More so than in any other form of forensic evaluation, mental health professionals who conduct parenting plan evaluations must have an understanding of the most current evidence in the areas of child development, optimal parenting plans across various populations, behavioral psychology, family violence, and legal issues to inform their opinions. In addition, family law judges and legal professionals require the best available evidence to support their decisions and positions. Parenting Plan Evaluations has become the go-to source for the most current empirical evidence in the field of child custody disputes. Fully updated in this Second Edition, the volume continues its focus on translating and implementing research associated with the most important topics within the family court. It presents an organized and in-depth analysis of the latest research and offers specific recommendations for applying these findings to the issues in child custody disputes. Written by international experts in the field, chapters cover the most important and complex issues that arise in family court, such as attachment and overnight timesharing with very young children, co-parenting children with chronic medical conditions and developmental disorders, domestic violence during separation and divorce, alienation, gay and lesbian co-parents, and relocation, among others. This volume assists forensic mental health professionals to proffer empirically based opinions, conclusions, and recommendations and assists family law judges and attorneys in evaluating the reliability of the information provided to the courts by mental health professionals in their reports and testimony. Not just for forensic evaluators, Parenting Plan Evaluations is a must-read for legal practitioners, family law judges and attorneys, and other professionals seeking to understand more about the science behind parenting plan evaluations.

Gathering leading thinkers in social and clinical psychology, public health, medicine, and sociology, Interpersonal Relationships and Health considers theoretical and empirical issues relevant to understanding the social and clinical psychological mechanisms linking close relationship processes with mental and physical health outcomes. The volume arises out of a recent explosion of interest, across multiple academic and research fields, in the ways that interpersonal relationships affect health and well-being. This volume pulls together a range of scholars who focus on different aspects of relationships and health in order to encourage both collaboration and cross-disciplinary initiatives. This is the first edited volume to pull together noted experts across myriad disciplines whose research is at the intersection of human relationships and health. Topics addressed include key biological processes that influence and, in turn, are influenced by close relationships. Interpersonal Relationships and Health presents research that demonstrates the connections between interpersonal relationships, mental and physical health outcomes, and biophysical markers that figure prominently in the fields of psychoneuroimmunology, endocrinology, and cardiology. In addition, it highlights recent work on marital, family, and social relationships and their interplay with health and well-being. Chapters also address sexual health among young and older adults, as well as clinical intervention efforts that focus on the role of relational factors in influencing health. Each chapter highlights extant theoretical and empirical findings and suggests future avenues for research in this burgeoning area.

Robi Friedman is an experienced group analyst and clinician specializing in conflict resolution, and in this important collection of his work, he presents his most innovative concepts. Dreamtelling is an original approach to the sharing of dreams with partners or within families, exploring how the dreamer's unconscious messages can be communicated, and helping to contain emotional difficulties. The book also explains Friedman's concept relation disorders, which locates dysfunctional behavioural patterns not within intrapsychic issues, but rather as a function of dynamics in group relations. And finally, the book presents the soldier's matrix, a method for conceptualizing processes in highly stressed organizations and societies which are either under existential threat or pursuing glory. In the process of becoming a soldier's matrix, subgroups and nations progressively lose shame, guilt and empathy towards perceived enemies and the Other, and every society member embraces a selfless role. Applying this method to training in groups provides an optimal way out of organizational and national crisis. The book will be of great interest to group analysts. It will also appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists with an interest in conflict resolution.

Humor is a powerful force that can nourish children's growth, development, health, and sense of well-being. This study will inspire adults to lower their threshold for humor — to let humor enter their professional lives and intertwine their relationships with children. Examines the significant role that humor plays in meeting children's needs at various stages of development. Children between the ages/stages of preschool to eleven years of age (pre-adolescence) are the focus of this book. Professionals who are creative users of humor, and whose work with humor is exemplary in nurturing children's cognitive, social, and/or emotional development, illustrate how humor played a key role in the relationships they developed with children. Authors, representing a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines, include: a therapist, teacher educator, child development specialist, art/communication multimedia educator, early childhood teacher, Child Life specialist, and therapeutic hospital clowns. The authors take readers into the different worlds of children, and describe how humor helped children learn, cope, think creatively, develop social skills, gain self-esteem, and experience a sense of well being. The role and significance of comic incongruity is illustrated in the context of play, classroom life, artistic expression, medical treatment, and therapy. A final chapter promotes humor as a subject of inquiry in professional development programs across disciplines.

