Handbook of Mentalization-Based Treatment

Jon G. Allen

Peter Fonagy

Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, John

Distilling years of experience in educating psychiatric patients and their families about depression, Jon Allen has written a practical book that addresses the challenges depressed patients face on the road to recovery. Allen advocates approaching depression by focusing on the importance of hope, and he helps patients understand depression through two simple ideas: catch-22 and stress pileup. This book conveys how the symptoms of depression impede all the things depressed persons must do to recover, thus defusing self-criticism while encouraging patients to take satisfaction in small steps toward improvement. And the concept of stress pileup encompasses a developmental perspective respecting the full range of accumulated biological, psychological, and interpersonal stresses that play into depression. This broad understanding helps patients become more compassionate toward themselves and puts them in a stronger position to make use of professional care. Coping With Depression is written for a general audience, including depressed persons and their family members, as well as professionals seeking a readable integration of current knowledge that they can use to educate their patients. Although written in nontechnical language, the book provides a sophisticated and comprehensive understanding of the psychological development of depression, the neurobiology of the illness, and the full range of evidence-based treatment modalities. All material is buttressed by extensive references to theoretical, clinical, and research literature. Coping With Depression emphasizes the concept of agency, encouraging readers to take an active role in their recovery. Countering today's trend toward exclusive reliance on antidepressant medication, the book employs the perspective of developmental psychopathology to integrate psychosocial and neurobiological knowledge. The book explains how biological vulnerability is intertwined with stress stemming from insecure attachment, childhood adversity, stressful life events, emotional conflicts, and problems in close relationships. Going far beyond the "chemical imbalance," the author illustrates how the experience of depression is linked to changes in patterns of brain activity as evidenced by neuroimaging studies. Coping With Depression will help readers 
<ul>
<li>understand the development of depression from a biopsychosocial perspective </li>
<li>appreciate how depression is compounded by related conditions, including bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, personality disorders, general medical conditions, and suicidal states </li>
<li>understand how recovering from depression entails working on many fronts, including improving physical health, participating in pleasurable activities, countering negative thinking, resolving internal conflicts, and-above all-establishing more stable and secure attachment relationships </li>
<li>become knowledgeable about the treatment options that facilitate coping, including cognitive-behavioral, interpersonal, and psychodynamic psychotherapy as well as medication and combined treatment </li>
<li>appreciate the centrality of hope in recovery from depression and the challenges to hope that depression poses</li>
</ul> To maintain hope, patients, their family members, and clinicians must face the seriousness of the illness of depression and the daunting obstacles to recovery, including catch-22 in all of its manifestations. Throughout the book, Allen reiterates the theme of agency: depressed persons can use their intelligence to understand their illness and do something to recover and remain well, making use of help from others along the way.

Coping With Depression: From Catch-22 to Hope

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.

Mentalizing the fundamental human capacity to understand behavior in relation to mental states such as thoughts and feelings is the basis of healthy relationships and self-awareness. Mentalizing in Clinical Practice distills the burgeoning literature on mentalizing for clinicians of diverse professional backgrounds. As growing evidence supports the effectiveness of mentalizing-focused interventions in the treatment of borderline personality disorder, this volume seeks to explore even wider applications in trauma treatment, parent-child therapy, psychoeducation, and violence prevention in social systems. Part I, Understanding Mentalizing, fully explicates the concept of mentalizing and its foundations in developmental research and social-cognitive neuroscience; Part II, Practicing Mentalizing, presents the general principles of psychotherapeutic interventions that promote mentalizing as well as a range of current clinical applications. 
 The book includes a straightforward explanation clinicians can use with patients, What is Mentalizing and Why Do It? and also demonstrates the ways in which clinicians are already doing it. The authors reason that if the effectiveness of treatment depends on therapists mentalizing and helping their patients do so more consistently and skillfully, clinicians of all persuasions can benefit from the extensive knowledge now available to hone further their attention to this vital therapeutic process.

Mentalizing in Clinical Practice

Anthony Bateman

Psychology & Counseling

Coping With Trauma Hope Through Understanding

American Psychiatric Pub

Understanding how childhood trauma overwhelms adult well-being is at the cornerstone of Restoring Hope and Trust: An Illustrated Guide to Mastering Trauma. Although survivors may use avoidance strategies to cope with the impact of past trauma, many find that it bubbles up anyway often following other life stressors or a new trauma. Restoring Hope and Trust discusses memories of the past, the role of the nervous system, depression, self-image, and the traumatized worldview, showing clearly how past trauma affects present-day success, happiness, and relationships. This conceptual framework empowers survivors to embark on the healing journey. Restoring Hope and Trust is a compact volume based on a ten-session course that brings old and new understanding together in the psychoeducational approach using simple language, illustrations, awareness exercises, and study questions to guide readers whether they are people on the healing journey or clinicians. Author Lisa Lewis notes the importance of learning new strategies for dealing with past trauma: Too often patients want to jump into the processing [of trauma] before they have found healthy ways of regulating their emotions. It s important to be able to talk about the emotions, but not to be overwhelmed by them. We want the details to eventually bleach out and become more like other memories of what has happened in a persons lifetime....Our goal is to rob the trauma of its power. Restoring Hope and Trust reflects the authors combined 25 years of work with groups of trauma patients at the Menninger Clinic and the Heritage Mental Health Clinic. Author Jon Allen explains: For more than a decade, we clinicians and our patients have worked together in psychoeducational groups to learn about trauma from each other. Each individual brings unique expertise to this endeavor, primarily from life experience. Based on this large pool of expertise personal and professional we have continued to refine our educational program; pe

Restoring Hope And Trust: An Illustrated Guide To Mastering Trauma

Kay, Kelly

Lisa Lewis

Sidran Press

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Books by Jon G. Allen