This handbook describes evidence-based methods of assessing psychological, educational, behavioral, and developmental problems in children and adolescents. It provides state-of-the-art analyses of leading assessment tools and methods. Chapters provide an overview of childhood assessment issues, diagnostic classification systems, interviewing and report writing, traditional assessment tools and methods, such as Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). In addition, chapters address daily living, academic, and social skills, commonly encountered psychological conditions, and developmental disorders, reviewing definitions and etiology, history of assessment and diagnosis, possible comorbid conditions, and current measures and procedures. The handbook also covers specific childhood disorders that often present assessment challenges in children, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, mood disorders, pain, and feeding and eating disorders. Topics featured in this handbook include: Adaptive and developmental behavior scales. Diagnostic classification systems and how to apply them to childhood problems and disorders. Intelligence testing and its use in childhood psychological assessment. Assessment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in persons with developmental disabilities. Self-Injurious behavior in children. Prevalence and assessment of common sleep problems in children. The Handbook of Childhood Psychopathology and Developmental Disabilities Assessment is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, clinicians, and related therapists and professionals in clinical child and school psychology, pediatrics, social work, developmental psychology, behavioral therapy/rehabilitation, child and adolescent psychiatry, and special education.

As domestic violence continues to be a focus of social and psychological concern, two basic contradictory viewpoints endure: one rooted in male power dynamics, the other maintaining that both genders use and are victimized by violence. Although both sides have their merits, neither has adequately answered the crucial question: What causes conflict to escalate into violence?

"Partner Violence: A New Paradigm for Understanding Conflict Escalation"adds a third, escalation-focused paradigm to the debate, addressing the limitations of the two dominant perspectives in a comprehensive scholarly approach. This concise yet comprehensive volume examines key gender- and non-gender-related violence issues and sets out a compelling behavioral argument that using violence to control others is a rational choice. Its theoretical and empirical foundations support an in-depth study of escalating aggression in violent relationships, both throughout periods of chronic conflict and in single violent episodes. This analysis promotes a broader and deeper understanding of partner violence, suitable to developing more finely targeted, effective, and lasting interventions.

Among the key topics featured are: Gender differences in aggressive tendencies. Dominance, control, and violence. Partner violence as planned behavior. The process leading to partner violence. Partner conflict dynamics throughout relationship periods and within conflicts. Gender differences in escalatory intentions.

"Partner Violence" is an important volume for researchers, graduate students, and clinicians/professionals across various disciplines, including personality and social psychology, criminology, public health, clinical psychology, sociology, and social work. "

This book provides extraordinary insight into the subtleties and diversities of contemporary clinical practice by exploring the problematic and ambiguous concept of the transference neurosis.

Oxford Handbooks offer authoritative and up-to-date reviews of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned chapters from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates, as well as a foundation for futureresearch. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

As one of psychology's oldest fields, personality assessment is one of the most extensively studied subsets of contemporary psychology. The Oxford Handbook of Personality Assessment synthesizes new and existing literature with clinical practice to provide a comprehensive volume on contemporary personality assessment, including its historical developments, underlying methods, applications, contemporary issues, and assessment techniques. This handbook, part of the Oxford Library of Psychology, addresses both the historical roots of personality assessment and the evolution of its contemporary methodological tenets, thus providing a foundation for the handbook's other innovative focus: the application of personality assessment in clinical, personnel, and forensic assessments.
With a wealth of respected international contributors and unequalled breadth of content, the Oxford Handbook of Personality Assessment offers an authoritative and field-encompassing resource for researchers and clinicians from across the medical health and psychology disciplines (i.e., clinical psychology, psychiatry, and social work) and would be an ideal text for any graduate course on the topic of personality assessment.

The treatment of eating disorders remains controversial, protracted, and often unsuccessful. Therapists face a number of impediments to the optimal care fo their patients, from transference to difficulties in dealing with the patient's family.

Treating Eating Disorders addresses the pressure and responsibility faced by practicing therapists in the treatment of eating disorders. Legal, ethical, and interpersonal issues involving compulsory treatment, food refusal and forced feeding, managed care, treatment facilities, terminal care, and how the gender of the therapist affects treatment figure centrally in this invaluable navigational guide.