Violent video games are successfully marketed to and easily obtained by children and adolescents. Even the U.S. government distributes one such game, America's Army, through both the internet and its recruiting offices. Is there any scientific evidence to support the claims that violent games contribute to aggressive and violent behavior?
Anderson, Gentile, and Buckley first present an overview of empirical research on the effects of violent video games, and then add to this literature three new studies that fill the most important gaps. They update the traditional General Aggression Model to focus on both developmental processes and how media-violence exposure can increase the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior in both short- and long-term contexts. Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents also reviews the history of these games' explosive growth, and explores the public policy options for controlling their distribution. Anderson et al. describe the reaction of the games industry to scientific findings that exposure to violent video games and other forms of media violence constitutes a significant risk factor for later aggressive and violent behavior. They argue that society should begin a more productive debate about whether to reduce the high rates of exposure to media violence, and delineate the public policy options that are likely be most effective.
As the first book to unite empirical research on and public policy options for violent video games, Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents will be an invaluable resource for student and professional researchers in social and developmental psychology and media studies.

""Staying Well After Psychosis" is extremely readable, based on solid research evidence and packed full of clinical insights and strategies that will satisfy any clinician seeking innovative approaches to the promotion of recovery from psychosis."
--Anthony P. Morrison, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Manchester, UK

Over the past decade our understanding of the experience of psychosis has changed dramatically. As part of this change, a range of psychological models of psychosis and associated interventions have developed.

"Staying Well After Psychosis" presents an individually based psychological intervention targeting emotional recovery and relapse prevention. This approach considers the cognitive, interpersonal and developmental aspects involved in recovery and vulnerability to the recurrence of psychosis.

Andrew Gumley and Matthias Schwannauer provide a framework for recovery and staying well that focuses on emotional and interpersonal adaptation to psychosis. This practical manual covers, in detail, all aspects of the therapeutic process of Cognitive Interpersonal Therapy, including: Taking a developmental perspective on help seeking and affect regulation.Supporting self-reorganisation and adaptation after acute psychosis.Understanding and treating traumatic reactions to psychosis.Working with humiliation, entrapment, loss and fear of recurrence appraisals during recovery.Working with cognitive interpersonal schemata.Developing coping in an interpersonal context.

Clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals will find this innovative treatment manual to be a valuable resource in their work with adults and adolescents. This book will also be of interest to lecturers and students of clinical psychology and mental health.

The concept of executive functioning has become central in understanding normal and abnormal cognitive processes. This timely volume analyzes the diverse conditions that can result in executive function disturbances, providing research about underlying causes, exploring the differences between developmental and acquired executive "dysfunctions," and providing approaches for the assessment of executive dysfunction both in children and in adults. In doing so, it addresses a gap in the literature in its analysis of executive function deficits and their link with psychopathology in psychiatric patients for the management of clinical symptoms and social adjustment. Among the specific topics examined: Theoretical approaches for the analysis of the diverse dysexecutive syndromes Common executive dysfunction syndromes found during childhood development: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorders Consequences of executive function deficits in the use of information technology Executive dysfunction and personality disorders Common executive function tests, assessment issues in executive dysfunction, and cross-cultural and bilingual questions in assessment of executive dysfunction Dysexecutive Syndromes: Clinical and Experimental Perspectives expertly extends the analysis of executive functions and dysfunctions from a fundamental and clinical perspective. It is essential reading for clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists, neurologists, and psychiatrists, and graduate and post-graduate students in psychology, neurology, and the health neurosciences, as well as clinicians, counselors, and psychometricians working with neuropsychiatric assessment.

