"[A] fascinating read... Contrary to what the title might suggest, this is an upbeat exploration of suicide with a positive message." --Jeanine Connor, Therapy Today, December, 2018 This thought-provoking volume offers a distinctly human evolutionary analysis of a distinctly human phenomenon: suicide. Its 'pain and brain' model posits animal adaptations as the motivator for suicidal escape, and specific human cognitive adaptations as supplying the means , while also providing a plausible explanation for why only a relatively small number of humans actually take their own lives. The author hypothesizes two types of anti-suicide responses, active and reactive mechanisms prompted by the brain as suicide deterrents. Proposed as well is the intriguing prospect that mental disorders such as depression and addiction, long associated with suicidality, may serve as survival measures. Among the topics covered: * Suicide as an evolutionary puzzle. * The protection against suicide afforded to animals and young children. * Suicide as a by-product of pain and human cognition. * Why psychodynamic defenses regulate the experiencing of painful events. * Links between suicidality and positive psychology. * The anti-suicide role of spiritual and religious belief. In raising and considering key questions regarding this most controversial act, The Evolution of Suicide will appeal to researchers across a range of behavioral science disciplines. At the same time, the book's implications for clinical intervention and prevention will make it useful among mental health professionals and those involved with mental health policy.

This book addresses the ongoing scientific debates regarding video games and their effects on players. The book features opposing perspectives and offers point and counterpoint exchanges in which researchers on both sides of a specific topic make their best case for their findings and analysis. Chapters cover both positive and negative effects of video games on players' behavior and cognition, from contributing to violence and alienation to promoting therapeutic outcomes for types of cognitive dysfunction. The contrasting viewpoints model presents respectful scientific debate, encourages open dialogue, and allows readers to come to informed conclusions. Key questions addressed include: * Do violent video games promote violence? * Does video game addiction exist? * Should parents limit children's use of interactive media? * Do action video games promote visual attention? * Does sexist content in video games promote misogyny in real life? * Can video games slow the progress of dementia? * Are video games socially isolating? Video Game Influences on Aggression, Cognition, and Attention is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians and professionals as well as graduate students in developmental psychology, social work, educational policy and politics, criminology/criminal justice, child and school psychology, sociology, media law, and other related disciplines.

Risky Decision Making in Psychological Disorders provides readers with a detailed examination of how risky decision making is affected by a wide array of individual psychological disorders. The book starts by providing important background information on the construct of risky decision making, the assessment of risky decision making, and the neuroscience behind such decision making. The Iowa Gambling Task, Balloon Analogue Risk Task, and other behavioral measures are covered, as are topics such as test reliability and the pros and cons of utilizing tasks that have strong practice effects. The book then moves into how risky decision making is affected by specific psychological disorders, such as addictive behaviors, anxiety disorders, mood disorders, schizophrenia, sleep disorders, eating disorders, and more.

Intermittent Explosive Disorder: Etiology, Assessment, and Treatment provides a complete overview on this disorder, focusing on its etiology, how the disorder presents, and the clinical assessment and treatment methods currently available. The book presents the history of the disorder, discusses the rationale for its inclusion in the DSM, and includes diagnostic considerations, comorbidity, epidemiology, intervention, and how treatments have evolved. Each section is bolstered by clinical case material that provides real-world context and clinical lessons on how to distinguish intermittent explosive disorder from other presentations of aggression.

Compulsive buying is a shopping addiction with worldwide prevalence that causes significant emotional, financial, and social problems for those afflicted by it. While most research has focused on the problem and its consequences, this book examines the intersections between consumer traits, self-regulation, ethical considerations, and compulsive buying. Compulsive Buying: Consumer Traits, Self-Regulation, and Marketing Ethics presents a model on consumer trait predictors of compulsive buying as well as guidelines for consumers, government policymakers, and companies.

From a leader in the field of psychotherapy, this new book is the first dedicated to the topic of the fear of contamination. The fear of contamination is the driving force behind compulsive washing, the most common manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder. This is one of the most extraordinary of all human fears. It is complex, powerful, probably universal, easily provoked, intense, and difficult to control. Usually the fear is caused by physical contact with a contaminant and spreads rapidly and widely. The book starts by defining the disorder, before considering the various manifestations of this fear, examining both mental contamination and contact contamination, and feelings of disgust.Most significantly, it develops a theory for how this problem can be treated, providing clinical guidelines - based around cognitive behavioural techniques.

