Most health professionals would agree that time and funds are in short supply, even under optimal conditions. Patients, too, would admit similar shortfalls, even with optimal motivation. This book offers self-administered and easily administered interventions designed to promote positive health behaviors while requiring little or no outside funding. Editor Luciano L’Abate continues his long tradition of prolific innovations by identifying major changes in today’s health care systems and explaining how targeted, prescriptive promotion/prevention strategies can enhance traditional primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions in key behavioral and relational areas.

Most health professionals would agree that time and funds are in short supply, even under optimal conditions. Patients, too, would admit similar shortfalls, even with optimal motivation. This book offers self-administered and easily administered interventions designed to promote positive health behaviors while requiring little or no outside funding. Editor Luciano L’Abate continues his long tradition of prolific innovations by identifying major changes in today’s health care systems and explaining how targeted, prescriptive promotion/prevention strategies can enhance traditional primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions in key behavioral and relational areas.

Mental, neurological, and substance use disorders are common, highly disabling, and associated with significant premature mortality. The impact of these disorders on the social and economic well-being of individuals, families, and societies is large, growing, and underestimated. Despite this burden, these disorders have been systematically neglected, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, with pitifully small contributions to scaling up cost-effective prevention and treatment strategies. Systematically compiling the substantial existing knowledge to address this inequity is the central goal of this volume. This evidence-base can help policy makers in resource-constrained settings as they prioritize programs and interventions to address these disorders.

Self-help is big business, but alas not a scienti c business. The estimated 10 billion—that’s with a “b”—spent each year on self-help in the United States is rarely guided by research or monitored by mental health professionals. Instead, marketing and metaphysics triumph. The more outrageous the “miraculous cure” and the “r- olutionary secret,” the better the sales. Of the 3,000 plus self-help books published each year, only a dozen contain controlled research documenting their effectiveness as stand-alone self-help. Of the 20,000 plus psychological and relationship web sites available on the Internet, only a couple hundred meet professional standards for accuracy and balance. Most, in fact, sell a commercial product. Pity the layperson, or for that matter, the practitioner, trying to navigate the self-help morass. We are bombarded with thousands of potential resources and c- tradictory advice. Should we seek wisdom in a self-help book, an online site, a 12-step group, an engaging autobiography, a treatment manual, an inspiring movie, or distance writing? Should we just do it, or just say no? Work toward change or accept what is? Love your inner child or grow out of your Peter Pan? I become confused and discouraged just contemplating the choices.

Writing as a medium of professional help and healing in the various interventional tiers of self-help, education, promotion, prevention, and psychotherapy, and rehabilitation has expanded exponentially since the introduction of computers and the Internet in the last generation. This volume does three things. Firstly, it brings together research on different types of writing and distance writing that have been, or need to be, used by mental health professionals. Secondly, it critically evaluates the therapeutic effectiveness of these writing practices, such as automatic writing, programmed writing poetry therapy, diaries, expressive writing and more. And thirdly, in addition to evaluating the effectiveness of various writing practices, the volume will examine how research-based writing approaches will influence the delivery of mental health services now and in the future, including the implications of these approaches.

This book examines a seemingly simple and absolutely essential topic: learning how to enjoy every aspect of your life on a daily basis. All of us look for happiness, well-being, and positivity throughout our lives, but for most people these goals are abstract and the processes established to achieve them ambiguous. The Seven Sources of Pleasure in Life: Making Way for the Upside in the Midst of Modern Demands focuses attention upon the concrete, specific, and everyday sources of pleasure that are within the grasp of almost everyone. Prolific author Luciano L'Abate, PhD, ABEPP, examines at all kinds of pleasures, investigating where we find them, why they appeal to us, and what benefits they provide in terms of both mental and physical health. He explains how to increase our sensitivity to everyday opportunities for pleasure, and then gives tangible techniques to focus upon these moments in order to fully experience them. The author employs personal memories from his childhood in Italy, more recent stories from his travels abroad, and the findings of most recent scientific research on the benefits of pleasure-seeking to further illustrate his points.

Over the course of the last decade, political and mental entities at large have embraced global mental health: the idea that psychiatric health is vital to improved quality of life. Physicians globally have implemented guidelines recommended by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 2007, thereby breaking down barriers to care and improving quality of life in areas where these practices have been implemented. Programs for training and education have expanded as a result. Clinicians benefit more from both local resources in some regions as well as in international collaboration and technological advancements. Even amidst all of these positive outcomes, clinicians still face some stumbling blocks. With worldwide statistics estimating that 450 million people struggle with mental, neuropsychiatric, and neurological disorders—25 percent of the world’s non-communicable disease burden—rising to these challenges prove to be no small feat, even in wealthy Western nations. Various articles and books have been published on global mental health, but few of them thoroughly cover the clinical, research, innovative, and social implications as they pertain to psychiatry; often, only one of these aspects is covered. A comprehensive text that can keep pace with the rapidly evolving literature grows more and more valuable each day as clinicians struggle to piece together the changes around the world that leave open the possibility for improved outcomes in care. This book seeks to boldly rectify this situation by identifying innovative models of service delivery, training, education, research funding, and payment systems that have proven to be exemplary in implementation and scalability or have potential for scalability. Chapters describe specific barriers and challenges, illuminating effective strategies for improved outcomes. This text is the first peer-reviewed resource to gather prestigious physicians in global mental health from around the world and disseminate their expertise in the medical community at large in a format that is updateable, making it a truly cutting-edge resource in a world constantly changed by medical, scientific, and technological advances. Innovations in Global Mental Health is the ultimate resource for psychiatrists, psychologists, primary care physicians, hospitalists, policy makers, and all medical professionals at the forefront of global mental health and its implications for the future.

Drawing on new paradigms and evidence-based discoveries in neuroscience, narrative psychology, and creativity theory, this text explores the beneficial role of expressive arts within a recovery perspective. A framework of practice principles for the visual arts, creative writing, music, drama, dance, and digital storytelling is addressed across a number of settings and populations, providing readers with an accessible overview of techniques taught in counseling programs in the U.S. and abroad.

The last decade has seen a renewed recognition of the interconnection of the mental and physical wellbeing of people living with mental diseases. Research has assessed the impact of exercise and psychological interventions as monotherapy and complementary treatments to usual care and found considerable benefits to reduce psychiatric symptoms and improve quality of life. Questions remain on the effectiveness and on the best practices to deliver such interventions. Combining Exercise and Psychotherapy to Treat Mental Health evaluates the effects of psychotherapy and exercise interventions in individuals with mental health diseases. The book also addresses psychotherapy and exercise interventions for mental health followed by combined psychotherapy and exercise interventions and provides strategies for maintaining exercise involvement. Covering key topics such as anxiety disorders, psychology, exercise, and mood disorders, this premier reference source is ideal for therapists, mental health specialists, psychologists, industry professionals, researchers, academicians, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

In the book "Mental Illnesses - Understanding, Prediction and Control" attention is devoted to the many background factors that are present in understanding public attitudes, immigration, stigma, and competencies surrounding mental illness. Various etiological and pathogenic factors, starting with adhesion molecules at one level and ending with abuse and maltreatment in childhood and youth at another level that are related to mental illness, include personality disorders that sit between mental health and illness. If we really understand the nature of mental illness then we should be able to not only predict but perhaps even to control it irrespective of the type of mental illness in question but also the degree of severity of the illness in order to allow us to predict their long-term outcome and begin to reduce its influence and costs to society. How can we integrate theory, research evidence, and specific ways to deal with mental illness? An attempt will be made in the last conclusive chapter of this volume.