The questions of what psychoanalysis is, and does, and who can and should practice it, remains key within the modern profession. Has the invaluable material packed into Freud's The Question of Lay Analysis (1926) been underestimated by contemporary psychoanalysis? This book explores how the issues raised in this paper can continue to impact contemporary Freudian theory and practice. The chapters examine why the arguably litigious nature of the paper might be contributing to its neglect and underestimation. The editors of this book put forth a hypothesis: is there an underlying, still unrecognized, but heartrending factor underlying the century-old quarrel between "lay analysts" and what might be described as medically or psychiatrically trained analysts? They then brought together a selection of major contemporary psychoanalytic thinkers from around the world to attempt to bridge the seemingly unbridgeable gap between medical and non-medical analysis, using The Question of Lay Analysis as a central pivot. The work of the key figure, in social and historic terms, on this issue, Theodor Reik, is also duly honoured. On Freud's "The Question of Lay Analysis" will be of great interest to all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

This timely volume illustrates how and why the fight against quackery in modern America has largely failed, laying the blame on an unlikely confluence of scientific advances, regulatory reforms, changes in the medical profession, and the politics of consumption. Throughout the 20th century, anti-quackery crusaders investigated, exposed, and attempted to regulate allegedly fraudulent therapeutic approaches to health and healing under the banner of consumer protection and a commitment to medical science. Quack Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth-Century America reveals how efforts to establish an exact border between quackery and legitimate therapeutic practices and medications have largely failed, and details the reasons for this failure. Digging beneath the surface, the book uncovers the history of allegedly fraudulent therapies including pain medications, obesity and asthma cures, gastrointestinal remedies, virility treatments, and panaceas for diseases such as arthritis, asthma, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. It shows how efforts to combat alleged medical quackery have been connected to broader debates among medical professionals, scientists, legislators, businesses, and consumers, and it exposes the competing professional, economic, and political priorities that have encouraged the drawing of arbitrary, vaguely defined boundaries between good medicine and "quack medicine." Previously unpublished images from medical almanacs and drug advertisements sent directly to doctors Images of materials used by "quackbusters" in their public educational campaigns, including posters used by the AMA and anti-quackery pamphlets produced by governmental agencies

Mutual Growth in the Psychotherapeutic Relationship: Reciprocal Resilience is an essential, innovative guide for mental health professionals who listen repeatedly to stories of devastation and trauma. Moving beyond traditions that consider the clinician as existing only for the patient and not as an individual, this breakthrough model explores the possibility of mutual resilience-building and personal benefit developing between therapists and their patients. The first section of the book situates Reciprocal Resilience in the context of evolving resilience studies. The second section provides lively, demonstrative clinical anecdotes from therapists themselves, organized into chapters focused on enhancing their positive strategies for coping and growth while functioning under duress. This book presents a framework for teaching and supervising psychotherapists that can enrich clinician well-being, while recognizing the therapeutic relationship as the key for enabling patients' emotional growth. It challenges mental health practitioners to share their own experiences, presenting a research model syntonic with how clinicians think and work daily in their professional practice. It offers a pioneering approach, finding inspiration in even the darkest moments for therapists and patients alike.

Traditionally, psychoanalytic treatment has been a lengthy endeavour, requiring a long-term commitment from patient and analyst, as well as vast financial resources. More recently, short-term approaches to psychoanalytic treatment have proliferated. One of the most well-known and thoroughly studied is the groundbreaking method of Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy, developed by Dr. Habib Davanloo. Having trained directly with Dr. Davenloo, the author has written a clear, concise outline of the method that has come to be regarded as a classic in the field. The book is organised in a systematic fashion, analogous to the process of therapy itself, from initial contact through to termination and follow-up. Detailed clinical examples are presented throughout the text to illustrate how theory is translated into techniques of unparalleled power and effectiveness.

