This chapter presents a case study on performance dysfunction in the case of a 21-year-old African American female basketball player entering her senior year at a major Division I-level university. She described regret about not working out harder during the off-season, which she blamed for a poor start to her current season. In addition, she also reported feeling a great deal of worry over the possibility that she may have a poor season and ruin her chance to be drafted in the first round of the WNBA entry draft. According to the case formulation model, there are 10 elements that are necessary to consider prior to making an intervention decision contextual performance demands; skill level; situational demands; transitional and developmental issues; psychological characteristics/performance and nonperformance schemas; attentional focus; cognitive responses; affective responses; behavioral responses; and readiness for change and level of reactance.

This chapter presents a case study on performance development with the case of a man who reported that he had been “ultra successful” in every facet of his business life and was happily married and living with his wife of three years in a large suburban home. He described himself as “feeling stuck”, which he described as the belief that he had gone as far as he could go without improving in fundamental areas in his life. The consequences of the avoidant behaviors led him to feel quite overwhelmed. Preintervention psychological functioning was assessed with a standard semi-structured interview and three self-report measures selected based on specific processes that appeared most likely to be relevant to the performer’s referral issue. The measures utilized included the Young Schema Questionnaire-Short Form, the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-Revised, and the Profile of Mood States.

Over the past 25 years there has been a growing recognition of the importance of working with families of persons with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and treatment-refractory depression. Family intervention can be provided by a wide range of professionals, including social workers, psychologists, nurses, psychiatrists, and counselors. This chapter provides an overview of two empirically supported family intervention models for major mental illness: behavioral family therapy (BFT) and multifamily groups (MFGs), both of which employ a combination of education and cognitive behavior techniques such as problem solving training. Some families have excellent communication skills and need only a brief review, as provided in the psychoeductional stage in the handout “Keys to Good Communication”. One of the main goals of BFT is to teach families a systematic method of solving their own problems.

Cognitive behavior theory attempts to deconstruct individual differences in vulnerability, adaptation, and development of psychopathology, through systematic assessment of a client’s thoughts and behaviors, and use of empirically validated interventions. This chapter presents an overview of depression, demonstrates empirical support for CBT and clarifies its potential usefulness in social work settings. Albert Ellis’s rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) was developed in the 1950s. Albert Ellis’s REBT model uses cognitive restructuring to change irrational thoughts. Behavior therapy is founded on the premise that when environmental consequences are linked to particular behaviors, the consequence either increases or decreases the likelihood of a person responding in the same manner when confronted with similar stimuli in the future. Despite extensive research into variables that might contribute to suicidal behaviors, evaluating suicide risk continues to be both clinically difficult and scientifically imperfect for mental health providers.

This chapter offers a brief and focused review of human development, with specific emphasis on cognition and emotion. It is essential that the reader distinguishes between cognitive development, cognitive psychology, and cognitive therapy. Both short-term and long-term memory improve, partly as a result of other cognitive developments such as learning strategies. Adolescents have the cognitive ability to develop hypotheses, or guesses, about how to solve problems. The pattern of cognitive decline varies widely and the differences can be related to environmental factors, lifestyle factors, and heredity. Wisdom is a hypothesized cognitive characteristic of older adults that includes accumulated knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge to practical problems of living. Cognitive style and format make the mysterious understandable for the individual. Equally, an understanding of an individual’s cognitive style and content help the clinician better understand the client and structure therapeutic experiences that have the greatest likelihood of success.

This chapter and the intervention protocol that follows seek to better understand and ultimately influence human performance through understanding how internal processes interact with external demands. Many factors determine the effectiveness of human performance. The myriad of factors contributing to functional as well as dysfunctional human performance can be summarized as follows: instrumental competencies, environmental stimuli and performance demands, dispositional characteristics, and behavioral self-regulation. The chapter presents the model of functional and dysfunctional human performance that involves three broad yet interactive phases, namely performance phase, postperformance response, and competitive performance. The professional literature in both clinical and cognitive psychology suggests that individuals develop an interactive pattern of self and other mental schemas. The accumulated empirical evidence has led to similar findings in studies across many forms of human performance. Chronic performance dysfunction is much more likely to be associated with an avoidant coping style.

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.

When Charles, a 46-year-old divorced male with an extensive psychiatric history of depression, substance abuse, and disordered eating resulting in a suicide attempt, erratic employment, and two failed marriages, began treatment with a clinical social worker trained in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), he was an angry, dysphoric individual beginning yet another cycle of destructive behavior. This chapter provides the reader with an overview of the standard DBT model as developed by Linehan. Dialectical behavior therapy, which engages vulnerable individuals early in its treatment cycle by acknowledging suffering and the intensity of the biosocial forces to be overcome and then attending to resulting symptoms, appears to be the model most congruent with and responsive to the cumulative scientific and theoretical research indicating the need for the development of self-regulatory abilities prior to discussions of traumatic material or deeply held schema.

Geniuses have been around for a very long time. Genuine scientific inquiries into the psychology of genius came much later. The investigators engaged in these inquiries adopted two main approaches: psychometrics and historiometrics. Not only was Francis Galton the first psychometrician to study genius, but he himself was a genius. Psychometric research represents the most common way that research psychologists investigate genius. The principal alternative is a technique known as historiometrics. Frederick Woods also conducted historiometric research of his own. In 1906, he had studied the inheritance of intellectual and moral genius in royal families, and in 1913 he examined the influence of political genius on the welfare of the nations ruled. Lewis M. Terman had also explored a method of calculating intelligence quotient (IQ) scores using historiometric methods. Unlike psychometrics and historiometrics, psychobiography constitutes a single-case qualitative approach.

Old age brings with it unique challenges in diagnosis, treatment, and care; dementia complicates these issues even more. Improving the management and care of persons with dementia has positive implications for patients, caregivers, and physicians alike. Two types of secondary complications can be analyzed in relation to dementia: conditions that arise outside of the dementia and then conditions that appear to develop due to the neurological degeneration inherent in dementia. Examples of psychiatric complications include depression, anxiety, and psychosis. Medical problems consist of issues such as stroke, cardiovascular problems, cancer, infections, orthopedic issues, diabetes, nutritional disorders, vision and hearing problems, as well as general pain. The high comorbidity of dementias with other psychiatric and medical issues can complicate the diagnosis and treatment of patients with dementia. Issues in the central nervous system (CNS) have long been looked at as possible predictors of dementia.

Students and professionals in the field of psychology are encouraged to understand diverse populations. Life scripts are formed in childhood, and feelings of alienation seeded in their early years can haunt the gifted throughout their lifespan. Gifted individuals need professionals who understand their striving, their search for meaning, their yearning for connection, and their complexity, sensitivity, and intensity. They need professionals alert to the issues of giftedness—who use this template to help their clients develop greater self-awareness. Those who are interested in success equate giftedness with eminence. The Great Divide in the field of gifted education and psychology stems, in part, from polarized perceptions of IQ testing. Gifted behavior occurs when there is an interaction among three basic clusters of human traits: above-average general and/or specific abilities, high levels of task commitment, and high levels of creativity.

