Start Dates & Ontario Colleges Program Codes:
- Fall, Winter + Spring starts (September, January, and May): 0199
CIP Code: 51.1599
Are you passionate and caring?
Are you looking for practical training that will help you have a positive impact on the lives of those with mental health and addiction challenges?
The Addiction and Mental Health Post Graduate Certificate prepares students to support people, families, and communities with empathy, respect, and cultural humility. Grounded in trauma-informed and anti-oppressive practices, the program emphasizes seeing people beyond labels and diagnoses, honouring lived experience, and supporting self-determination. Students learn to work collaboratively, recognizing the social, cultural, and systemic factors that shape mental health and substance use.
Graduates are equipped to deliver ethical, culturally safe, and responsive care across a range of community and health settings. The program builds skills in assessment, crisis response, advocacy, and collaborative wellness planning, while also emphasizing reflective practice and practitioner well-being. Graduates leave prepared to contribute to addiction and mental health services and to support more compassionate, inclusive systems of care.
Top Highlights
- Benefit from online delivery and flexible courses that enable you to study at a time and place convenient for you
- Learn to recognize and effectively support a diverse set of client needs and experiences through accessible and responsive programs and services
- Practice appropriate treatment, prevention and harm reduction strategies
- Develop strategies for client advocacy and examine policy, legislation, and systems that impact service delivery in the field
Program Learning Outcomes
The graduate has reliably demonstrated the ability to:
- Provide holistic and culturally relevant assessments in collaboration with individuals experiencing addiction and mental health challenges, guided by trauma-informed and anti-oppressive practices.
- Co-create and collaboratively monitor wellness plans that meet the unique needs of the individual to determine if additional goals, interventions, and supports are required.
- Provide services and resources to individuals, families/natural supports, and communities in accordance with various frameworks and informed by multiple research perspectives.
- Make ethical decisions aligned with professional standards and adhere to workplace policies and legislation within scope of practice.
- Educate and advocate alongside individuals, families/natural supports, and communities to reduce stigma, navigate referral processes, and challenge barriers to holistic care.
- Build collaborative relationships with individuals, families/natural supports, community members, and networks to enhance addiction and mental health services.
- Work safely and in accordance with trauma-informed critical incident and crisis management practices to increase the safety of self and others.
- Develop individualized self-care and critical self-reflection strategies to maintain health, growth, and resilience as an addiction and/or mental health practitioner.
- Comply with confidentiality requirements and documentation standards to respect individual rights and self-determination.
There is a high demand for mental health and addictions professionals. Graduates may find employment opportunities in the addictions and mental health field as community support workers, front-line shelter workers, team leaders, housing workers, case managers, counsellors, crisis workers, addictions counsellors and mental health workers. For more details on related occupations, job market information and career opportunities, see the Government of Canada website: www.jobbank.gc.ca/home.
