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.

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.

This book explores various frameworks within which post-school education is situated and the practice that actually happens in classrooms and lecture theatres, especially when things go wrong. Examining how and why some students choose to resist learning whilst undertaking tertiary education, this book provides practical tips and guidance for educators on how to work through difficult situations where learning isn’t a student’s priority. Considering both theory and practice, the book offers a range of practical solutions to difficult circumstances, such as the greater emphasis on distance learning, the growth of predatory or fake journals to the challenges of too much screen time, ghostwriters and plagiarism, speaking out of turn, consistent lateness, absenteeism and even violent behaviour. Looking at contexts and behaviours where learning is rejected or ignored, through students’ indifference or resistance, from a range of perspectives, this book is ideal reading for anyone working or involved in tertiary education, including teacher trainees, tutors, teacher educators, managers, administrators and lecturers working at universities and colleges, as well as students who may benefit from discussions of the problematic nature of 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.

Our understanding of how the human brain operates and completes its essential tasks continues is fundamentally altered from what it was ten years ago. We have moved from an understanding based on the modularity of key structural components and their specialized functions to an almost diametrically opposed, highly integrated neural network model, based on a vertically organized brain dependent on small world hub principles. This new understanding completely changes how we understand essential psychological constructs such as motivation. Network modeling posits that motivation is a construct that describes a modified aspect of the operation of the human learning system that is specifically designed to cause a person to pursue a goal. Anthropologically and developmentally, these goals were initially basic, including things like food, shelter and reproduction. Over the course of time and development they develop into a complex web of extrinsic and then intrinsic goals, objectives and values. The core for all of this development is the inborn flight or fight reaction has been modified over time by a combination of inborn human temperamental characteristics and life experiences. This process of modification is, in part, based on the operation of a network based error-prediction network working in concert with the reward network to produce a system of ever evolving valuations of goals and objectives. These valuations are never truly fixed. They are constantly evolving, being modified and shaped by experience. The error prediction network and learning related networks work in concert with the limbic system to allow affect laden experiences to inform the process of valuation. These networks, operating in concert, produce a cognitive process we call motivation. Like most networks, the motivation system of networks is recruited when the task demands of the situation require them. Understanding motivation from this perspective has profound implications for many scientific disciplines in general and psychology in specific. Psychologically, this new understanding will alter how we understand client behavior in therapy and when being evaluated. This new understanding will provide direction for new therapeutic intervention for a variety of disorders of mental health. It will also inform testing practices concerning the evaluation of effort and malingering. This book is not a project in reductionism. It is the polar opposite. A neural network understanding of the operation of the human brain allows for the integration of what has come before into a comprehensive and integrated model. It will likely provide the basis for future research for years to come.

This edited volume recognizes that resilience, and the most effective means of harnessing it, differ across individuals, contexts and time. Presenting chapters written by a range of scholars and clinicians, the book highlights effective evidence-based approaches to nurturing resilience, before, during and after a traumatic experience or event. By identifying distinct therapeutic tools which can be used effectively to meet the particular needs and limitations associated with different age groups, clients and types of experience, the volume addresses specific challenges and benefits of nurturing resilience and informs best practice as well as self-care. Approaches explored in the volume include the use of group activities to teach resilience to children, the role of sense-making for victims of sex trafficking, and the ways in which identity and spirituality can be used to help young and older adults in the face of pain and bereavement. Chapters also draw on the lived experiences of those who have engaged in a personal or guided journey towards finding new meaning and achieving posttraumatic growth following experiences of trauma. The rich variety of approaches offered here will be of interest to clinicians, counsellors, scholars and researchers involved in the practice and study of building resilience, as well as trauma studies, psychology and mental health more broadly. The personal and practice-based real-life stories in this volume will also resonate with individuals, family and community members facing adversity.

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.

Embodied, Embedded, and Enactive Psychopathology presents a new way of thinking about mental disorder that is holistic yet critically minded, biologically plausible yet value-inclusive, and scientific yet deeply compassionate. Grounded in an embodied, embedded, and enactive (3e) view of human functioning, this book presents a novel conceptual framework for the study and treatment of mental disorders and explores implications for the tasks of classification, explanation, and treatment. Chapters one to three argue for the central role of conceptualization in the study and treatment of mental disorders. Popular conceptual models are critiqued, including other recent enactive frameworks. Chapters four to seven then present 3e Psychopathology and explore its implications. This includes analysis of both research-based efforts to explain mental disorders, and methods for formulating individual-level explanations in clinical practice. New answers are presented for important questions such as: are mental disorders things we do or get? Are mental disorders defined in nature or are they socially constructed? Are mental disorders the same things across different cultures? And, are mental disorders located in our brains, bodies, or environments? This engaging work offers fresh insights that will appeal to clinicians, researchers, and those with an interest in the philosophy of psychiatry.

This book examines sex and gender differences in the causes and expression of medical conditions, including mental health disorders. Sex differences are variations attributable to individual reproductive organs and the XX or XY chromosomal complement. Gender differences are variations that result from biological sex as well as individual self-representation which include psychological, behavioural, and social consequences of an individual’s perceived gender. Gender is still a neglected field in psychopathology, and gender differences is often incorrectly used as a synonym of sex differences. A reconsideration of the definition of gender, as the term that subsumes masculinity and femininity, could shed some light on this misperception and could have an effect in the study of health and disease. This second edition of Psychopathology clarifies the anthropological, cultural and social aspects of gender and their impact on mental health disorders. It focuses on gender perspective as a paradigm not only in psychopathology but also in mental health disorders. As such it promotes open mindedness in the definition and perception of symptoms, as well as assumptions about those symptoms, and raises awareness of mental health.