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is the third leading cause of dementia in large pathological series but tends to have an earlier age of onset than Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Lewy body dementia, the most frequent and second most frequent forms of dementia. Semantic dementia (SD) includes impairment in the understanding of the meanings of words and difficulty in identifying objects. Semantic primary progressive aphasia, also known as SD, includes difficulties with naming and single-word comprehension although grammar and fluency are often spared. SD is a disorder that involves loss of semantic memory, anomia, receptive aphasia, and an actual loss of word meaning. The chapter presents some assessment tools that are those conducted by a psychologist or a neuropsychologist. Such an evaluation should include a clinical interview and neuropsychological examination. SD has been associated with ubiquitin-positive, TAR-DNA-binding protein-43 (TDP-43)-positive, tau-negative inclusions.

This chapter discusses the effects of personality with respect to the other, that of getting ahead. The literature examining the impact of personality on career-related outcomes is vast and stretches back to the beginnings of psychology. The chapter reviews the most important research and paradigms concerning the areas of: academic achievement, work performance, leadership and entrepreneurship. Early reviews of the relationship between personality and job performance seemed to suggest that personality was a trivial or insignificant predictor of job performance. Psychological theories focusing on leaders’ personality or traits were influenced by Carlyle’s ‘Great Man‘ theory of leadership, which posited that ‘the history of the world was the biography of great men’. Over the past 20 years, an increasing amount of attention has been given to the area of bad leadership. The literature on personality and leadership suggests that a leader’s personality has a substantial influence on how the group performs.

This chapter suggests some new directions that personality research is, or should be, taking as well as the future agenda of this research. In contrast, personality psychology provides us with a solid evidence base that people can lean on when searching for answers about human nature. Personality refers to the stable and consistent patterns we observe in how people behave, feel, and think. Associations between personality and intelligence have been found on the measurement level and hypothesized at a conceptual level. It is supposedly human nature not to trust humankind to provide the unselfish responses in questionnaires, or to possess an adequate level of self-awareness. Admittedly, this trend has been changing. An increasing number of organizations are using self-report personality measures and even laypeople seem to accept the notion of questionnaires more kindly than before.

This chapter explores the incidence of giftedness, the parallels between degrees of delay and advancement, giftedness as an organizing principle, different levels of giftedness, typical characteristics throughout the lifespan, and why it is important to recognize advanced development as early as possible. Educators forgot the integral role of psychologists in the development of the gifted, and psychology abandoned the gifted. The 21st century holds promise of reconnecting gifted education with its psychological roots. Giftedness is a psychological reality—the opposite end of the spectrum from Intellectual Developmental Disorder, as it is referred to in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). When a psychologist evaluates a child and concludes that the child is gifted, it often has a ripple effect on the parents’ self-perceptions. Gifted adults, perhaps more than any other group, have the potential to achieve a high degree of self-actualization.

It is time for a psychology of giftedness—time to recognize the developmental differences, personality traits, lifespan development, particular issues and struggles of the gifted, as well as the consequences of not being acceptable. The focus on eminence ignores the exceptionally gifted, the twice exceptional, underachievers, gifted preschoolers, women who chose parenting as the main expression of their gifts, gifted teachers, gifted elders, self-actualizing volunteers—the gifted whose names shall never be known. Gifted babies tend to be responsive infants, sometimes smiling early, which elicits the best from their parents. As the concept of mental age has been abandoned in psychology, there is little awareness that gifted children’s friendship patterns and social conceptions are more related to their mental age than their chronological age. Acceleration and home-schooling can ameliorate the social alienation of exceptionally gifted children. And gifted children demonstrate higher intrinsic than extrinsic motivation.

Positive psychology has received a lot of popular press and media attention in the past several years. A core assumption of positive psychology is that people want to live lives of meaning and purpose, beyond simply avoiding hassles or correcting problems. Positive psychology arose from within the context of the mental health profession, having been heavily influenced by the medical model and the corresponding emphases on pathology, illnesses, and weaknesses, with “scant knowledge of what makes life worth living”. One of the goals of positive psychology was “to begin to catalyze a change in the focus of psychology from preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building positive qualities”. Much of psychology has been built upon the premise that improving deficits will help us lead fuller and more productive lives. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions illustrates the adaptive value of positive affect.

So here the authors are, caught between two worldviews. In one camp, they have educators and academics, attempting to overthrow the “old guard”—those of them who define giftedness through the narrow lens of IQ tests. They are hoping to establish a raison d’etre for gifted education—a field with a wobbly foundation. In the other camp, the authors have parents and the psychologists who specialize in working with the gifted, railing against the externalizing of giftedness. They want the inner world of the gifted to be recognized and appreciated. Controversy has dogged the study of giftedness since its inception, and is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. Multiple views will somehow have to learn to coexist. The psychology of giftedness is a fledgling. An impressive number of people think they know more about the gifted than one does and they are delighted to share their opinions.

This chapter presents the most salient psychological theories of personality. Personality is a core determinant of individual differences in everyday behaviors. The chapter discusses the difference between what psychologists broadly refer to as normal and what they regard as abnormal or clinical/mental illness. If one looks for an Elvis among personality psychologists, Sigmund Freud would be the one. During the mid-20th century, behaviorism emerged as a dominant paradigm for understanding human behavior, including personality. Although the social cognitive theory of personality has its origins in the radical behaviorist tradition, it emerged in clear opposition to it. According to the lexical hypothesis, historically, the most important and socially relevant behaviors that people display will eventually become encoded into language. Indeed, personality disorders are defined as long-standing, pervasive, and inflexible patterns of behavior and inner experience that deviate from the expectations of a person’s culture.

This chapter focuses on one particular type of eyewitness memory the memory of an eyewitness for the face of the perpetrator. Eyewitness identifications are crucial evidence in upward of 80,000 criminal cases per year. Accurate eyewitness memory can help police catch criminals and can help prosecutors bring solid cases against those criminals. The person accused of a crime also deserves to have justice done to not be falsely accused or wrongfully imprisoned. To understand eyewitness memory, one has to understand perceptual psychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, motivation, emotion, reasoning, personality just about every kind of psychology we can imagine. Mistaken identifications are a memory problem. They involve a person retrieving details from memory but being mistaken in the recollection of those details. The good news is that cognitive and social psychologists have been hard at work in developing science-based approaches that can reduce the problem.