This text offers practicing clinicians strategies, interventions, suggestions, guidance and ideas to work with adults struggling with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and is intended as a reference to which clinicians will turn time and time again as issues or problems present themselves. The text will also provide a comprehensive review of the scientific literature and expand the development of an ongoing model to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

The Psychology Express undergraduate revision guide series will help you to understand key concepts quickly, revise effectively and make sure your answers stand out. This revision guide will provide concise coverage of the key areas of abnormal and clinical psychology including personality disorders, depression and mental health. It will allow students to: * prepare for exams and coursework using sample questions and assessment advice * maximise marks and approach exams with confidence * quickly grasp key research, critical issues and practical applications * use the subject-specific companion website to test knowledge, try out sample questions and view guided answers, and keep up to date with the latest study advice. Understand quickly. Revise effectively. Take exams with confidence. www.pearson-books.com/psychologyexpress

One of the few books on the topic, this updated edition offers alternatives to disease models of addiction by exploring personal pathways to recovery. Focusing on alcohol and drug problems, it provides a literature review of 40 years of studies on self-change with particular emphasis on the current decade and methodological issues (starting with how much or how little treatment constitutes "treatment"). The 24 experts keep the coverage consistently readable, and dozens of brief narratives from individuals who have successfully recovered from an addictive behavior without formal help lend valuable personal perspectives.

Fantasies of Flight invigorates the field of personality psychology by challenging the contemporary academic view that individuals are best studied as carriers of traits. Daniel Ogilvie exchanges a heart-to-heart, case study approach to understanding human behavior for the current strategies of categorizing and comparing individuals according to their manifest traits. Ogilvie asks and endeavors to answer questions like "What were the psychological conditions that led Sir James Barrie to create a character named Peter Pan?" and "What were the dynamics behind the Marshall Herff Applewhite's conviction that a space ship, hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet, would rescue him and his Heaven's Gate followers after they enacted a mass suicide pact in 1997?" Answering these questions requires him to resurrect "old" ways to think about personality and "old" strategies for studying individuals one by one. Early in the book, Ogilvie reviews the history of why intensive case studies were discredited in psychology and describes how Sigmund Freud's psychobiographical account of Leonardo da Vinci's fascination with flight inadvertently abetted critics of psychoanalytic psychology. He then performs a partial psychobiography of James Barrie and the origins of Peter Pan, followed by an investigation of Carl Jung, who fashioned the collective unconscious to serve as humankind's link to eternity. Arguing that personality psychology needs to become less insular, Ogilvie integrates information from the disciplines of developmental psychology and neuroscience into a theory regarding the latent needs that both Barrie and Jung sought to satisfy. The theory, including its emphasis on the onset of self and consciousness, is then applied to an array of well-known and obscure individuals with ascensionistic inclinations. Well written and accessible, but complex and scholarly, this volume will restore interest in the investigation of people's inner lives.

Research in children's mental health lags behind research for adults in part because it is intrinsically context-bound. Children are embedded in families, in schools, and in communities who have responsibility for their care. Making research findings useful and ensuring that they are applied to improve the lives of children and families requires attention to these contexts. This entails a process of collaboration with many partners-teachers, nurses, healthcare providers, church leaders, neighborhood group directors, and other community leaders. The process of collaboration in children's mental health is complicated but the products that it yields have the potential to benefit both children and families. This volume, with the toolkit and casebook that it contains, distills the process of collaboration into manageable steps, and provides concrete examples of how researchers have addressed specific challenges. The premise of the book is that collaborative research, in contrast to traditional research paradigms, will yield findings that are more ethical, valid, and useful. Highlighting the transformation of science from ivory-tower theories to action-oriented practices, the editors offer practical advice for researchers and practitioners interested in using data to inform and transform children's mental health. Concrete examples of projects that have involved community leaders and researchers provide an insider's guide to conducting successful collaborations that can yield better results than traditional top-down research paradigms.

Does living a stress-filled life lead to elevated blood pressure? And if so, do strategies to better manage stress effectively lower blood pressure? In this authoritative and comprehensive book, Kevin T. Larkin examines more than a half-century of empirical evidence obtained to test the common assumption that stress is associated with the onset and maintenance of essential hypertension (high blood pressure).While the research confirms that stress does play a role in the exacerbation of essential hypertension, numerous other factors must also be considered, among them obesity, exercise, and smoking, as well as demographic, constitutional, and psychological concerns. The author discusses the effectiveness of strategies developed to manage stress and thereby lower blood pressure and concludes with suggestions and directions for further study.

Schizophrenia is the most widely known and feared mental illness worldwide, yet a rapidly growing literature from a broad spectrum of basic and clinical disciplines, especially epidemiology and molecular genetics, suggests that schizophrenia is the same condition as a psychotic bipolar disorder and does not exist as a separate disease. The goal is to document and interpret these data to justify eliminating the diagnosis of schizophrenia from the nomenclature. The author reviews the changing diagnostic concepts of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with a historical perspective to clarify how the current conflict over explanations for psychosis has arisen. That two disorders, schizophrenia and bipolar, known as the Kraepelinian dichotomy, account for the functional psychoses has been a cornerstone of Psychiatry for over 100 years, but is questioned because of substantial similarities and overlap between these two disorders. Literature in the field demonstrates that psychotic patients are frequently misdiagnosed as suffering from the disease called schizophrenia when they suffer from a psychotic mood disorder. Such patients, their families, and their caretakers suffer significant disadvantages from the misdiagnosis. Psychotic patients misdiagnosed with schizophrenia receive substandard care regarding their medications, thus allowing their bipolar conditions to worsen. Other adverse effects are substantial and will be included. Liability for medical malpractice is of critical importance for the mental health professionals who make the majority of the diagnoses of schizophrenia. The concept put forward in this work will have a discipline-altering impact.

