This chapter explains two essential elements form Sleep Therapy, which are based on sleep science and psychology principles. Many people find this background intriguing. What’s more, it is always easier to carry out techniques when one understands how they work. The elements of Sleep Therapy are: uncovering one’s natural sleep processes and associating one’s bed with sleep. By understanding how sleep comes and goes in the natural state one can see more clearly how to restore healthy sleep. Good sleep comes when our biological sleep processes can operate without interference. Associating one’s bed with sleep element of Sleep Therapy is based on something called “conditioning” or “learned associations”. These are connections one make in their mind (automatically) between two things that occur together on several occasions.

This chapter explores the impact of all manner of radiotherapy incidents, and comments on the role of reporting, methods of investigation, and the path to meaningful improvement. The impact of harmful incidents on patients is sometimes immediate and life changing. Although the physical impact of incidents on patients can be direct, immediate, and known for certain incidents, they are more commonly unknown. The psychological impact of known incidents on patients is typically profound. The airline and nuclear power industries study their incidents using a root cause analysis (RCA) technique, developed for investigating industrial accidents. An investigation of an incident is a bit like detective work, where evidence is reviewed to piece together what happens. After completing an incident investigation, the practice should consider implementing improvements. Effective implementation of incident investigation, monitoring for effectiveness, and support for staff involved in error can result in the development of a true learning organization.

Psychologically, individuals must learn to cope with a sudden and often unexpected change in physical function that frequently results in at least an initial dependence on others for most of the basic needs. This chapter reviews frequently experienced psychosocial factors post-spinal cord injury (SCI), such as psychopathology, issues related to sexuality and social relationships, as well as positive factors. It is critically important to recognize that these issues must be examined within the context of each individual person with SCI and may or may not be applicable based on that individual's premorbid history, cultural identity, coping skills, and degree of social support. The chapter covers four mental health disorders as well as pain, a common secondary condition of SCI. The four mental health disorders are depression, anxiety, and trauma- and stressor-related disorders. The chapter highlights various psychosocial issues that are important to consider throughout inpatient SCI rehabilitation and outpatient follow-up.

This chapter briefs the psychology of dementia. Three mood disorders such as apathy, depression, and empathy deficit are closely connected to Lewy body dementia (LBD). All share common traits with other dementias but tend to be even more similar to LBD and have traits that appear earlier than with other dementias. Thinking is the process of gathering information, adding an emotion along with a theory, and then processing all of this with the brain’s abstract thinking skills. This chapter adds an emotion along with a proposed reason for that particular emotion. Thinking errors are what happens when a person living with dementia must depend only on the earlier basic thinking skills, often fueled by negative emotions. They include things like the following: poor decision making; organizing difficulties; impulsiveness; and all or nothing thinking.

Pain is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as an “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage.” Pain is typically classified as either acute or chronic. A recent IASP Task Force and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) have both recognized chronic pain as a disease itself, with further classification based on etiology and location. The classification system recognizes some conditions can fall into multiple categories, noting that definitions of such conditions should be consistent throughout the classification system. Outpatient treatment consists of a combination of medication management, psychological treatment, and physical/occupational therapy to address the interplay of factors that contribute to chronic pain. Therapy disciplines should focus on facilitating a self-management approach to promote independence in the presence of pain rather than waiting for the pain to improve before advancing.

This chapter discusses case of a 41-year-old woman who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at 20 years of age. A cranial CT scan and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis were done with normal results and large spectrum antibiotic treatment was started. A diagnosis of central pontine, mainly extrapontine myelinolysis (EPM) was established, and the patient was moved to neurologic unit to complete the study and rehabilitation. Neuropsychological examination detected mild frontosubcortical alterations. A gradual spontaneous improvement of her parkinsonism was paralleled by a gradual worsening of disinhibition with repetitive language and potomanic behavior. At her next visit in September 1997, potomania persisted, parkinsonism almost subsided, psychological deficits showed a discrete worsening, and a control MRI showed a noticeable vanishing of the hyperintensities. Adams et al. described central pontine myelinolysis (CPM) as a unique clinical entity in 1958 in patients who suffered from alcoholism or malnutrition.

This chapter discusses the nature of error, the classification of error, concepts in quality management, types of error mitigation, hierarchy of interventions, and the role of culture in error prevention. Psychologists have proposed a dual system processing theory for thought. More recently, a classification system based on Reason’s error categorization, Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS), has been demonstrated to improve standardization of error classification, increase the specificity of error classification, and facilitate the development of actionable corrective plans. Readers are directed to the guidance from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) on this subject for a detailed treatise on the components of peer review. An effective quality management program depends on a robust understanding of error, appropriate classification of error, the application of a systems approach to problem solving, the careful choice and implementation of error mitigation strategies, and a commitment to continuous improvement.