This chapter provides selective review of research on religion and spirituality across three groups of racial and ethnic minority older adults African American, Asian American, and Hispanic/Latino. It discusses major denomination and faith traditions, as well as information about types and patterns of participation and their sociodemographic correlates. The chapter examines informal social support provisions within faith communities and the types of assistance exchanged. It also examines associations between religion, spirituality and physical/mental health, and psychological well-being. Religion and spirituality, through a variety of psychosocial mechanisms and pathways are thought to have largely beneficial impacts on physical and mental hea.

Mood disorders are collectively one of the most common psychiatric disorders. Of these, the most frequent disorders are depression and bipolar disorder. This chapter aims to help us better understand the two most common mood disorders, depression and bipolar disorder, by reviewing the genetic, neuroanatomical, and cognitive findings of the disorders. Advancements in neuroscience have led to the development of technology, including deep brain stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), as an effective form of treatment. The most common treatments, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and psychotropic medications, have been well validated and are highly efficacious. Indeed, these two types of treatments appear nearly equivalent in decreasing the acute symptoms for depression. However, several other forms of treatment, such as deep brain stimulation (DBS), vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), can be used to ameliorate depression as well.

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.

Improved nutritional status is an important component of efforts to improve the health of older adults, whose ability to consume a healthy diet is affected by comorbidities and behavioral, cognitive, and psychological factors. In addition to genetics and nutrition intake, nutritional status of the elderly could be affected by socioeconomic factors, such as education and income levels, and environmental factors, such as proximity to stores and transportation, that can affect food variety and availability. Nutrition and aging are connected inseparably because eating patterns affect progress of many chronic and degenerative diseases associated with aging. Anthropometric measurements are often used for nutritional assessment of older adults and are reliable across ethnicities. The Mini-Nutritional Assessment (MNA) tool was developed to evaluate the risk of malnutrition among frail older adults. Dietary patterns may better capture the multifaceted effects of diet on body composition than individual nutrients or foods.

This chapter presents an illustration of the complexities involved in studying ethnic and racial influences on psychosocial processes and how they are intimately tied to physical outcomes in later life. It focuses on psychology as a discipline, minority aging research during the last several decades has revealed the need for multidisciplinary and intersectional conceptual and research approaches. The chapter also focuses on the age, gender, socioeconomic, cultural, and racial and ethnic graded influences on life course development that eventuate in unequal burdens of psychological and physical health morbidity and mortality for certain groups in late life. No section on psychology could be complete without a discussion of religion and spirituality among racial and ethnic minorities. Generational processes are clearly implicated in ideas about the cyclical nature of poverty and health behaviors that are intricately linked with environmental factors and social influence.

Evolutionary psychologists argue that passionate love is innate to human nature and is based on biological processes that are universal, applying to people of all cultures. However, it is possible that people fall in love more or less often depending on their culture's social organization and ideology. Research has found that some of the antecedents of falling in love are reciprocal liking, appearance, personality traits, similarity, familiarity and isolation. Even if romantic love occurs in many or even all cultures of the world, it is still reasonable to assume that the experience of being in love is colored by one's cultural values and the society to which one belongs. The emic approach gives us quite a different picture of what people considers love to be from that obtained with the etic approach.

This chapter explores the utility of applying the unified theory of crime with theory of developmental trajectories of childhood aggression to predict possible neuroscience-informed policy and practice strategies for improved outcomes in the management of violence and aggression in schools. Contributions of neurobiological factors to violence and aggression have received less attention in the social work literature than psychosocial factors, as is true of many behaviors that are a focus of social work practice. Specific research into violence in the schools has focused less on neurological contributors to youth aggression in the school setting, and more on hypothesized trigger behaviors or events such as bullying, and social rejection. When examining neurological underpinnings to violence in schools, the role of health disparities and related educational status disproportionalities emerge in the policy context. Enacting schoolwide screening policies for behavioral risk factors has shown promise as a violence prevention step for some time.

This chapter reviews some of the earlier approaches through psychology to understanding what love is. It considers some of the major approaches namely philosophical approaches, literary approaches and clinical approaches. The philosophical approaches include reinforcement theories and cognitive-consistency theories. For many people, love is the most important thing in their lives. Perhaps the earliest approach to understanding the nature of love was through philosophy. Literature helps us understand not only love but also the forces that can undermine and even destroy love: family quarrels, economic hardship, incompatible goals in life, jealousy, inability to control one's rage or other negative emotions, and so forth. One of the earliest approaches toward understanding the antecedents of love was based on reinforcement theories, which are theories aimed at explaining behavior through patterns of environmental rewards. Cognitive-consistency theories basically hold that people strive to keep their cognitions psychologically consistent.

This chapter presents an integrative approach to the psychological study of minority populations and the reduction of health disparities through positive nonmaterial resources. It provides a brief introduction to positive psychology and to the concept of early life origins of disease, highlighting the value of integrating these seemingly disparate literatures as a lens for studying health and broader aging processes among minority populations. Minority status whether based on ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), citizenship, religion, or other factors is a robust determinant of health, well-being, and success across the life span and intergenerationally. Positive psychology is relevant to health and development particularly physiological and psychological adaptation to stress across the life span, and even across multiple generations among humans in general and among minority populations in particular. Health inequalities are the result of unique challenges to successful psychological and physiological adaptation faced by minority group members.

This chapter describes British psychologist Charles Spearman’s work, among the most influential in all of psychology. It shows how psychologists developed and advanced their views of intelligence over much of the 20th century. The chapter focuses on arguments over whether intelligence is one thing or many things. The American psychologist L. L. Thurstone interested in human intelligence, and although one of his early books is largely conceptual, his later, empirical work resulted in the theory of primary mental abilities (PMA), consisting of word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial visualization, number facility, associative memory, reasoning, and perceptual speed. Unlike Spearman, David Wechsler viewed intelligence as an effect rather than a cause and asserted that nonintellective factors, such as personality, contribute to the development of each person’s intelligence. Many of the ideas that are manifest in the theory of successful intelligence have been part of psychological discussions for generations.

One of the best known psychologists of the 20th century was Jean Piaget. The memory he described was from when he was about 2 years old, a kidnapping attempt in which his nurse tried to protect him. According to the storehouse metaphor, memory is kind of a warehouse. When one remembers an event from one’s life, one looks through this warehouse. Remembering a past event is also a kind of simulation, a simulation of what happened in the past, rather than a veridical reproduction of the past. In fact, our best understanding is that brains are massively parallel simulation devices. Constructive theories deal with filling in gaps at encoding as the event transpires, whereas reconstructive theories deal with filling in gaps at retrieval as one tries to remember the event. When thinking about memory illusions it is important to make a similar distinction.

