This book uses current psychosocial literature in combination with empirical research and clinical accounts of family adaptation to help professionals and families cope with the impact of cancer. It is broad in scope and includes families in any life cycle (i.e. single adults, children, adolescents, and later life). This book, with its solid theoretical foundation, will be especially beneficial to any professional who is helping a family to adapt to cancer.

This volume is the result of many years of clinical research by medical and health care professionals working with cancer patients and their families. It demonstrates the impact of cancer at different stages of a patient's life, and how certain factors influence treatment and management.

Cancer care today often provides state-of-the-science biomedical treatment, but fails to address the psychological and social (psychosocial) problems associated with the illness. This failure can compromise the effectiveness of health care and thereby adversely affect the health of cancer patients. Psychological and social problems created or exacerbated by cancer-including depression and other emotional problems; lack of information or skills needed to manage the illness; lack of transportation or other resources; and disruptions in work, school, and family life-cause additional suffering, weaken adherence to prescribed treatments, and threaten patients' return to health. Today, it is not possible to deliver high-quality cancer care without using existing approaches, tools, and resources to address patients' psychosocial health needs. All patients with cancer and their families should expect and receive cancer care that ensures the provision of appropriate psychosocial health services. Cancer Care for the Whole Patient recommends actions that oncology providers, health policy makers, educators, health insurers, health planners, researchers and research sponsors, and consumer advocates should undertake to ensure that this standard is met.

Reinforce the relationship between healthy bodies and healthy relationships in families! Feminist Perspectives in Medical Family Therapy explores the groundbreaking collaboration of therapy and medicine to form a biopsychosocial approach to health care. In this book, feminists from several fields of study offer their ideas, research, and personal experiences to show how gender, culture, and other diversity issues affect medical treatment. This invaluable tool provides tips and suggestions for interdisciplinary medical teams working with patients’ bodies, minds, spirits, and relationships simultaneously. Medical family therapy is a relatively new specialty, and this book demonstrates its advantages and opportunities with an easy-to-understand, applicable approach. Clinicians, researchers, trainers, and students in medicine, social work, family therapy, psychology, and others can use Feminist Perspectives in Medical Family Therapy to examine more closely the medical issues that are most relevant to women and families. In this unique resource, you’ll learn about: how both biological factors and environment create gender differencesand how they apply to women with depression how the issues of power and gender influence the experiences of male and female medical family therapists incorporating feminist principles in family medicine education the benefits of collaborative care to both physicians and patients in a family medicine setting using couples therapy in cases of vulvar vestibulitis syndrome how a woman’s diagnosis of cancer affects the family system Feminist Perspectives in Medical Family Therapy offers a variety of viewpoints from patients and providers, using hard data, interviews, practicum models, case examples, and reflections on personal experiences.

Get innovative ideas and effective interventions for your group therapy Group work requires facilitators to use different skills than they would use in individual or family therapy. The Group Therapist’s Notebook: Homework, Handouts, and Activities for Use in Psychotherapy offers facilitators effective strategies to gather individuals who have their own unique needs together to form a group where each member feels comfortable exploring personal—and often painful—topics. This resource provides creative handouts, homework, and activities along with practical ideas and interventions appropriate for a variety of problems and population types. Each chapter gives detailed easy-to-follow instructions, activity contraindications, and suggestions for tracking the intervention in successive meetings. Every intervention is backed by a theoretical or practical rationale for use, and many chapters feature a helpful illustrative clinical vignette. Group work has several benefits, including the ability to treat a greater number of clients with fewer resources. Group therapy work also relies on various theories that may seem to be difficult to apply to clinical practice. The Group Therapist’s Notebook is a practical guide that builds a bridge between theory and practice with ease. The text provides help for psychotherapists who are either beginning group practice or already utilizing groups as part of their practice and need a fresh set of ideas. The workbook framework allows group specialists to generate approaches and modify exercises to fit the varying needs of their clients. This guide offers a wide variety of valid approaches that effectively address client concerns. The book provides therapists with tips and ideas for starting and facilitating a group, assists them through sets of interventions, activities, and assignments, then showcases a variety of interventions for needs-specific populations or problems. Special sections are included with interventions for teens, young adults, couples, and family groups. Interventions in The Group Therapist’s Notebook include: anger management skills ease feelings of shame and guilt substance use and abuse grief and loss positive body image guidance through change independence and belonging interpersonal skills coping skills crisis intervention strategies much, much more! The Group Therapist’s Notebook is an essential resource for both novice and more experienced practitioners working in the mental health field, including counselor educators, social workers, guidance counselors, prevention educators, and other group facilitators. Every nonprofit agency, counseling center, private practice, school, hospital, treatment facility, or training center that organizes and implements therapy groups of any type should have this guide in their library.

Social Work Live accesses multiple approaches to student learning: experiential, visual, and auditory. Carol Dorr emphasizes the important role of self-reflection and critical thinking in social work practice by paying special attention to process recordings and observing how the social worker reflects on her own reactions in the moment with the client. Students also can appreciate the important role of reflecting on their own interventions with clients after their sessions, acknowledging what went well and what could have been done better. Social Work Live encourages a constructivist perspective to practice that calls attention to the many possible interpretations and approaches to working with clients. The classroom provides an ideal opportunity for students to explore with each other different ways of making meaning out of clients' stories and intervening with them.

Identifying and Addressing the Needs of Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer is the summary of a workshop convened by the Institute of Medicine's National Cancer Policy Forum in July 2013 to facilitate discussion about gaps and challenges in caring for adolescent and young adult cancer patients and potential strategies and actions to improve the quality of their care. The workshop featured invited presentations from clinicians and other advocates working to improve the care and outcomes for the adolescent and young adult population with cancer. Cancer is the leading disease-related cause of death in adolescents and young adults. Each year nearly 70,000 people between the ages of 15 and 39 are diagnosed with cancer, approximately 8 times more than children under age 15. This population faces a variety of unique short- and long-term health and psychosocial issues, such as difficulty reentering school, the workforce, or the dating scene; problems with infertility; cardiac, pulmonary, or other treatment repercussions; and secondary malignancies. Survivors are also at increased risk for psychiatric conditions such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide and may have difficulty acquiring health insurance and paying for needed care. Identifying and Addressing the Needs of Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer discusses a variety of topics important to adolescent and young adult patients with cancer, including the ways in which cancers affecting this group differ from cancers in other age groups and what that implies about the best treatments for these cancer patients. This report identifies gaps and challenges in providing optimal care to adolescent and young adult patients with cancer and to discuss potential strategies and actions to address them.