Empathy is fundamental to therapeutic change. This engaging and accessible text teaches students the clinical skills they will need as therapists to communicate empathy and help clients change. Slattery and Park begin by outlining a framework for understanding how clients think - what meaning they give to difficult situations - and how those meaning systems are connected to cultural and other contextual factors. Chapters that follow discuss how their empathic framework can be factored into assessment, intervention, ending treatment, and even case reporting and ethical concerns. Throughout they emphasize that effective therapists possess not only strong observational, listening, and critical thinking skills, but that they also put their clients' worldviews, meaning-making, culture, and change processes at the heart of their practice. This second edition features new case studies, research, and clinical applications, as well as a streamlined presentation that better mirrors the process of mental health treatment. With extensive case material, reflection questions, and other practical tools, the book will help budding mental health practitioners understand and empathize with a diverse range of clients, develop strong therapeutic alliances, make accurate assessments that reflect clients' contexts and worldviews, and facilitate positive change.

Trauma represents a spiritual or religious violation for many people. Survivors attempt to make sense out of painful events, incorporating that meaning into their current worldview in either a harmful or a more helpful way. This volume helps mental health practitioners—many of whom are less religious than their clients—understand the important relationship between trauma and spirituality, and how to best help survivors create meaning out of their experiences. Drawing on relevant theories and research, the authors present a new conceptual framework, the Reciprocal Meaning-Making Model, demonstrating how it can guide both assessment and treatment. Through the use of case material, the authors examine a range of spiritual views, traumas, and posttraumatic reactions that are reflective of the population as a whole rather than targeting only specific religions or cultural perspectives. Given the lack of scientific literature on the topic, this book fills an important gap, and will appeal to clinicians and researchers alike.