Perry’s theory of development has had a significant impact on the field of psychology and is essential to understanding the cognitive development of college students. This chapter provides an overview of Perry’s theory and describes the ways in which it still applies to college students on a diverse, pluralistic college campus. The chapter discusses how Perry’s theory continues to apply to the diversified college student population common in modern American institutions of higher education. It outlines the ways in which Perry’s scheme applies to Fatima, the contextual and pluralistic challenges faced at each position, and future development, should Fatima continue to courageously accept responsibility for her moral development and overcome the ambiguities of relativism. The chapter describes utilizing Perry’s scheme as a lens through which to view Fatima’s development, anticipate deflections from growth, and identify strategies and campus and community resources to foster inclusivity, personal exploration, and continued development.

The multicultural movement in counseling and psychology has begun to provide scholars and practitioners with contextually relevant, systems-based ecological approaches to counseling as alternatives to the traditional theoretical models of human behavior and intervention that are based on Western dominant culture. This chapter provides awareness of the complexity of multicultural issues among individuals with disabilities and discusses culturally sensitive strategies to work with people with disabilities (PWDs). It reviews legislative mandates related to diversity and multiculturalism in rehabilitation and addresses the relationship between disability and culture in the scope of rehabilitation practice. The chapter introduces multiculturalism and multicultural counseling models as a therapeutic framework and provides guidelines to help psychologists increase their cultural sensitivity. It also provides strategies to work with individuals with disabilities from minority backgrounds.

The ideas of Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato all contribute to the foundation of our understanding of the nature of human intelligence. Their ideas on topics as diverse as the origin of ability, the mind-body relationship, and general inquiry methods continued to inspire thinkers centuries later and influenced those who shaped modern psychology and intelligence theory. This chapter provides an overview of recent research on how people’s beliefs about intelligence impact their behaviors, a body of research that has significant implications for education. The emergence of reliable genetic and neurological research methodologies is creating a new area of study in which environmental, biological, and psychological facets of intelligence are studied simultaneously. Structure of Intellect (SOI) model represents a very different approach to theories of intelligence. Recent technological advances have encouraged explorations into the relationship between brain function and specific types of cognitive functioning.

This chapter describes the various roles and functions of the treatment program or clinical management staff in the residential facility. It characterizes the roles of support staff and agency personnel. Teachers, physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, lawyers, and accountants in the TC ply their professions in the usual way. The relationship between staff and peer roles is rooted in the evolution of the Therapeutic Community (TC). In the TC approach, the role of staff is complex and can be contrasted with that of mental health and human service providers in other settings. An array of staff activities underscores the distinctively humanistic focus of the TC. The chapter describes how primary clinical staff in the treatment program supervise the daily activities of the peer community through their interrelated roles of facilitator, counselor, community manager, and rational authority. Other staff provide educational, vocational, legal, medical, and facility support services.

This chapter presents the formulation of the therapeutic community (TC) as theory, model, and method. The TC has proven to be a powerful treatment approach for substance abuse and related problems in living. The TC is fundamentally a self-help approach, evolved primarily outside of mainstream psychiatry, psychology, and medicine. The TC’s basic approach of treating the whole person through the use of the peer community, which was initially developed to address substance abuse, has been amplified with a variety of additional services related to family, education, vocational training, and medical and mental health. The evolution of the TC reveals the vigor, resourcefulness, and flexibility of the TC modality to expand and adapt to change. The sophistication of the TC is evident in the fact that Therapeutic Communities of America (TCA) has established criteria and procedures for evaluating counselors and certifying their competency.

This chapter helps the reader to demonstrate an understanding of the benefits of peer supervision and gain knowledge of supervision models. Peer mentoring and peer supervision are vital components of the postsecondary educational experience for all degree tracks that can promote retention, acclimation to graduate studies, and a sense of community within programs. Generally, both peer supervisors and peer mentors provide encouragement, socialization to the graduate school program, networking connections, and informal advice. The peer supervision elements may include teaching by modeling skills and preliminary review of assignments. Some programs may formally match advanced students with incoming students across the program based on common specialization interests or degree tracks, whereas other programs may consider matching based on the logistics of practica placement or joint participation in a research team project. Peer supervisors may discuss numerous aspects of the supervisee’s experience in the school psychology program.

This chapter examines the cultural and relational contexts of postpartum depression. Postpartum depression (PPD) is a debilitating, multidimensional mental health problem that affects 10"-15” of new mothers and has serious consequences for women, children, families, and marriages. Although women’s experience of postpartum depression has been the subject of considerable recent study, nearly all of this work has been interpreted within a medical or psychological frame. The chapter looks at a social constructionist lens to this body of research through a meta-data-analysis of recent qualitative studies of PPD. Though hormonal changes as a result of childbirth are related to depressive symptoms after childbirth, biological explanations alone cannot explain postpartum depression. A social constructionist approach to postpartum depression focuses on how the condition arises in the context of ongoing interpersonal and societal interaction. Climbing out of postpartum depression is an interpersonal experience that requires reconnection with others.

This chapter helps the reader to acquire knowledge of the portfolio approach to demonstrating competencies. School psychology programs are typically approved and/or accredited by state departments of education, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), and the American Psychological Association (APA) depending on the scope of the training and the degree track. Proximal data focus on changes that occur in the acquisition of graduate students’ skills, knowledge, and professional behaviors. Faculties also understand that students can be at different levels of skill acquisition across domains depending on the sequence of curricula and the length of practice with specific skills. Through the evaluation process, graduate students may be asked to sign consent for release of information form acknowledging the exchange of performance data between the practica site supervisor and the school psychology program.

This chapter helps the reader to be familiar with the concept of an advanced specialization practicum. The overarching goal is to learn core competencies for assessment, intervention, consultation, and systems-level pedagogical supports. There is an increasing need for school psychologists with expertize in high school transition and postsecondary evaluations as well as dual enrollment collaborative evaluations. Clinic-based examples of specialized practica might include forensics evaluation through a law clinic or adjudicated youth programs, inpatient or outpatient hospital units, community mental health agencies, and private practice. The chapter describes important considerations for pursuing a variety of advanced practicum experiences, including coordinating postsecondary transition services, conducting forensic evaluations, and working within settings that utilize a medical model. To secure disability services at the college level, eligible students are required to submit acceptable documentation.

This chapter provides practical and procedural information for students beginning practicum and the journey toward entry-level professional competency. The practice of school psychology is a complex and challenging career that offers tremendous opportunity to affect positive outcomes for children and youth. Practica provides the initial experiences into this profession and a glimpse of the many possible career choices within the field. A review of professional demeanor and appearance characteristics noted the impact of these nonverbal cues that can define professional identity from the very first day of practicum. Site supervisors and faculty can also be an important resource in advising on organizational and time-management techniques that ease the stress of multiple time demands. In preparation for entry into public school systems or restrictive clinical sites, background checks and identification documents are important and are common practices in preparing for practica work.