Socialization of violence and abuse is often highly structured through the Munchausen Complex. Munchausen Syndrome occurs when an individual harms themselves for attention and self-glorification. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is when an individual harms another, usually under their care. Attention and self-glorification are achieved through their victim's subsequent medical treatment. Munchausen by Proxy is a crime with a victim. Violence and abuse in families are often passed down from one generation to the next and may be termed Transgenerational Munchausen Syndrome as these families expand and their habits are introduced into society. Munchausen Syndrome in Collective Transmission occurs when such practices become an acceptable part of society often eventuating into full acculturation. In this way societies attach themselves to self-glorification with various explanations of justification As socialized beings, we are often unaware why we think what we think and why we do what we do. Exploring beneath the surface, we may discover we are not who we think we are. Are our subtle perversions and aberrations so different from those of the ancients, or other cultures we label primitive?

In Dostoevsky as Suicidologist, Amy D. Ronner illustrates how self-homicide in Fyodor Dostoevsky's fiction prefigures Emile Durkheim's etiology in Suicide as well as theories of other prominent suicidologists. This book not only fills a lacuna in Dostoevsky scholarship, but provides fresh readings of Dostoevsky's major works, including Notes from The House of the Dead, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. Ronner provides an exegesis of how Dostoevsky's implicit awareness of fatalistic, altruistic, egoistic, and anomic modes of self-destruction helped shape not only his philosophy, but also his craft as a writer. In this study, Ronner contributes to the field of suicidology by anatomizing both self-destructive behavior and suicidal ideation while offering ways to think about prevention. But most expansively, Ronner tackles the formidable task of forging a ligature between artistic creation and the pluripresent social fact of self-annihilation.

New developments in the basic and clinical neurosciences have lead to important advances in our understanding of the events that occur between conception and birth that can influence schizophrenia. At the other end of the life span, some of the most exciting developments in years have recently been coming out of comprehensive studies of post-mortem studies of patients with schizophrenia. In the clinical domain, studies of first episode patients with schizophrenia are proliferating, at the same time as many research groups are performing comprehensive studies of patients with schizophrenia who are in the eighth decade of life or even older. Thus, many of the exciting new developments in research on schizophrenia are at the ends of the life span, suggesting that a wide-ranging treatment of schizophrenia in this framework will be very well accepted. This volume is unique in adopting a lifespan approach to understanding schizophrenia. There are many aspects of schizophrenia that require research attention from a lifespan perspective. For example, there may be aspects of the behavior or biological functioning that are present before the illness that change an individual's risk for developing the illness. There may be environmental events that can cause schizophrenia in the absence of other predisposing factors. There may be genetic influences on the development of schizophrenia that are modified by environmental events, either psychological or physiological. Factors such as an individual's gender or intelligence may also influence schizophrenia, either in terms of changing the risk for development or changing aspects of the illness' presentation, such as onset age or overall functional outcome. With contributions from leading scientists in this field, and results from the frontiers of schizophrenia research, this volume is a major new addition to the psychiatry literature.

New developments in the basic and clinical neurosciences have lead to important advances in our understanding of the events that occur between conception and birth that can influence schizophrenia. At the other end of the life span, some of the most exciting developments in years have recently been coming out of comprehensive studies of post-mortem studies of patients with schizophrenia. In the clinical domain, studies of first episode patients with schizophrenia are proliferating, at the same time as many research groups are performing comprehensive studies of patients with schizophrenia who are in the eighth decade of life or even older. Thus, many of the exciting new developments in research on schizophrenia are at the ends of the life span, suggesting that a wide-ranging treatment of schizophrenia in this framework will be very well accepted. This volume is unique in adopting a lifespan approach to understanding schizophrenia. There are many aspects of schizophrenia that require research attention from a lifespan perspective. For example, there may be aspects of the behavior or biological functioning that are present before the illness that change an individual's risk for developing the illness. There may be environmental events that can cause schizophrenia in the absence of other predisposing factors. There may be genetic influences on the development of schizophrenia that are modified by environmental events, either psychological or physiological. Factors such as an individual's gender or intelligence may also influence schizophrenia, either in terms of changing the risk for development or changing aspects of the illness' presentation, such as onset age or overall functional outcome. With contributions from leading scientists in this field, and results from the frontiers of schizophrenia research, this volume is a major new addition to the psychiatry literature.

