Course Overview: Selective mutism, an anxiety and communication disorder, renders children unable to verbally participate in school and community settings. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Adapted for Selective Mutism is a play-based, empirically supported treatment to improve verbalizing and participating. Training includes 2 days of didactics and 1 year of monthly case consultation to achieve certification.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Adapted for Selective Mutism (PCIT-SM) is a research-tested behavioral therapy that improves verbal and non-verbal participation and reduces parental over-accommodation. Research in randomized trials shows that the outcomes are impressive and the gains persist and generalize to real-world settings  Dr. Kurtz is the developer of the PCIT-SM protocol and is certified by PCIT International as a PCIT Global Trainer. He provides training virtually, and both at the NYC flagship offices of Kurtz Psychology Consulting PC as well as onsite at agencies to suit their scheduling needs. Training is remote with 16 hours of live, participatory synchronous learning, accompanied by some asynchronous learning, and includes the required monthly case consultation calls to help with your implementation with fidelity and to earn PCIT-SM certification.

The treatment has many interesting and unique characteristics including the fact that the parent and child are coached live – in real time – to shape new interaction patterns.  The motto of Kurtz Psychology Consulting PC is changing interactions one at a time and no treatment captures this process better than PCIT and PCIT-SM. In the office, we use a one-way mirror to coach parents with a wireless earpiece – sometimes called a “bug-in-the-ear.” (The one-way mirror is preferred but not required in all PCIT settings.) On the internet, we help families with live coaching via their own tablets, laptops, or phones.

Training towards certification involves completing the initial didactic course as well as case consultation for one year, during which time therapists treat at least two cases to graduation.

ASHA Course Description: Learn to implement Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Adapted for Selective Mutism (PCIT-SM), an evidence-based treatment that increases verbal and non-verbal participation while reducing family accommodation. Training includes interactive instruction plus guided case consultation to support fidelity and certification.

Training: Two full days, or four half-days, of didactics followed by one-year of ongoing case consultation to achieve proficiency and then be eligible for certification as a PCIT-SM Therapist. Training cohorts are limited to six individuals for a more personal and intensive experience. Please note that this training is ONLY for the Selective Mutism adaptation and does NOT prepare individuals to do Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) for disruptive behavior disorders; that is a separate and distinct training process. Click here for more information on that training. There are homework assignments assigned after each day of training, as well as for each of the consultation calls.

Fees: The course fee is $3,000 and payment plans are available to spread out the cost of the training with $2,000 paid at the time of registration and 5 monthly payments of $200 after that. There is an additional fee of $45 per person for those seeking CEs for through APA, NASW, PCIT International or ASHA. Case review is accomplished most easily by our review of sessions either live or recorded by you and uploaded to our HIPAA-compliant secure cloud website.  There are many options for infrastructure and we will work with you to optimize your setup. You are essentially creating a portfolio of your work doing PCIT-SM.

Case Consultation Calls: The 12 consultation calls for the December 2025 cohort start at 10:30 am the 3rd Tuesday of each month starting 1/20/26 until 12/15/26. The calls are a minimum of 60 minutes each, but we block 90 minutes from 10:30 am – 12:00 pm Eastern as case flow may require. The 12 consultation calls for the January 2026 cohort will be the 2nd Tuesday of each month starting 10:30am, beginning March 10, 2026, ending February 9, 2027.

Instructors: The course instructors are Kate Gibson, PsyD, ABPP and Carmen Lynas, PhD.  Steven Kurtz, PhD, ABPP and Annie DiVello, MS, CCC-SLP, MEd.

Intended Audience Participants: This course is intended for mental health therapists, SLPs, and allied health professionals licensed for independent practice, or accruing hours towards licensure in some cases. If you are not already certified in the traditional PCIT protocol for disruptive behavior by PCIT International, you will also need to complete the free 10-hrs online course from the UC Davis website and send us the PDF of your completion certificate any time before our course begins. You don’t need to complete this short course before registering. Participants must provide the course certificate documenting completion within one year of the start of their PCIT-SM initial training date. We thank the UC Davis PCIT & PC-CARE Training Center for their generous permission to include their free online training course. All trainees must also complete the free online Selective Mutism University course prior to the first date of training. Participants need to have a relatively good case flow of patients with SM in order to apply the skills learned and benefit from the monthly case consultation calls and have material to add to their portfolios which are reviewed by the instructors for certification.

Instructional Levels: Intermediate and Advanced.

