Empowerment can best be described as a client’s ability to be actively involved in his or her care. Empowered clients see—and believe— themselves to be capable of making decisions about their treatment, and are confident that their decisions will help them effectively manage their mental illnesses (Alegria M et al,...

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Therapy needs to be tailored to the issues, the patient, and the risk factors in her environment. This is especially true in domestic violence, where our urge to spirit a battered woman away from her partner may feel like a good idea to us, but not reflect a client’s best...

Patients who have been exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) often develop significant psychiatric symptoms, most commonly insomnia, anxiety, and depression (Wuest J et al, Can J Public Health 2007,98(6):460–464; Stene L et al, Scand J Public Health 2010, 38(5 Suppl):88–95). Despite the fact that a majority of those exposed...

Annie Mortimer (not her real name), a graduate student in her late 20s, came to the Safe Horizon Community Program after her therapist of six months had terminated services with her.Annie had initially gone to this therapist for depressive symptoms, and to deal with longstanding family issues. About four months...

Marsha Linehan developed DBT to help patients with BPD (Linehan MM, Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. New York, NY: The Guilford Press;1993), and over the past two decades it has received strong empirical support.

“Self-management” is a newly popular buzzword among clinicians treating the seriously mentally ill.

Insomnia in DSM-5According to Dr. Morin, DSM-5 will move away from the distinction between “primary” and “secondary” insomnia that is present in DSM-IV, and instead identify all insomnia as “insomnia disorder.” While the condition description will include a list of comorbid conditions, clinicians won’t have to make a causal attribution...

Some helpful information, including a question and answer section about CBT, can be found at www.beckinstitute.org. Referrals to certified cognitive therapists can be found at the Academy of Cognitive Therapy website at www.academyofct.org.

They are short, snappy, and spontaneous, as in, “I’m going to die,” “I look like an idiot,” “I’ll be just like my father,” or even more abbreviated phrases, such as, “Oh no!” Automatic thoughts can be positive, but people tend not to seek help in those cases. They may...