This brief, accessible treatise harnesses the neurophysiological processes of learning to create an innovative and powerful approach to therapy. It sets out a non-pathologizing alternative not only to the current medicalized conception of diagnosis and treatment but also to the labeling of relatively normal reactions to stressors and upsets as illnesses. Rooted in the neurobiology of human learning, the book’s approach to treatment, Neuro-Cognitive Learning Therapy, characterizes maladaptive behavior patterns as learned responses to upsetting conditions—processes which can be unlearned. In addition, the coverage includes a clinical teaching guide for bringing NCLT theory and methods into the training curriculum. This groundbreaking volume: Proposes a non-stigmatizing learning model for therapy, Neuro-Cognitive Learning Therapy. Introduces the concept of the connectome and explains its critical role in mental health and illness. Differentiates between the unconscious and automaticity in cognition and behavior. Addresses the applicability of NCLT to biologically-based mental disorders. Offers case studies illustrating NCLT in contrast with commonly-used approaches. Includes a chapter-by-chapter clinical teaching guide with therapeutic principles and discussion questions. Provides a comprehensive therapeutic framework for practitioners of all orientations. Depathologizing Psychopathology gives neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, clinical social workers, and child and school psychologists new ways of thinking about mental illness and learning about learning for a bold new step in the evolution of mind/brain knowledge.

This groundbreaking volume introduces the theoretical base and clinical methods of Neurocognitive Learning Therapy, an integrative framework for client-centered intervention. The model unifies psychology and neuroscience in revisiting the connections between brain and behavior, replacing the cognitive-versus-affective binary traditional to clinical thinking with a scenario of the cognitive and emotional learning processes that work together to shape adaptive and pathological behavior. This foundation in learning theory illuminates the therapeutic relationship, synching how therapists teach with how clients learn, with guidelines for educating to encourage change. The unique flexibility of the NCLT model allows practitioners across clinical orientations the freedom to apply eclectic intervention strategies that fit clients’ learning styles and therapeutic needs. Included in the coverage: Neurocognitive Learning Therapy and Life Course Theory. Reward recognition in Neurocognitive Learning Therapy. Memory reconsolidation and Neurocognitive Learning Therapy. How to be an NCLT therapist. Neurocognitive Learning Therapy clinical procedures. Treating children with Neurocognitive Learning Therapy. Plus practice handouts and forms for therapists and patients. Neuropsychologists, child and school psychologists, and social workers will welcome Neurocognitive Learning Therapy not only as a source of theoretical insight into the brain and behavior, but also as an innovative system for enhancing their capacity for therapeutic teaching and their clients’ capacity for learning.

This innovative work explores integrating emerging research into how the brain processes information in applied therapeutic interventions. Typically, clinicians select therapeutic interventions based on their own training, personal experience or preference. This book aims to provide a new model, based upon the neural networks, to both understand the development of mental health issues and their persistence, and how and why to apply therapeutic interventions to impact the systems which are maintaining them. This work begins with a short and accessible overview of the neural network model, and the general aims of therapy. It elucidates components of the neural network model of learning such as reward recognition, automaticity, and memory reconsolidation, and how they apply to both general learning and new learning through the process in therapy. Next, the authors explore how the neural network model can be integrated across existing systems of therapy, including Cognitive Behavior therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), third wave therapies and analytic therapies. Therapy and the Neural Network Model is an exciting resource for researchers and practitioners interested in understanding more about the applications of a neural network model for therapy and the how and why of building new mentally healthy cognitions, behaviors and emotions. Therapy and the Neural Network Model is also an essential theoretical foundation for both researchers and practitioners who wish to base their therapeutic practice on neuroscience and integrate their work with related fields such as behavioral medicine, health psychology, social work and public health.

Psychology's contribution to health research and clinical practice continues to grow at a phenomenal pace. In this book a global and multidisciplinary selection of outstanding academics and clinicians focus on the psychological well-being and positive health of both children and families in order to 'depathologise' mental disorders.

First published in 2003. The most comprehensive book on the topic of multicultural mental health, Culturally Diverse Mental Health addresses the challenge of counseling diverse populations including multiracial, homosexual, geriatric, and disabled individuals. Because many clients of diverse backgrounds have entered therapy in the last two decades, old models of treatment based on the mainstream majority no longer apply. This book compiles the latest research on a widely diverse number of populations and addresses the issue of resistance to the need to modify old practices to apply to these populations.

The work will be a reanalysis and reconceptualization of the concept of apraxia. Apraxia is currently understood as a motor speech disorder but an analysis of the neural network properties of apraxia indicate a more complex and far reaching disorder with implications for intentionality, motor coordination and motor control of response inhibition in a variety of human behavioral and emotional reactions. A thorough redefinition of apraxia will be provided along with suggestions for diagnoses and treatment. The primary audience will be diagnostic and treating professionals in a variety of disciplines (outlined above). Secondarily, the book will provide an argument and justification for considering developmental apraxia pf speech to be a separate and discrete white matter based disorder. Finally, this work will serve as a driver of future research in the area.

Using the premise that deaf people often are a minority within a minority, 27 outstanding experts outline in this timely volume approaches to intervention with clients from specific, diverse populations. With an overview on being a psychotherapist with deaf clients, this guide includes information on the diversity of consumer knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and experiences.