The central thesis of Schizotypy: Implications for Illness and Health is both challenging and controversial: that the features of psychotic disorders actually lie on a continuum with, and form part of, normal behaviour and experience. The dispositional or 'schizotypal' traits associated with psychotic disorders certainly predispose an individual to mental illness, but they may also lead to positive outcomes such as enhanced creativity or spiritual experience. Discussion of each aspect of this theme is supported by extensive experimental and clinical evidence, questioning the received medical wisdom which treats psychotic illness in the narrow context of neurological disease. The result is an authoritative and provocative overview of an important topic in psychological research and clinical practice.

This book is developed from the framework of locating childhood and adolescence within the wider context of South African society. The merging world-view and identity of South African children are described. A portion of the book describes the psychological traumas associated with political unrest and a society undergoing major transition, paying particular attention to three major traumas: child abuse and neglect, children who have been the victims of an unjust and inequitable educational system, and children caught in the "war" of political violence. The book addresses issues within the South African context by recognizing the effects of the wider social, economic, and political setting. By promoting a better understanding of diverse cultures, a mechanism is in place for bringing about reconciliation in a divided society.

A thoroughly updated version of a key practitioner text, this new edition includes a treatment manual of cognitive-behavioural therapy for Bipolar Disorder which incorporates the very latest understanding of the psycho-social aspects of bipolar illness. * Updated to reflect treatment packages developed by the authors over the last decade, and the successful completion of a large randomized controlled study which shows the efficacy of CBT for relapse prevention in Bipolar Disorder * Demonstrates the positive results of a combined approach of cognitive behavioural therapy and medication * Provides readers with a basic knowledge of bipolar disorders and its psycho-social aspects, treatments, and the authors' model for psychological intervention * Includes numerous clinical examples and case studies

Although forced migration is not new in human history it has become, in our time, one of the world's major problems. In the last few decades, armed conflict and political unrest have created vast numbers of asylum seekers, refugees and displaced persons. This has led, in turn to increasing involvement of professional care workers and agencies, both governmental and nongovernmental. While there is no doubt on the part of helping parties that care is necessary, there is considerable debate about the kind of care that is needed. This book presents a critical review of mental health care provisions for people who have had to leave their homeland, and explores the controversies surrounding this topic. Providing fresh perspectives on an age old problem, this book covers humanitarian aid and reconstruction programs as well as service provision in host countries. It is of interest to all those who provide health services, create policy, and initiate legislation for these populations.

Six decades after the serendipitous discovery of chlorpromazine as an antipsychotic and four decades after the launch of clozapine, the first atypical or second generation antipsychotic, psychopharmacology has arrived at an important crossroad. It is clear that pharmacological research and pharmaceutical development must now focus on complementary or even alternative mechanisms of action to address unmet medical needs, i.e. poorly treated domains of schizophrenia, improved acceptance by patients, better adherence to medication, safety in psychoses in demented patients, and avoiding cardiac and metabolic adverse effects. The first completely novel mechanisms evolving from our insights into the pathophysiology of psychotic disorders, especially the role of glutamatergic mechanisms in schizophrenia, are now under development, and further principles are on the horizon. This situation, in many respects similar to that when the initial second-generation antipsychotics became available, can be rewarding for all. Preclinical and clinical researchers now have the opportunity to confirm their hypotheses and the pharmaceutical industry may be able to develop really novel classes of therapeutics.

When we were approached by the publishers of the Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology to prepare a new volume on antipsychotics, our intention was to capture both, the accumulated preclinical and clinical knowledge about current antipsychotics as well as prospects for new and potentially more specific antischizophrenia principles. These efforts should be based on the pathophysiology of the diseases and the affected neurotransmitter systems. Since preclinical research on antipsychotic compounds is only reliable when intimately linked through translational aspects to clinical results, we decided to include clinical science as well. It turned out that that this endeavor could not be covered by a single volume. We thank the editorial board and the publishers for supporting our decision to prepare two volumes: Current Antipsychotics and Novel Antischizophrenia Treatments. These topics cannot really be separated from one another and should be seen as a composite entity despite the somewhat arbitrary separation of contributions into two volumes. The continuing challenges of developing improved and safer antipsychotic medications remain of concern and are discussed in the first volume. The new opportunities for the field to develop and license adjunctive treatments for the negative symptoms and cognitive deficits that are treated inadequately by existing compounds have been incentivized recently and provide the focus for the second volume. We hope these collective contributions will facilitate the development of improved treatments for the full range of symptomatology seen in the group of schizophrenias and other major psychotic disorders.