Promoting Positive Processes After Trauma targets one of the most damaging effects of trauma, ongoing impairment across the whole of "living." Viewing clients with trauma histories from the perspectives of their shared experiences is the foundation for the application of six strengths and virtues studied by positive psychology: hope, positive emotions, resilience, forgiveness, spirituality and religiosity, and meaning-making. The lived trauma experience of the contributing author illustrates actual means of change

This timesaving resource features: * Treatment plan components for 31 behaviorally based presenting problems * Over 1,000 prewritten treatment goals, objectives, and interventions plus space to record your own treatment plan options * A step-by-step guide to writing treatment plans that meet the requirements of most accrediting bodies, insurance companies, and third-party payors * Includes new Evidence-Based Practice Interventions as required by many public funding sources and private insurers PracticePlanners(R) THE BESTSELLING TREATMENT PLANNING SYSTEM FOR MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS The Severe and Persistent Mental Illness Treatment Planner, Second Edition provides all the elements necessary to quickly and easily develop formal treatment plans that satisfy the demands of HMOs, managed care companies, third-party payors, and state and federal agencies. * New edition features empirically supported, evidence-based treatment interventions * Organized around 31 main presenting problems, including employment problems, family conflicts, financial needs, homelessness, intimate relationship conflicts, and social anxiety * Over 1,000 prewritten treatment goals, objectives, and interventions plus space to record your own treatment plan options * Easy-to-use reference format helps locate treatment plan components by behavioral problem * Designed to correspond with The Severe and Persistent Mental Illness Progress Notes Planner, Second Edition * Includes a sample treatment plan that conforms to the requirements of most third-party payors and accrediting agencies (including CARF, The Joint Commission, COA, and NCQA) Additional resources in the PracticePlanners(R) series: Progress Notes Planners contain complete, prewritten progress notes for each presenting problem in the companion Treatment Planners. Documentation Sourcebooks provide the forms and records that mental health professionals need to efficiently run their practice. For more information on our PracticePlanners(R), including our full line of Treatment Planners, visit us on the Web at: www.wiley.com/practiceplanners

In 2006, Babiak and Hare alerted the public to the danger of "corporate psychopaths," psychopathic individuals occupying positions of power in business organizations. Since then, academicians and the public media have advertised their presence, documented the harm they can cause, and issued a call to arms to identify corporate psychopaths and eliminate their presence in the workplace. Very little attention has been paid, however, to the ethics of such a "seek and destroy" mission. The Ethics of Employment Screening for Psychopathy argues that employment screening for psychopathy would be illegal and unethical. On legal grounds, Brian K Steverson argues that psychopathy would qualify as a protected disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and, hence, medical screening to identify potential corporate psychopaths would be in violation of the ADA. On ethical grounds, the case is made that such screening would violate a social commitment to equal opportunity, would constitute a morally unjustified violation of personal privacy, and would, in practice, not produce the intended benefits, while at the same time inflicting harm on the subjects of the screening.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of binge eating, which is characterized by the uncontrollable consumption of large amounts of food in a discrete time period. Written by experts on eating disorders, it first introduces the phenotype of binge eating, including its epidemiology and assessment. It then describes the underlying neurobiological alterations, drawing on cutting-edge animal models and human studies to do so. In addition, it extensively discusses current treatment models, including medication, psychotherapy, self-interventions and disease prevention. Lastly, an outlook on the future research agenda rounds out the coverage. Given binge eating's current status as an under-researched symptom, but one shared across many eating disorders, this book provides an up-to-date, integrative and comprehensive synthesis of recent research and offers a valuable reference for scientists and clinicians alike.

How can we better understand and treat those suffering from schizophrenia and manic-depressive illnesses? This important new book takes us into the world of those suffering from such disorders. Using self-descriptions, its emphasis is not on how mental health professional's view sufferers, but on how the patients themselves experience their disorder. Central to the book is the idea that schizophrenic persons live like disembodies spirits or deanimated bodies. As disembodies spirits, they feel like abstract entities that contemplate their own existence and the world from outside. As deanimated bodies, schizophrenic people feel deprived of the possibility of living personal experiences - perceptions, thoughts, emotions - as their own. A new volume in the International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry series, this book will be of great interest to all those working with sufferers from such disorders - helping them to better understand their mental lives and providing important insights into how best to treat them.

This book examines the role of deceptive tactics in the criminal victimization process, showing how various forms of manipulative aggression can help disguise dangerous advances. The author approaches crime victimization as the final stage in a purposeful, predictable, dynamic, and progressively dangerous process involving interactions between the target and the aggressor. As they prepare for the attack, aggressors may attempt to distract, confuse, and reduce target resistance. While these tactics provide aggressors certain advantages, they can be recognized, anticipated, and managed. By presenting a framework to identify behaviors of concern early in the process, Kenny shows how preventative action can be taken. Proactive intervention may cause aggressors to withdraw before they are fully committed to and confident in their ability to be successful. Those who take steps to reduce vulnerabilities, limit risky behaviors, and avoid dangerous situations can help prevent themselves from being victimized.