This book challenges professional and public misconceptions of schizophrenia as an illness with intractable symptoms and inexorable mental deterioration, educating clinicians and researchers on the effectiveness of treatment to change the course of or prevent the onset of illness. The authors illustrate such effectiveness through fifteen case studies examining psychosis in diverse clients. These case studies are divided into the three phases of the illness-prodromal/clinical high risk, first-episode, chronic, and treatment-refractory-with accompanying analyses of the causes, symptoms, interventions and treatments. By depicting patients at different clinical stages of the illness, with accompanying explanations of how they got to that point, what might have been done to avoid - or has been done to achieve - this outcome, the reader will gain an appreciation of the nature of the illness and for the therapeutic potential of currently available treatments. Readers will learn about the various clinical aspects of schizophrenia and treatment including diagnosis, prognosis, clinical presentation, suicide risk, cognitive deficits, stigma, medication management, and psychosocial interventions.

This book challenges professional and public misconceptions of schizophrenia as an illness with intractable symptoms and inexorable mental deterioration, educating clinicians and researchers on the effectiveness of treatment to change the course of or prevent the onset of illness. The authors illustrate such effectiveness through fifteen case studies examining psychosis in diverse clients. These case studies are divided into the three phases of the illness-prodromal/clinical high risk, first-episode, chronic, and treatment-refractory-with accompanying analyses of the causes, symptoms, interventions and treatments. By depicting patients at different clinical stages of the illness, with accompanying explanations of how they got to that point, what might have been done to avoid - or has been done to achieve - this outcome, the reader will gain an appreciation of the nature of the illness and for the therapeutic potential of currently available treatments. Readers will learn about the various clinical aspects of schizophrenia and treatment including diagnosis, prognosis, clinical presentation, suicide risk, cognitive deficits, stigma, medication management, and psychosocial interventions.

A CHILLING FOLLOW-UP TO THE POPULAR TRUE CRIME BOOK THE ANATOMY OF EVIL Revisiting Dr. Michael Stone's groundbreaking 22-level Gradations of Evil Scale, a hierarchy of evil behavior first introduced in the book The Anatomy of Evil, Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato, a fellow violence and serious psychopathology expert, here provide even more detail, using dozens of cases to exemplify the categories along the continuum. The New Evil also presents compelling evidence that, since a cultural tipping-point in the 1960s, certain types of violent crime have emerged that in earlier decades never or very rarely occurred. The authors examine the biological and psychiatric factors behind serial killing, serial rape, torture, mass and spree murders, and other severe forms of violence. They persuasively argue that, in at least some cases, a collapse of moral faculties contributes to the commission of such heinous crimes, such that "evil" should be considered not only a valid area of inquiry, but, in our current cultural climate, an imperative one. They consider the effects of new technologies and sociological, cultural, and historical factors since the 1960s that may have set the stage for "the new evil." Further, they explain how personality, psychosis, and other qualities can meaningfully contribute to particular crimes, making for many different motives. Relying on their extensive clinical experience, and examination of writings and artwork by infamous serial killers, these experts offer many insights into the logic that drives horrible criminal behavior, and they discuss the hope that in the future such violence may be prevented.