This book focuses on Free Church pastors in Germany and their perceptions of spirit possession and mental illness. To explore Free Church pastors' understanding of spirit possession and mental illness is critical in light of the overlap of symptoms. Misdiagnosis may result in a client receiving treatment that may not be appropriate. Interviews with Free Church pastors were conducted. The results were analysed and four themes were identified. Based on these interviews conclusions could be drawn which ultimately made it clear that the German free church pastors' theological training needs to be supplemented in the area of psychology and that the pastors are unable to cope in the area of "spirit possession or mental illness".

The meanings and causes of hearing voices that others cannot hear (auditory verbal hallucinations, in psychiatric parlance) have been debated for thousands of years. Voice-hearing has been both revered and condemned, understood as a symptom of disease as well as a source of otherworldly communication. Those hearing voices have been viewed as mystics, potential psychiatric patients or simply just people with unusual experiences, and have been beatified, esteemed or accepted, as well as drugged, burnt or gassed. This book travels from voice-hearing in the ancient world through to contemporary experience, examining how power, politics, gender, medicine and religion have shaped the meaning of hearing voices. Who hears voices today, what these voices are like and their potential impact are comprehensively examined. Cutting edge neuroscience is integrated with current psychological theories to consider what may cause voices and the future of research in voice-hearing is explored.

What is the difference between a child who is temperamentally sad and one who has depression? Can a kid be angry by temperament without being mentally ill? How can two thrill-seeking parents end up with a shy, risk-averse child? The subject of personality and how we differ from one another behaviorally has long fascinated parents, teachers, and scientists, but because no true "pathology" was involved, it was traditionally the arena of psychologists and behavioral scientists. Today, the question of temperament-and how it contributes to the development of psychiatric disorders-is one posed by mainstream psychiatry as a major area of investigation. From depression to ADHD to autism, temperament can play a definite role, but how, and to what degree? In this book, David Rettew examines the research and discusses the factors that can propel children with particular temperamental tendencies toward or away from more problematic trajectories.

Sexual obsessions are a common symptom of OCD, but addressing them in treatment is uniquely challenging due to feelings of shame, prior misdiagnosis, and the covert nature of ritualizing behaviors. These complicating factors make it difficult for clients to disclose their symptoms and for clinicians to know how to approach treatment. Sexual Obsessions in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder provides clinicians with the information and guidance needed to help clients experiencing unwanted and intrusive thoughts of a sexual nature. Opening with background information on sexual obsessions and OCD, including assessment and differential diagnosis, Williams and Wetterneck then offer a complete, step-by-step manual describing treatment using a combination of empirically-supported CBT strategies, such as exposure and response prevention, cognitive therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy, as well as useful mindfulness techniques. Accompanying these practical, step-by-step instructions are educational handouts and diagrams for clients designed to promote learning. The book concludes with a discussion of relationship issues that commonly result from sexually-themed OCD, and how therapists can tackle these problems. Sexual Obsessions in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is an essential resource for clinicians who treat OCD, as well as students and trainees from across the mental health professions.

Case Analyses for Abnormal Psychology, Second Edition uses case studies to explore the etiology, biology, and dynamics of psychiatric disorders in the DSM-5. Readers will learn about the new classifications and treatments for disorders while simultaneously reading the personal history of each consumer both before and during the development of each case. Every case ends with a section on the particular disorder presented, as viewed from a biological perspective. This updated edition bridges advances in abnormal psychology and neuroscience in understanding mental illness.