Over the past decade, legal wagering has expanded rapidly in North America. In 1998 alone, people lost 50 billion dollars in legal betting and it is estimated that illegal wagering is twice that amount. A recent government report, based on the broadest population survey, concludes that the lifetime and pathological gamblers in the U.S. range between 4 and 10 million persons and is growing. If we include the families affected by problem gambling then the potential impact is indeed prodigious. Virtually no community in the U.S. and Canada is left untouched by entertainment or problem gambling. Treating problem gambling has evolved from a small group of practitioners in the 1980's working in specialty impatient units into an international enterprise that affects the caseload of many mental health professionals. Owing to its quiet origins, problem gambling treatment strategies are not well known throughout the clinical community. Consequently the average clinician is him/herself "learning as they go." This approach does not benefit either client or therapist. As the book's first chapter makes clear, problem gambling differs significantly from substance abuse, its nearest clinical relative. Not attending to these differences leads to poor results and clinical failure. This book is the one essential tool needed by clinicians treating or likely to treat problem gambling. Written by a clinician with wide experience, it is intended for the general clinician treating or likely to treat problem gambling desiring a comprehensive, yet user-friendly guide.
Key Features
* Assessment and treatment of problem gambling and those affected by it is discussed
* Includes diagnostic instruments developed by the author
* An integrative approach is taken with a special focus on cultural concerns and clinical applications for women and minorities
* Integration of spirituality in treatment is covered

In the past few decades clinical science has emerged as a prominent model for training and practice in clinical psychology. This model emphasizes evidence derived from high-quality research and is consistent with the increasingly influential evidence-based movement in medicine, which is a vital step toward making psychotherapy more effective, efficient, and safe. Despite this trend, much current psychological practice is not evidence-based; moreover, there is a marked dearth of resources available to train students and assist practitioners with the challenging goal of translating science into practice. Case Studies in Clinical Psychological Science demonstrates in detail how the clinical science model can be applied to actual cases. Edited by Professors William O'Donohue and Scott O. Lilienfeld, this book's unique structure presents dialogues between leading clinical researchers regarding the treatment of a wide variety of psychological problems, from depression and Alzheimer's disease to Panic Disorder and chronic pain. Chapters describe what evidence-based practice consists of for various clinical problems and are followed by commentary sections in which other leading clinical researchers analyze the case at hand, pointing out additional assessment and treatment options and controversial issues. The chapter authors then reply to the commentary in response sections. By examining the application of scientifically based interventions to actual cases and modeling thoughtful and collegial discussion among prominent clinical researchers, Case Studies in Clinical Psychological Science will assist students, practitioners, and clinical researchers with the crucial task of applying research evidence to psychotherapy and bridging the gap between science and practice.

This handbook offers practical strategies and evidence-based parent-implemented interventions for very young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It explores this important subject within the context of rapidly increasing numbers of toddlers who are diagnosed with ASD during the second year of life. The handbook discusses how parents of young children with ASD can effectively be supported, taught, and coached to implement evidence-based parenting strategies and intervention techniques, and describes a broad range of developmentally appropriate programs at the family, community, and service delivery levels. In addition, the handbook examines individual differences in parenting cognitions, emotions, and practices and proposes strategies for supporting the varying capacities of diverse families to meet the needs of young children with ASD. Chapters provide diverse coverage, spanning cultural/socio-economic differences as well as differences in family structure; parenting cognitions, emotions, and practices; parental learning styles; and access to social support. Featured topics include: Supporting families of high-risk infants who have an older sibling with ASD. The use of video feedback strategies in parent-mediated early ASD intervention. The Incredible Years (IY) Parent Program for preschool children with ASD and language delays. Self-help for parents of children with ASD. The Family Implemented TEACCH for Toddlers (FITT) support model. Parent-implemented interventions for underserved families in Taiwan. Family and provider-based interventions in South Asia. The Handbook of Parent-Implemented Interventions for Very Young Children with Autism is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians/professionals, and graduate students in clinical child, school, and developmental psychology, family studies, behavioral therapy, and social work as well as rehabilitation medicine/therapy, child and adolescent psychiatry, pediatrics, and special education/educational psychology.