This chapter helps the reader to describe the ethical standards related to practicing within one’s competencies. The school psychology internship represents the culminating, comprehensive, supervised field experience prior to engaging in full-time employment. Internship offers an opportunity to integrate and apply the range of skills acquired through course work and practica while learning new skills as well. Often, professional organizations and agencies for a variety of disciplines offer specific guidelines and standards related to ethical behavior. Within school psychology, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) as well as the American Psychological Association (APA) offers the primary guidelines for professional ethics. All school psychology interns should remember that while they possess professional skills, the intent of the internship is to provide a structured supervised training experience. Taking on a role as a professional, while appealing, can create practical and ethical challenges.

This chapter helps reader to effectively delineate the core components of comprehensive case reports and identify school-based report-writing strategies that facilitate problem-solving decisions. It discusses different types of comprehensive case reports to illustrate the key components essential to producing effective psychoeducational summaries that help inform schools, parents, and mental health professionals of an individual’s needs. Report writing is a core skill competency area for the practice of school psychology and multiple writing exercises are often intertwined into the practica requirements. The overarching goal of psychological and psychoeducational report writing is to succinctly, accurately, and respectfully communicate the needs of an individual. Astute parents and teachers generally know the referral concerns and low areas of performance prior to reading psychoeducational reports. Any school psychologist who can consistently deliver insight on academic and behavioral needs with solutions will be highly respected and sought out.

This chapter helps the reader to develop a professional internship curriculum vita (CV). Given the role of internship in graduate preparation and finding employment after graduation, internship is among the most important decisions in graduate school. Regardless of the anticipated internship setting, all school psychology graduate students should prepare an effective and updated CV. Both are designed to outline the education and professional experiences. The professional experiences include practica or internship experiences, volunteer experiences, graduate assistantships, leadership experiences, editorial work, or other related work experiences. Selecting an internship site presents an exciting yet potentially stressful opportunity. Some districts allow interns the opportunity to participate in brief “rotations” in specialized centers or settings within the district to help create a broad and diverse learning experience. Some doctoral school psychology students may plan to pursue internship settings that either blend school and clinical settings, or are almost exclusively clinical in nature.

This chapter specifically focuses on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. In the field of psychotherapy, EMDR therapy is an important and integrated psychotherapeutic method that utilizes our innate biology to facilitate healing. EMDR therapy researchers are working hard to examine and publish their findings on its efficacy in areas such as addictions, self-harming behaviors, and depression. EMDR therapy utilizes an information processing model, which is proposed to be innate: the adaptive information processing (AIP) model. The AIP model proposes the normal mechanism by which information processing takes place, resulting in a functional and integrated memory network. The standard EMDR therapy protocol is divided into eight phases, with a three-pronged protocol that processes material considering the past, present, and future. The eight phases are: History and treatment planning, Preparation, Assessment, Desensitization, Installation, Body scan, Closure, and Re-evaluation.

This chapter provides guidelines for psychologists on the assessment of oral language proficiency (OLP) of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children and adolescents who study in their second language (L2). It discusses the issues that should be considered in the assessment of OLP, including the aspects of oral language that should be assessed in L1 or L2, the factors that should be considered in interpreting assessment data, and the advantages and challenges of assessing children in their L1. The chapter then describes specific methods for assessing OLP. It discusses issues involved in interpretation of data from OLP assessments, including a discussion of the diagnosis of a language disorder. The chapter also explains specific tasks and observational schedules that psychologists might find helpful when conducting assessments of OLP.

This chapter provides basic and fundamental knowledge that will be helpful in identifying if psychiatric symptoms are present and assisting when there may be concern about psychiatric stability. It discusses what one can expect from individuals who are being approached with concern about their current mental health status. The chapter facilitates connection to a treatment provider who can evaluate the signs and symptoms of distress. Paranoia can elicit denial if auditory hallucinations are present that threaten safety if any information is revealed. Negative symptoms and disorganization can also impair reality-based thinking through difficulty engaging with the environment. The chapter provides the idea of some important considerations and expectations after one have made the decision to approach someone about concern for psychotic symptoms. Empathy is critical to the practice of psychology and psychological intervention, but it is also very helpful to use in everyday life and conversation.

Chronic pain is common and contributes to significant emotional suffering and physical disability worldwide. For example, individuals with chronic pain endorse substantially more symptoms of depression and anxiety than those without chronic pain. By far, the most common treatments of chronic pain are analgesic medications, including opioid drugs. Chronic pain is not primarily a biomedical problem, and is therefore not easily resolved with a single simple biomedical treatment. This chapter provides an introduction to the use of hypnosis for the treatment of chronic pain for the clinician who is interested in incorporating hypnotic approaches into his or her clinical practice. It presents a basic overview of a contemporary biopsychosocial model of pain-a model that should be clearly understood by health care professionals who work with individuals with chronic pain. The chapter finally describes a detailed and specific protocol for training patients in the use of self-hypnosis for chronic pain management.

This chapter discusses the types of depression in which hypnosis can be useful and explains the technique of using hypnosis as an explorative and therapeutic tool in the treatment of depression. The symptoms of depression may manifest in the form of depressed mood, excessive sadness, crying spells, or aches and pains in various parts of the body. The patient’s depression represents an underlying, unresolved grief or a form of pathological, prolonged, incomplete mourning reaction. The new trend has gradually shifted away from the exploration of a history of a past trauma or unresolved memories of childhood abuse and instead has focused on the patterns of maladaptive cognitions and behaviors that are associated with depression. The use of hypnosis in patients with depression is best done by therapists who are well-trained in psychodynamics and in the care of suicidal patients.

Parkinson’s disease is a severe neurological disorder that results in the progressive diminishment of the physical and mental health of those affected. The disease attacks neurons located in the basal ganglia and substantia nigra of the brain. Damage to these brain structures, along with the subsequent decrease in dopamine availability, leads to the hallmark symptoms of the disease, which include rest tremor, rigidity, and slowed or difficult movement, also known as bradykinesia. Another common symptom, involuntary muscle movement, or dyskinesia, is brought about by the long-term usage of levodopa, which is the most commonly prescribed treatment for the disorder. Apart from these motor complications, Parkinson’s disease is associated with a number of severe psychological concerns as well. In fact, over 60” of patients with Parkinson’s disease either report or display neuropsychiatric symptoms. Common symptoms include anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, and impulsiveness.

The adolescent stage of life does not occur in isolation from other developmental stages. When an adolescent is experiencing difficulties with parents and friends leading to feelings of sadness, studies of average adolescents and their natural propensity toward difficulties during the adolescent years can help us assess whether this particular adolescent’s problems go beyond the norm. Understanding normative adolescent development can help clarify for professionals working with teens if the issue they encounter with a client is clinical or developmental. The majority of the time, when a teen is experiencing sadness it is an expression of a normal part of the adolescent experience. Understanding normal adolescent development can help in making the types of determinations thoughtfully, without jumping to conclusions and over diagnosing adolescents with major depression when all they are experiencing is a normal developmental process.