PCIT International, Inc. is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. PCIT International, Inc. maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

PCIT, NASW and Psychologist CEUs: 16 Psychologist and PCIT CEs are approved from PCIT International. This program is pending approval by the National Association of Social Workers.

ASHA CEUs: ASHA – the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association – approved this cooperative offering between Kurtz Psychology Consulting PC and Our Brave Voices, LLC. This course has been registered for 2.6 CEUs (26 hours).

In order to earn a certificate of completion, learners must complete the didactic training and complete and submit a learner assessment within 30 days of the didactic training. Learners who want their CEUs to be reported to the ASHA registry must pay an additional $45 CEU fee. Partial credit cannot be offered per the terms of this ASHA cooperative offering. There is no commercial support for this CE program. If you’re in need of any additional special assistance or accommodations including those required for a disability, please contact skurtz@kurtzpsychology.com

If you have any additional questions, please contact Steven Kurtz, PhD at sm@kurtzpsychology.com. Refunds in full, minus a $100 administrative fee, are available until two months prior to the start of the event. Please make checks payable to Kurtz Psychology Consulting PC and mail them to SM Training c/o Kurtz Psychology Consulting PC, 506 Spook Hollow Rd., Nyack, NY  10960-1109. Payments can also be made by Zelle, ACH, or wire transfer; email us for details.

Learning objectives for the Didactic and Role Play training. Upon completion of the didactic and role-play parts of the training, i.e., the 16 hours, participants should be able to:

• State the theoretical foundations of PCIT-SM
• State the key components of the PCIT-SM model, including those for each phase of treatment (Client intake and assessment, Child Directed Interaction (CDI), and Verbal Directed Interaction (VDI).
• State the procedures for key PCIT-SM assessment tools:
  • Selective Mutism Questionnaire (SMQ), Frankfurt Scale for SM (FSSM)
  • SM Parent-Child Interaction Coding System (SMICS)
  • Leading an SM-BOT Observation session
• Demonstrate proficiency in role plays of:
  • CDI skills
  • VDI skills

Additional objectives for those pursuing PCIT-SM certification, after the didactic and role-play portions:

• Demonstrate clinical proficiency in conducting patient assessments with 90% fidelity
• Demonstrate clinical proficiency in conducting the CDI and VDI teaching sessions with 90% fidelity
• Demonstrate clinical proficiency in conducting fade-in sessions with peers and teachers with 90% fidelity
• Deliver treatment sessions with high fidelity while also attending to the therapeutic relationship and family engagement
• Deliver treatment both via telehealth and in-person
• Graduate two cases to clinically significant improvement. Please see PDF below for more details on all the training milestones.

Certification process: 

• Some proficiency assessments will happen during the didactics and role plays, e.g., you demonstrating good CDI and VDI skills yourself
• You will have a personal portfolio folder on our secure drive where you will, over the course of the year, upload your actual work meeting various milestones including, but not limited to:
  • An SM-BOT, baseline behavioral observation task
  • A Teach session with a parent or teacher
  • An actual fading in of a new talking partner to a child with SM
  • An actual community exposure, such as in an ice cream shop, that you lead either remotely or in person
• A complete list of all milestones that need to be checked off or observed on a recording is provided below
• We will work with you on obtaining permissions to record. Some settings are harder than others and we will guide you.
• We will review your tapes and other submissions. If one part does not pass, we provide opportunities to re-submit as needed either with real patients, or in some cases, and with prior approval in writing from us, in role plays with colleagues or others you know.

Instructor biographies: Click here for Dr. Kurtz’s biography and CV,  Dr. Gibson’s CV, Dr. Lynas’ CV and here for Annie DiVello’s CV.

Disclosures:

Instructors’ Financial Disclosures: Some of the instructors receive fees for their participation as faculty.

Speakers’ Non-Financial Disclosures: Dr. Steven Kurtz is the developer of the PCIT-SM protocol.

Kurtz Psychology would like to thank UC Davis PCIT & PC-Care Training Center for their free online PCIT webcourse:

Website:  https://pcit.ucdavis.edu/   Web Course:  https://pcitwebcourse.pcit.ucdavis.edu/login/index.php

Neither UC-Davis nor Kurtz Psychology charges any fees for this UC Davis PCIT course. This is training only for the SM Adaptation of PCIT and is not for individuals to get certified in traditional PCIT for disruptive behaviors.

Limitations/Risks: The risks associated with this training are low. The most common risk includes stress that may
occur when attempting to achieve skill competency, which will be guarded against through ample role play and consultation. Limitations of the content include limits to the populations that are served through this treatment modality.

Training location: online