After completing each session, participants will be able to:

Session 1 · Mon Jan 11 · Foundation: How AI Output Is Made and Where It Stands (4 hours)

1. Explain how generative and agentic AI produce output, and why that output always carries a standpoint that improving capability does not remove.
2. Apply the accountable-standpoint test (what is this based on, and what is it accountable to?) to AI-generated clinical content.
3. Place their own clinical tasks on the task-zone map, and name the three frames of Recognition: the tool's, the client's, and their own.

Session 2 · Tue Jan 12 · Recognition: The Echo and the Conserved Norm (4 hours)

1. Describe the echo at three levels: output that agrees with the clinician, output that yields when challenged, and output that converges across users.
2. Explain how AI output can conserve the standard or institutionally sanctioned option, drawing on the righting reflex from motivational interviewing.
3. Identify the assumptions in an AI output written for a constructed scenario, and describe how each shapes the response.

Session 3 · Mon Jan 25 · Practicum 1: Recognition at Work (2 hours)

1. Identify the standpoint in a new AI output without being told where to look.
2. Apply Recognition review questions to an AI output encountered in their work, described without client identifiers.
3. Name one pattern in their own reading of AI output.

Session 4 · Mon Feb 8 · Recognition: The Cultural Center and the Surviving Default (4 hours)

1. Apply principles of cultural humility to identify the cultural center an AI output assumes, including when no culture is named.
2. Distinguish an AI tool's stated value from its enacted default, including defaults that return after correction.
3. Compare constructed cases in which the standard answer fits the client with cases in which it does not.

Session 5 · Tue Feb 9 · Judgment: Does This Fit This Client? (4 hours)

1. Evaluate whether the frame of an AI output serves a particular client in constructed cases across populations outside the AI's default, including: BIPOC clients and clients whose culture differs from the AI's default; immigrant and refugee clients; multilingual clients and clients with limited English; LGBTQIA+ clients; justice-involved, low-income, and rural clients; people who use substances, in or out of recovery; neurodivergent clients; and youth and families.
2. Identify what an output assumed was available to the client, and when judgment requires asking the client.
3. Choose and justify a clinical response to an AI output (for example: use, revise, set aside, or ask), including when agreement or an institutional default makes it easy to accept.

Session 6 · Mon Feb 22 · Practicum 2: Judgment on Real Work (2 hours)

1. Apply Judgment questions to an AI output from their work, described without client identifiers.
2. Re-place their own clinical tasks on the task-zone map and explain what moved since Session 1.
3. Describe one judgment call they would now make differently.

Session 7 · Mon Mar 8 · Practice: Building Review Into the Workflow (4 hours)

1. Apply structured review lenses to read an output from standpoints not already in the room.
2. Apply a pre-signing review to AI-assisted documentation: accuracy, support in the source, and ownership.
3. Recognize when an AI output has moved away from its source or added content the source doesn't support, and explain when a review requires a real person.

Session 8 · Tue Mar 9 · The Client: Consent, the Record, and Clients' Own AI Use (4 hours)

1. Explain the clinician's obligations when AI shapes documentation or treatment decisions about a client who is not present.
2. Describe informed consent requirements for AI use in mental health services, using Illinois law as a worked example, and identify the requirements that apply where they practice.
3. Revise a constructed client record for language, dignity, strengths, and cultural context, and outline what to disclose to clients about AI use.
4. Respond to a client's own use of AI between sessions from a harm-reduction stance, assessing what it provides and what it risks, including crisis and privacy, without endorsing or discouraging it.

Sessions 9 and 10 · Mon Apr 5 and Mon May 3 · Consultation Call 1 and Consultation Call 2 (1 hour each)

1. Apply the course's review methods to a use, problem, or question from current practice, described without client identifiers.
2. Identify one review practice to strengthen, based on peer discussion.
3. Evaluate a change in their workplace's AI use (a new tool, policy, or expectation) using the course's frames.

The course is open to mental health and substance use clinicians: professional counselors, addiction counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, clinical supervisors, and pre-licensed clinicians working under supervision. The content is taught at a graduate level. No experience with AI is needed, and no one is required to use it.

Register with the links on this page, paying in full or with the payment plan (available through November 10, 2026). Paid members get registration 48 hours before general registration. Each cohort is capped at 25.

Every session is live on Zoom. The room opens 15 minutes early for sign-in and tech checks, and instruction starts on time. You register for each session with the email you enrolled with, and attendance is confirmed from Zoom's participant report. To be credited for a session you need to be present for all of it.

One certificate of completion for 30 hours is emailed within 14 days after you have attended all ten sessions and submitted the course evaluation. If you miss a session, you can join that session live with a later cohort, free, within a year, for up to two sessions; your certificate is issued once all 30 hours are complete. Session recordings are for review only and don't count toward CE.

Once you have paid, you may cancel for a full refund up to 14 days before the first session. Within 14 days of the first session, your payment can be transferred to a later cohort within 12 months at the price you paid, or your seat can be given to a colleague, but is not refunded. No refunds are given after the course begins. If The Underrated Superhero cancels or reschedules a cohort and you cannot attend the new dates, you receive a full refund. If the continuing education credit offered for this course differs from what this page describes, you may withdraw for a full refund before the first session. Payment plans follow the same terms. If a plan payment doesn’t go through, you’ll get an email with a link to update your card. If it’s still unpaid after 14 days, your seat is paused until it’s settled. Certificates are issued once the course is paid in full.

Sessions are held on Zoom with live captions available, and materials are provided in accessible digital formats. To request an accommodation, email connect@theunderratedsuperhero.com at least 14 days before the first session, and we will work with you to meet it.

We collect only what is needed to register you, verify your attendance, and issue your certificate: your name, email, professional credentials, attendance records, and evaluation responses. This information is kept in access-controlled systems and is not sold or shared. It is disclosed only when needed to verify your continuing education credit with an approving body, or when the law requires it. Records are kept for five years after your cohort ends.

Sessions are recorded for your cohort's review only. Recordings are available to that cohort for six months and are not shared outside it. Evaluation responses are reported only in summary. To see or correct your information, email connect@theunderratedsuperhero.com.

If you have a concern about the course, its content, the presenter, or how your registration was handled, email connect@theunderratedsuperhero.com. You will receive an acknowledgment within 5 business days and a written response within 15 business days. If the concern is not resolved, you may request a review, and any remedy offered, including a refund where warranted, will be confirmed in writing. Complaints are kept confidential and never change how a participant is treated.