This chapter describes family, friends and enemies, dating and love, tv and media, technology and cyberbullying. Children with close family relationships during middle childhood are more likely to have closeness in these relationships during adolescence than those with detached family relationships during middle childhood. Studies indicate that adolescents with high levels of parental monitoring are less likely to engage in problem behaviors than those with little or no parental monitoring. Many adolescents have little or no conflict, and those with elevated levels of conflict are often experiencing other difficulties in their lives such as substance abuse or depression. The way in which adolescents engage in victimization shifts from primarily physical aggression, which is more common during middle childhood, to social or relational bullying. An additional aspect of the reorganization of an adolescent’s social network discussed earlier involves a shakeup of the peer group to include more cross-sex interactions.

Active Minds offers many resources for individuals with mental illnesses and allies. Suicide prevention website provides information about wealth and how to support someone who may be experiencing suicidal thoughts. American Psychological Association (APA) is a national organization for psychologists that are also dedicated to improving public access to information and services related to psychology. The government website for mental health provides a directory of government mental health programs as well as general information related to mental health. A national addiction recovery program aimed at building skills that help to combat addictive behaviors offering meetings in many communities as well as online. OK2TALK is an online support community for young adults living with mental illness. Community members are supported in sharing and learning from the stories of others in a stigma-free environment.

This chapter aims to help clinicians learn stabilization interventions for use in the Preparation Phase of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) treatment. Using these interventions will aid clients in developing readiness for processing trauma, learning how to manage symptoms of dissociation, dealing with affect regulation, and developing the necessary internal cohesion and resources to utilize the EMDR trauma-processing phase. Earlier negative experiences stored dysfunctionally increase vulnerability to anxiety disorders, depression, and other diagnoses. When assessing a client with a complex trauma history, clinicians need to view current symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression as reflections of the earlier traumas. The chapter outlines the strategies dealing with dissociative symptoms, ego state work, and internal stability that help clinicians to develop an individualized treatment plan to successfully guide the client through the EMDR phases of treatment.

This chapter describes the interacting forces, understanding the self, identity and emotions. It examines adolescent self and identity, which will serve as a basis for understanding much about the social and emotional world of adolescents. The adolescent years bring with them the long process of departing childhood and emerging into adulthood. Similar to many aspects of development during adolescence that proceed somewhat differently based on gender, males and females differ in the process of self-exploration and identity formation as well. Sexual experimentation is common during adolescence as part of this gender identity struggle. An inability to develop a mature ethnic identity may entail denying one’s culture of origin, whereas a healthy identity process may result in adolescents who are proud of both their culture of origin and the culture they find themselves in currently.

Dementia is characterized by a significant loss of cognitive function in multiple domains that is not due to impaired arousal. The term dementia does not imply an irreversible condition, a progressive course, or a specific disease. It is an overall term that describes a constellation of symptoms associated with cognitive decline that is severe enough to interfere with daily life. Different types of dementia are associated with characteristic types of brain cell damage in particular regions of the brain. Diagnosis of dementia can be made more difficult where there is focal brain disease such as a stroke, the presence of a psychiatric cause of cognitive impairment such as depression, where there is concurrent delirium, or in patients who are poorly educated or mentally handicapped. The signs and symptoms of different types of dementia overlap, which also makes diagnosing the exact type of dementia a challenge.

This chapter covers major depression and discusses the syndrome of depression as defined by criteria in the various versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals (DSMs) issued before the newly minted DSM-5. It considers the prevalence in time and across national boundaries. The chapter discusses the role of events and genetics in bringing on depression. It provides the link between depressive behaviors and systemic inflammation, and reviews the efficacy, and side effects for various treatments. There has been speculation that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) might play a causal role in creating symptoms of depression. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which involves external application of an electrode, is a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved treatment for major depression. In the clinical literature, exercise has demonstrated efficacy in ameliorating major depression. Cognitive behavioral therapy is as effective as antidepressants, although it may be slower to achieve results.

This chapter shows that how positive psychology is in fact important to psychology as a whole. It attempts to explain the foundations of positive psychology. It looks at basic conceptions of happiness and subjective well-being (SWB) including all the debates therein, it explores the history of happiness, it debates the criticisms of positive psychology, it examines important theories of SWB and positive emotion, and finally it gives a taste of research in positive psychology. The chapter demonstrates the importance of the study of happiness and SWB. Moreover, as Fredrickson’s theory has shown, positive emotions are crucial, in that they broaden the authors’ momentary thought/action readiness and build essential personal resources for the future. Happiness and joy are consequential, as Helen Keller affirmed, “Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow”.

This chapter investigates the genetic makeup of happy people, and draws some conclusions about biological contributions to happiness. It discusses the behavioral characteristics of those who are happy. The chapter delves into an important area of research in positive psychology: looking at the personality traits that predict happiness. It shows that happy people are active in their work and leisure life, and extends this to a more general conclusion: Happy people tend to be active people. Contrary to the stereotype of happiness producing “contented cows”, happy people appear to be actively engaged in life. Religious and spiritual people tend to be happier than those who are not. A healthy humility may have an important role to play in our happiness. Humility helps us accept who we really are, so we can get past ourselves to focus on others and the beauty all around us.

Few guides exist that outline the use of contextual therapy theory as a supervision model for training systemic therapists. This chapter presents an overview of contextual therapy theory and its application to supervision, the role of the supervisor and supervisee, and the application of this supervision model to the given case example. The contextual therapy approach assumes an integrative, intergenerational stance, positing that both individual and relational realities constitute human existence. In order to examine both individual and relational realities in the supervision relationship, the contextual supervisor should incorporate the four basic tenets of the contextual therapy model into the supervision approach: existential facts/biology, individual psychology, transactional relational patterns, and relational ethics. The supervision relationship should also incorporate specific components related to ethics, such as fairness, trust, loyalty, and entitlement. The goals for training a contextual therapist mirror the goals put forth for the therapeutic relationship.

This chapter explores positive psychology’s attempt to identify significant human virtues. Early in the positive psychology movement it was recognized that in order to advance research on human excellence, there was a need to develop a classification system complete with measurable strengths that would be meaningful to the good life. The chapter describes and defines the six core virtues, and also explores some of the more specific human strengths thought to be clustered with each virtue. The author believe that the most significant achievement of the Values in Action (VIA) project was to identify virtues and strengths that appear to transcend time and culture. Finally the chapter emphasizes and recommends two other attempts to identify transcendent virtues that come from outside of psychology. To emphasize one virtue without the others is bound to result in an imbalanced life.