Everybody has heard the statement "they are a hoarder" but not so many many of us really know what it means. Pathological hoarding was first formally conceptualised as a syndrome separate from OCD in the early 1990s, yet it wasn't until 2013 that hoarding received formal psychiatric diagnostic criteria in the DSM. Recognizing and Treating Hoarding Disorder looks at how a mental health professional who sees clients in an office can determine if hoarding is a factor in a client's life. Here, Carol Mathews provides readers with the first-ever comprehensive clinical book on hoarding, covering every aspect of the disorder. Topics include: epidemiology and impact; screening tools and clinical interview tools for assessment; differential diagnosis and co-occurring disorders; when to suspect mild cognitive impairment and dementia; hoarding behaviours in children; how to differentiate normal keeping of items from hoarding; animal hoarding; the neurobiology of hoarding disorder; treatments, both psychopharmacological and otherwise; self-help options; and the impact of hoarding on the family.

Few regions of the planet have undergone such rapid social transition as the Arabian Gulf States. Psychological Well-Being in the Gulf States explores the implications of these rapid changes in terms of mental health and psychological well-being.

Celebrity culture surrounds us. We are inundated with information about actors and actresses, athletes, musicians, and others who have become famous or infamous. Although we never will likely meet or get to know them, our interest in them seems boundless. We are literally obsessed with being entertained as well as with the people who entertain us. Who our celebrities are has also shifted; in the past, celebrity status was bestowed on men and women of great accomplishment, those who had given the world something to be proud of and to celebrate. Conversely, today's celebrities are generally people involved in entertainment-from TV newscasters to people who appear on reality television programs, as well as some who are simply famous for being famous. What remains an enigma is why we, as a society, are so infatuated with being entertained, as well as with those who entertain us and appear in the media. This book makes sense of this spectacle by explaining the reasons for this obsession from a psychological, social, and historical perspective. It suggests that we have become addicted in much the same way that a person becomes addicted to drugs or alcohol. Finally, the author offers his observations on how to free our minds from this captivation. Anyone interested in understanding more about our need to live vicariously through the rich and famous will find answers in this book.

"This book is informative and interesting and would be useful both in academic and professional settings."--"Feminism & Psychology"

A special kind of horror is reserved for mothers who kill their children. Cases such as those of Susan Smith, who drowned her two young sons by driving her car into a lake, and Melissa Drexler, who disposed of her newborn baby in a restroom at her prom, become media sensations. Unfortunately, in addition to these high-profile cases, hundreds of mothers kill their children in the United States each year. The question most often asked is, why? What would drive a mother to kill her own child?

Those who work with such cases, whether in clinical psychology, social services, law enforcement or academia, often lack basic understandings about the types of circumstances and patterns which might lead to these tragic deaths, and the social constructions of motherhood which may affect women's actions. These mothers oftentimes defy the myths and media exploitation of them as evil, insane, or lacking moral principles, and they are not a homogenous group. In obvious ways, intervention strategies should differ for a teenager who denies her pregnancy and then kills her newborn and a mother who kills her two toddlers out of mental illness or to further a relationship. A typology is needed to help us to understand the different cases that commonly occur and the patterns they follow in order to make possible more effective prevention plans.

Mothers Who Kill Their Children draws on extensive research to identify clear patterns among the cases of women who kill their children, shedding light on why some women commit these acts. The characteristics the authorsestablish will be helpful in creating more meaningful policies, more targeted intervention strategies, and more knowledgeable evaluations of these cases when they arise.

The concept of moral injury emerged in the past decade as a way to understand how traumatic levels of moral emotions generate moral anguish experienced by some military service members. Interdisciplinary research on moral injury has included clinical psychologists (Litz et al., 2009; Drescher et al., 2011), theologians (Brock & Lettini, 2012; Graham, 2017), ethicists (Kinghorn, 2012), and philosophers (Sherman, 2015). This project articulates a new key concept-moral orienting systems- a dynamic matrix of meaningful values, beliefs, behaviors, and relationships learned and changed over time and through formative experiences and relationships such as family of origin, religious and other significant communities, mentors, and teachers. Military recruit training reengineers pre-existing moral orienting systems and indoctrinates a military moral orienting system designed to support functioning within the military context and the demands of the high-stress environment of combat, including immediate responses to perceived threat. This military moral orienting system includes new values and beliefs, new behaviors, and new meaningful relationships. Recognizing the profound impact of military recruit training, this project challenges dominant notions of post-deployment reentry and reintegration, and formulates a new paradigm for first, understanding the generative circumstances of ongoing moral stress that include moral emotions like guilt, shame, disgust, and contempt, and, second, for responding to such human suffering through compassionate care and comprehensive restorative support. This project calls for more effective participation of religious communities in the reentry and reintegration process and for a military-wide post-deployment reentry program comparable to the encompassing physio-psycho-spiritual-social transformative intensity experienced in recruit-training boot camp.