Gerhard Gross, Ludwigshafen, Germany

Mark A. Geyer, La Jolla, CA

This volume will try to put current therapy - achievements, shortcomings, remaining medical needs - and emerging new targets into the context of increasing knowledge regarding the genetic and neurodevelopmental contributions to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Some of the chapters will also deal with respective experimental and clinical methodology, biomarkers, and translational aspects of drug development. Non-schizophrenia indications will be covered to some extent, but not exhaustively."

Practitioners are faced with the complexity of health and social service work and are bombarded with policy directives, quick-fix prescriptions, new fads, and conflicting opinions. Emergent Practice Planning supports practitioners in working with the complexity of issues and developing an integrated approach to practice. This textbook aims to provide an opportunity for inexperienced practitioners to think through the issues that define practice and develop an integrated and intentional approach, including assessment, planning, evaluation, and continuous learning. Emergent Practice Planning is a significant resource for school psychologists, school counsellors, child practitioners, child psychologists, and upper-level students of school psychology.

Traditional psychology has long been concerned with cognition, motivation, emotion, and the mind in general?the mind being held responsible for individual behavior in society?and scholars of social and cultural psychology have worked in relative isolation. Meaning in Action is a bold departure as it places culture at the center of human functioning and posits that it is not the independent mind that gives rise to human action but participation in a world of socially created meanings. Each chapter illuminates the socially grounded view of the individual. Investigations into the power of shared meanings, norms, and moralities in everyday life, as well as individual and social narratives, point to their pivotal significance in human relationships. Among other topics, it provides new insights into forgiveness, infant adoption, trauma, supranational identity, and prejudice. The book offers an alternative to the widely dominant vision of psychological functioning and draws on a wide variety of current movements to present a deeply challenging and globally integrative view of human behavior.

Marriage and other long-term committed relationships are an integral part of our lives and confer many benefits. People in satisfying marriages report greater life happiness, live longer, and are less vulnerable to mental and physical illness. Unfortunately, many couples experience significant relationship distress and about half of marriages end in divorce. Among those who stay married, a notable number of couples remain in unstable, severely distressed marriages for years or even decades. Given the serious physical and psychological consequences of relationship distress and divorce for spouses and their children, it is clear that relationship science-the basic and applied study of relationship development, maintenance, and dysfunction-is of critical importance. The Oxford Handbook of Relationship Science and Couple Interventions showcases cutting-edge research in relationship science, including couple functioning, relationship education, and couple therapy. The book presents the most current definitions of and classifications for relationship dysfunction and discusses the latest research on the biological, psychological, and interpersonal causes and correlates of couple dysfunction and subsequent treatment implications. The latest findings regarding empirically supported prevention and treatment interventions for couple dysfunction are highlighted, as well as diversity and cultural issues in the context of working with couples. This Handbook will appeal to researchers who seek to understand the development of relationship distress and design interventions to prevent and treat couple distress and clinicians who are diagnosing, assessing, and treating couple dysfunction.

The treatment of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a complex challenge. This book provides comprehensive, scientific coverage of the numerous different types of drugs that are used to treat ADHD, and it examines the historical, sociological, and policy-related factors involved in the use of ADHD medications. A national study indicated that 11 percent of U.S. children and teens were diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in 2011-a figure 43 percent higher than in 2003. The incidence of ADHD diagnoses among females has also increased significantly. For the millions of Americans of all ages who are diagnosed with ADHD, the proper treatment of this disorder is critically important. ADHD Medications: History, Science, and Issues provides readers with the complete story of ADHD drugs. The book discusses the pharmacological basis of the effects of these powerful drugs; examines the myriad social dimensions of the use, misuse, and abuse of these substances; and identifies the range of issues that affect the recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of ADHD. After an introductory case study of an individual with ADHD and this individual's problems and successes with ADHD medicines, this new book in the Story of a Drug series provides an overview of ADHD and its various symptoms, as well as the causes, prevalence, and diagnosis of ADHD. Various treatment approaches-including information about the many medications used-are discussed in detail, as well as other substances and alternative ways used to treat individuals with ADHD. Readers will also gain an understanding of neurotransmission and the specific mechanism of action of ADHD medications; the effects and applications of these drugs, plus their associated risks, misuse, and abuse; as well as related policy issues, with special focus on the controversial issues regarding ADHD drug scheduling (categorization). Provides broad background coverage of ADHD and of various types of drugs that can be used to treat symptoms of ADHD Explains how different types of ADHD medications work in the body Delves into issues and controversies related to ADHD medications, including their prescription to young children and recreational use by individuals without ADHD