This chapter gives an overview of the conditions and child vulnerabilities that can disrupt relationship building. In the context of parenting and/or adult-to-child caregiving, theoretical understanding of the importance of human relationships, connections, and alliances has been guided by major models, including evolutionary psychology, attachment theory, social learning, social cognition theory, social development theory, and social control theory, bioecological systems theory and human behavioral genetics theory. Relationship formation is critical in positioning caregivers to serve in a “curative” role in assisting children to make gains and recover from the experiences of not having normal parental experiences. Kinship caregivers are in a unique position to help children develop relational competence. Relational competence is a person’s ability to appropriately interact with others and to develop meaningful relationships and connections. The caregiver can help the child reconnect or restore broken relationships.

This chapter comes from an integrative/holistic approach to play therapy. Although the foundation is influenced by the work of Carl G. Jung, it is integrative because it focuses on practices from many other schools of psychotherapy as well. The chapter concentrates on directive approaches of using trays of sand and small figures as a therapeutic tool in the play therapy room. Jung’s psychology, also known as analytical or depth psychology, is not a tool, methodology, or even a group of techniques, but a way to gain insights that can influence psychic healing. The child’s psyche leads the process in Sandtray-Worldplay. Symbolic images become concrete as they bring powerful insights into consciousness. The builder and the witness travel together through four stages in Sandtray-Worldplay: building and observing, experiencing and reflecting, joint experiencing, and photographing. The sandtray process is led by the builder and facilitated by the witness/therapist.

Supervision activities in the early stages are likely to be highly structured and prescriptive and require close monitoring of skill development, as supervisees are more likely to be anxious and more dependent on their supervisors. Supervisors can help trainees to explore new school psychological roles, focus on professional behaviors that will help them gain independence, and develop a repertoire of self-care strategies. Supervisors may also support trainee role expansion by assigning new activities and responsibilities, particularly in National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) domain areas that are underrepresented in current practice. Supervisors can also assist supervisees in becoming more independent by encouraging them to take risks and maintain a healthy perspective about their work in the field. Practicum supervisors can support trainee self-care with two key activities: monitoring and modeling their own professional self-care, and encouraging supervisees to develop their own set of self-care strategies.

This chapter helps the reader to learn happiness matters. Happiness is not simply a nice consequence of a successful life. Indeed, happiness itself is consequential. Research has shown that there are a number of beneficial by-products to experiencing positive emotions frequently: better relationships, better health, and better occupational success. Lyubomirsky’s theory highlights the importance of the intentionality of positive activities and this brings up an important point about happy people’s pursuits. As positive psychology and the study of happiness come more and more into the public eye, the author increasingly see the need for science to be at the heart of positive psychology. The positive psychology movement has identified six primary virtues that are essential to the good life: wisdom, courage, love, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Although these virtues vary somewhat in their relationships to subjective well-being (SWB), they all may be seen as critical to the life well lived.

This chapter explores supervision activities to help the school psychology practicum candidate develop skills in case conceptualization across three main roles of school psychology: assessment, consultation, and counseling. Supervisors should expect to temper this enthusiasm by teaching their supervisees to follow a structured approach to client casework. Supervisors should assist their trainees in understanding the link between assessment and intervention. Supervisors can help trainees improve their clinical judgment by providing an explicit framework for evaluating their hypotheses with the data they have collected through case study evaluation. First and foremost, supervisors should carefully select counseling cases for practicum candidates by identifying students who have relatively mild social, behavioral, or emotional difficulties. That is, supervisors should assign the easiest cases to trainees and refer students who have more significant and persistent mental health concerns to seasoned school-based mental health practitioners or outside service providers.

This chapter discusses how pastoral counselors are different from other counseling professions. Pastoral counseling exists in a substantial community of related disciplines and professions. The two theoretical bodies of knowledge that combined to create pastoral counseling were the disciplines of psychology and theology. A review of pastoral counseling’s professional heritage sets the stage for the discipline’s contemporary identity dilemma. The formative nature of pastoral counseling training shapes the pastoral counselor’s self and is the rudiment from which the distinctive interventions of pastoral counselors organically emerge. Among the elements of training and formation most salient to shaping pastoral counseling interventions are clinical integration, pastoral formation, and the development of a spiritual orientation. The unique training and formation of pastoral counselors lays the groundwork for the development of interventions. Pastoral counselors share distinctive interventions that are born out of particular ways of being and a particular set of goals and objectives.

Anxiety is often a normal reaction to stress, and there will always be situations that create stress and discomfort. In social work practice, recognition of the primary types of anxiety-related mental health disorders and the medications used to treat these disorders is an essential first step for comprehensive treatment. When medication alone is not enough, psychosocial interventions can assist the client in controlling anxious feelings. This chapter emphasizes the importance of being familiar with the medications and supplemental psychosocial interventions that can be effective in treating these disorders. Social work professionals often provide key services, including assessment and diagnostic and treatment services, to those who suffer from anxiety conditions. In terms of direct intervention efforts, many of the techniques described in the chapter can be used to help clients suffering from depression because the symptoms of anxiety and depression frequently overlap.

Any discussion of medications in today's practice environment should include an introduction to complementary and alternative or integrative medicine (CAM) and other herbal treatments and remedies, with an emphasis on using this information to complement traditional treatment strategy. CAM can include the therapeutic use of animals and animal parts, but most often is defined as involving plants. Social workers are in a unique position to aid clients in their use of complementary and alternative medicine. Homeopathic medicine involves the whole person; it considers the emotional, mental, and physical symptoms and matches them to the needs of a particular client. Social workers can assist comprehensive care by providing stress management strategies, relaxation techniques, and psychosocial interventions that can be incorporated into alternative therapies. Keeping abreast of all forms of treatment is important to provide the best possible care.

Treatment manuals may imply that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) takes X number of sessions for anxiety and Y number of sessions for depression. However, artful practitioners of these manuals would universally agree that kids vary considerably regarding when they are ready to terminate. This chapter shows few developments that tend to emerge while nearing termination. The author discusses the possibility of termination with the parents first. There is a good chance that a parent will become anxious or upset about the notion of termination. The chapter shows some of the agenda items for booster sessions. Termination can activate countertransference like few other things. Self-examination is key, as it always is when doing kid clinical work. This self-examination would not necessarily weaken or eliminate the thoughts or feelings people are having that could interfere with the work, but it will allow to make better decisions by not responding to those factors.

This chapter considers the major paradigm shifts that have occurred in geropsychology as it has progressed over the course of the 20th century. It also considers the consequences of increased interdisciplinarity for studies of aging within the discipline of psychology. The chapter describes the recent interest in research-based psychological interventions in the aging process, and of the more recent influence of advances in neuroscience. The study of aging, however, was early on recognized in the context of American psychology, and the division of adulthood and aging was one of the first 20 substantive divisions of the American Psychological Association (APA). The development of structural and functional Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has had a revolutionary enhancement of neuroscience, allowing for the first time the conduct of direct tests of the relationship between age changes in behavior and brain changes during normal and pathological aging.

