This chapter helps readers to understand the main characteristics of the three major types of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating. It also examines each disorder from a neurobiological perspective, including genetic factors when known, neuroimaging results, the understanding of neurotransmitter dysregulation, cognitive performance, and various types of treatment. The chapter then presents the consideration of the unique challenges associated with comorbidity, societal pressure, and medical implications. Eating disorders are increasingly common, debilitating, and potentially life-threatening disorders that are clearly linked in their neurobiological basis. Mental health professionals should be aware of the signs and symptoms of eating disorders, as individuals might not disclose their eating habits as readily as their mood, anxiety level, or other symptoms. Treatment is complex, as no medication has been shown to be consistently effective, and each eating disorder will bring with it specific goals.

This chapter discusses the social psychology of humor, starting with a walk through how the presence of other people can make things seem funnier. It shows how humor can have a positive or a negative tone and it can focus on ourselves or on those around us. Self-enhancing humor makes stress tolerable. It can keep folks from viewing minor annoyances as unbearable disasters. The chapter sketches how humor can function to maintain the status quo. People who report using self-enhancing humor show less anxiety, neuroticism, and depression; better psychological well-being and self-esteem, and more extraversion, optimism, and openness to experience. When it comes to hierarchies, getting a feel for who’s cracking jokes and laughing can communicate who’s top dog. The chapter finally focuses on gender differences, and then sees how humor contributes to developing friendships, finding a date, and maintaining an intimate relationship.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with children addresses four main aims: to decrease behavior, to increase behavior, to remove anxiety, and to facilitate development. Each of these aims targets one of the four main groups of children referred to treatment. This chapter suggests a route for applying effective interventions in the day-to-day work of social workers who are involved in direct interventions with children and their families. An effective intervention is one that links developmental components with evidence-based practice to help enable clients to live with, accept, cope with, resolve, and overcome their distress and to improve their subjective well-being. CBT offers a promising approach to address such needs for treatment efficacy, on the condition that social workers adapt basic CBT to the specific needs of children and design the intervention holistically to foster change in children. Adolescent therapy covers rehabilitative activities and reduces the disability arising from an established disorder.

This chapter focuses on the desensitization phase during which the therapist processes the dysfunctional material. It explores a range of issues that are frequently raised in this phase, including therapist anxiety and abreactions and explores challenges during the desensitization phase, such as blocked processing and the use of cognitive interweaves. It is not only the client who gets anxious about the desensitization phase. It can be very daunting to the new EMDR practitioner. Performance anxiety can be a block for the therapist as well as for the client. The therapists’ role is distinct in this phase and involves supporting the client verbally with minimum intervention unless the client is stuck. They should help the client to focus on the flow of feelings, thoughts, and body sensations as they unfold. The therapist will observe the nonverbal signs, troughs and peaks of sensations, and will monitor the changes.

This chapter presents the therapy manual detailing the specific treatment guidelines encompassing problem-solving therapy (PST). It is important during the initial sessions with a new client to develop a positive therapeutic relationship. Upon obtaining a brief version of the client’s story, it becomes important early in treatment to provide an overview of PST that includes a rationale for why it is relevant to, and potentially effective for, this individual. Problem solving can be thought of as a set of skills or tools that people use to handle, cope with, or resolve difficult situations encountered in daily living. Research has demonstrated that social problem solving is comprised of two major components. The first is called problem orientation. The second major component is one’s problem-solving style. The chapter also presents the case of a 27-year-old woman suffering from multiple concerns, including anxiety, depression, fears of “going crazy”, and prior alcohol abuse.

To give an illustration of the basic clinical practice of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), this chapter provides a case illustration of Jane who is a 27-year-old woman afflicted with severe social and work anxiety. Jane held the common psychoanalytical belief that people become disturbed because of the traumatic events of their childhood. The irrational beliefs (IBs) about her nervousness led Jane to take her primary symptom, that is anxiety, and turn it into a deadly secondary symptom. An REBT technique adopted from general semantics is referenting. Using this method with Jane, the author helped her to write down and regularly review the advantages of making herself uncomfortable and overcoming her low frustration tolerance when she forced herself to act unsuitably. The author started with her emotional problems and showed her how to minimize or eliminate them and then solved practical problems.

Clients with dissociative identity disorder (DID) or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS) live with a multiple reality disorder where parts are often living in the past and are not aware of where they are, the current date, or the time. The goal of this resource is to reduce the anxiety of parts living in the past and increase the client’s ability to differentiate the past from the present. Beginning with the host, adult, or other oriented parts, make a list of information that the disoriented parts need to be oriented and to decrease anxiety. Once the list is developed, install the list using dual attention stimulation (DAS). Useful items tend to be concrete and help differentiate the past from the present. If the client is being abused in some way in the present, often there are ways to differentiate the past from the present.

This chapter illustrates how Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can be applied in the treatment of specific fears and phobic conditions. It includes summary sheets to facilitate gathering information, client documentation, and quick retrieval of salient information while formulating a treatment plan. Treatment of a fear or a phobic condition cannot be started if the therapist is unaware of the factors that cause and maintain the anxiety response. The main features of a specific phobia are that the fear is elicited by a specific and limited set of stimuli that confrontation with these stimuli results in intense fear and avoidance behavior, and that the fear is unreasonable and excessive to a degree that interferes with daily life. The DSM–IV–TR distinguishes the following five main categories or subtypes of specific phobia: Animal type, Natural environment type, Situational type, Blood, injury, injection type, and other types.

The purpose of the constructive avoidance script is to assist clients in dealing with their anxiety or stress-provoking present day situations. Dissociative clients generally are phobic or avoidant of many activities such as medical procedures, going to the dentist, taking examinations, going for job interviews, and so forth due to the complex nature of their traumas, panic, anxiety, and other trauma-related problems. When the client is going to encounter a situation that has caused high stress or triggering in the past and has not completed eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) target focusing on that issue, chances are that the ego states involved are not yet ready to deal with the situation. The client can practice with the parts before the upcoming event in sessions and as homework between sessions. This protocol assumes that clients have already established a Home Base and Workplace.

This author is interested in the idea of consolidating information in an accessible form throughout her career. The Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Summary Sheet was the result of a need on her part to have access to all of the relevant information concerning client information and EMDR interventions at a glance. This EMDR Summary Sheet is a way to consolidate important client information quickly and succinctly. It contains details such as the name of the patient, diagnosis, paper and pencil test results, goals, presenting problem, touchstone event, and experiences of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and any anticipatory anxiety. Major themes/cognitive interweaves and present resources are also noted.