the psychodynamic processes that occur between the therapist and patient. Theory helps to ‘hold’ and ‘contain’ the therapist as she enters the unique, often strange and at times disturbing inner world of the person who seeks her help. Theory must always be held lightly while it is actively operative in the mind of the therapist as he navigates his way through the world that emerges within the analytic setting. A solid grounding in psychodynamic theory helps the therapist maintain a calm receptivity to the patient in the midst of unknowing, which most often characterizes the immediacy of clinical work. It also helps the therapist cultivate and sustain a reflective use of herself that establishes a safe and supportive professional framework that holds and protects both parties in the clinical dyad.