This chapter presents a brief overview of some legislative efforts within the mental health (MH) arena and examined their limitations and application with respect to older adults and people living with mental illness. The chapter also takes us through a journey to examine the current status of MH and older adults, with a particular emphasis on depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. It discusses and reviews the programs, services and issues still outstanding within the MH arena. The chapter helps the reader to understand specific components of the Community Mental Health Act and other MH-related legislation. Many of the community day hospital programs and community MH programs administered through the Community Mental Health Act are based on the deinstitutionalization paradigm since the goal is to treat people outside the institution and within community settings. It concludes with laying out some challenges for the future in the area of MH and older adults.

This chapter describes the need for a specific focus on counseling women and girls. It discusses the fundamental tenets of empowerment feminist therapy (EFT). Gender and gender differences are not inherently problematic; however, issues arise when they become markers for which individuals are esteemed or devalued. Violence against women is a serious public health issue in every country in the world. Violence against women and girls takes many forms, some of which are accepted cultural practices that have severe negative repercussions for females’ physical and psychological well-being. Child marriage and female genital mutilation are two of these cultural practices. Due in part to trauma, oppression, and gender-role expectations, women and adolescent girls experience the highest rates of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Out of the feminist movement, and in response to the biases inherent in mental health treatment, feminist therapy came into existence.

This chapter explores the interventions employed within pastoral counseling that resonate with other mental health professions. Although interventions differ by definition and discipline, the chapter intends to elucidate the common ground shared across professions that serve to promote mental well-being. The actual interventions employed by different allied health professions similarly share a common ground. Most of the interventions used by pastoral counselors stem from a psychotherapeutic perspective informed by psychological theories and the historical, collective experience of the mental health disciplines. Pastoral counselors and other allied professionals are equally likely to draw from the shared pool of therapeutic interventions. The allied professions find common ground in psychodynamic interventions given the historical roots and cultural breadth of that paradigm. The humanistic and existential paradigms of psychotherapeutic intervention serve as another common ground for pastoral counselors and the allied professions.

Behavioral activation (BA) and physiological calming (PC) are primarily behavioral interventions, though PC involves clearing one’s mind and BA calls for a kid to overcome thoughts promoting lethargy. Additional commentary is one of the staples of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) interventions. However, there are certain positive psychology (PP) interventions that kids can do, within the context of CBT that appear to be helpful. The first of these is to focus on gratitude. As the author go through these techniques, it is noted that they are similar to the coping/happy thoughts intervention. The placement of commentary module in the sequence of interventions varies considerably based on: how a kid has done with other cognitive interventions, the progress of the work, and the characteristics of the kid, his family, and the context. A crisis module can be helpful when an older kid or teen is trying to find perspective regarding painful events.

Cardiovascular disorders constituted a major health epidemic in the 20th century and will continue to do so in the 21st century also unless effective measures are taken to control or eliminate this epidemic. Cardiovascular disorders are those that affect the heart and the vascular system. The coronary arteries are deemed to be the most important blood vessels in the body because they supply blood to the heart itself. Cardiovascular disorders, resulting from primary disease of the coronary arteries, are the single leading cause of death in the United States today. The risk factors for coronary atherosclerosis are abnormal blood lipids, high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, diabetes, obesity, and a sedentary but stressful life style. Depression has been determined to be a separate and independent risk factor. Ischemic chest pain, or angina pectoris, is one cardiac symptom in cardiac patients.

The concept of being an old gay male adult, old lesbian adult, old bisexual adult, or old transgender adult is remote and insignificant to most people. There is an abundance of literature about the younger lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community and a dearth of literature about the older LGBT community. Coming out is a difficult process for anyone, at any developmental stage. It is most difficult when old gay men or old lesbians do not initiate a decision to disclose their sexual identity until late life. Older adults with HIV disease are a significant subpopulation of the current older adult cohort. Transgender older adults are more likely to have a history, as compared with nontransgender people, of sex work, substance and alcohol abuse, and depression. Advocacy model can be adapted to meet the social and clinical needs of the LGBT community.

This chapter explores the diversity of professionals engaged in pastoral counseling, the characteristics of those professionals within the ever-expanding landscape of mental health care, and the settings in which pastoral counseling most often occurs. It describes the plurality present within the discipline, summarizes the discipline’s use of the adjective pastoral, and offers a broad, fluid understanding of pastoral counseling. Pastoral counselors at the center of practice in the 1950s to 1970s may have claimed to speak in a singular tongue and envisioned a monolithic tower representing the theory and practice of the discipline. Pastoral counseling is an approach to mental health care that draws on the wisdom of psychology and the behavioral sciences alongside spirituality/religion/theology. Pastoral counselors are bicultural because they have graduate training in both religious/spiritual/theological education and a mental health discipline. Religiously endorsed pastoral counselors are, like all pastoral counselors, bilingual and bicultural.

Mindfulness and meditation were embedded within their religious and cultural roots, and as such they were rarely used by psychologists as interventions in a secular therapy context. In recent years there has been an emerging body of empirical research supporting both mindfulness and hypnosis interventions. Mindfulness and hypnosis have been shown to be of benefit for similar problems (i.e., stress, anxiety, pain, depression, irritable bowel syndrome), and in other research hypnosis may offer some advantages of brevity and effect on symptoms (i.e., acute and procedural pain, hot flashes, dermatological symptoms, sleep quality, habits). However, the mechanisms by which they achieve benefit may be similar in some regards (i.e., relaxation, focus of attention, awareness) and different in other aspects (i.e., hypnotizability, hypnotic state, expectancy, goal-directed suggestions). Also, studies provide substantive evidence that when hypnotherapy is integrated into standard cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT), therapeutic gains tend to be superior to CBT alone.

This chapter focuses on Buddhist approaches to the work of pastoral counseling and the role of the counselor. It explores the topics of Buddhism and pastoral counseling as separate entities, looks at how they can be joined, and presents unique elements of working with Buddhist and non-Buddhist clients. The chapter introduces the notion of the Buddhist pastoral counselor as the kalamitra, or spiritual friend. In Mahayana Buddhism, the teacher is often termed kalamitra, Sanskrit for spiritual friend. The kalamitra as counselor is one who has worked with his or her own mind and therefore knows the workings of the mind and how the mind creates suffering. Similar to all counseling, the Buddhist pastoral counselor will rely on the relationship with the client as the main process and intervention of counseling. Buddhism and mindfulness will continue to influence psychology, and therefore Buddhist pastoral counseling as a discipline will continue to grow.