Choice Recommended Read What Psychiatry Left Out of the DSM-5: Historical Mental Disorders Today covers the diagnoses that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) failed to include, along with diagnoses that should not have been included, but were. Psychiatry as a field is over two centuries old and over that time has gathered great wisdom about mental illnesses. Today, much of that knowledge has been ignored and we have diagnoses such as "schizophrenia" and "bipolar disorder" that do not correspond to the diseases found in nature; we have also left out disease labels that on a historical basis may be real. Edward Shorter proposes a history-driven alternative to the DSM.

'Mental Health Worldwide' offers a perceptive critique of the universalised model of psychiatry and its apparent exportation from the West to the developing world. Rooted in detailed analysis of the problems this causes, the book proposes new suggestions for advancing the field of mental health and wellbeing in a way that is ethical, sustainable and culturally sensitive.

WHO IS THE DEVIL YOU KNOW? Is it your lying, cheating ex-husband? Your sadistic high school gym teacher? Your boss who loves to humiliate people in meetings? The colleague who stole your idea and passed it off as her own? In the pages of The Sociopath Next Door, you will realize that your ex was not just misunderstood. He's a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be sociopaths too. We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people- 1 in 25 - has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in 25 everyday people, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbour, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt. How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They're more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others' suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win. The fact is, we all almost certainly know at least one or more sociopaths already. Part of the urgency in reading The Sociopath Next Door is the moment when we suddenly recognize that someone we know - someone we worked for, or were involved with, or voted for - is a sociopath. But what do we do with that knowledge? To arm us against the sociopath, Dr Stout teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game. It is the ruthless versus the rest of us, and The Sociopath Next Door will show you how to recognize and defeat the devil you know.

From addiction expert Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a startling argument that technology has profoundly affected the brains of children--and not for the better. We've all seen them: kids hypnotically staring at glowing screens in restaurants, in playgrounds and in friends' houses--and the numbers are growing. Like a virtual scourge, the illuminated glowing faces--the Glow Kids--are multiplying. But at what cost? Is this just a harmless indulgence or fad like some sort of digital hula-hoop? Some say that glowing screens might even be good for kids--a form of interactive educational tool. Don't believe it. In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology--more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity--has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain's pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis. Most shocking of all, recent brain imaging studies conclusively show that excessive screen exposure can neurologically damage a young person's developing brain in the same way that cocaine addiction can. Kardaras will dive into the sociological, psychological, cultural, and economic factors involved in the global tech epidemic with one major goal: to explore the effect all of our wonderful shiny new technology is having on kids. Glow Kids also includes an opt-out letter and a quiz for parents in the back of the book.

Current Lacanian ideas on psychosis have much to contribute to the complex and often surprising forms of psychotic symptomatology encountered in clinical practice. By focussing on the unique experience of individuals with psychosis, this book examines the centrality of body phenomena to both the onset and stabilisation of psychosis.

Problem gambling is a perennial issue frequently reported in the media. This book is a comprehensive and up-to-date resource on problem gambling research. It describes the state of the art of the subject and presents the latest developments such as computer modelling of gambling behaviour and risk profiles of gambling products.

It is said that men are 'in crisis', blighted by the adverse effects of corrosive masculine norms ranging from emotional disconnection to aggression. This book follows one group of men seeking to overcome their masculine inheritance and ultimately reach a sense of wellbeing by taking up meditation.