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The demand for results-driven accountability is pervasive in all aspects of education today. The shift in emphasis from compliance to accountability for closing achievement gaps and improving student outcomes creates challenges and opportunities for school-based professionals. School-based professionals have a significant role to play in supporting school improvement efforts and improving outcomes for students in their role as program evaluators. Despite the need for advanced knowledge and skills in program evaluation, resources dedicated to developing the competencies of school-based professionals in evaluation approaches, methods, and tools are scarce. This book addresses this need by serving as a practical resource for school-based professionals seeking to use program evaluation to enhance data-based decision making and accountability as informed by implementation research and within the context of a multi-tier system of supports framework. Throughout this book, school-based professionals are positioned as change agents guiding their school or school districts in the adoption, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based interventions and systems of support to meet students’ academic and behavioral needs.Less

In recent years, there has been a movement away from traditional disorder-specific manuals for the treatment of psychological disorders and toward treatment approaches that focus on addressing psychological processes that appear to cut across disorders. These “transdiagnostic” evidence-based treatments may prove to be more cost-efficient and have the potential to increase availability of evidence-based treatments to meet a significant public-health need. Among clinicians, the Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders (UP), developed by Dr. David Barlow and colleagues, is the most recognizable and widely used transdiagnostic treatment protocol with empirical support for its use. This book provides clinicians with a “how to” guide for using the UP to treat a broad range of commonly encountered psychological disorders in adults. Each chapter covers a specific emotional disorder but important transdiagnostic processes are highlighted and discussed in relation to treatment. Case studies are employed throughout to illustrate the real-world application of this unique cognitive behavioral protocol and to instruct clinicians in the nuts and bolts of assessment, case formulation, and treatment in accordance with a transdiagnostic perspective. Most of the chapters are authored by current or former unified protocol team members who are all thoroughly familiar with the UP and will be writing about cases they themselves have treated.Less

This title aims to improve coping skills of older adults. It builds on traditional interpersonal psychotherapy, an evidence-based treatment that has been found useful in treating depressed elders. Cognitive impairment, a common occurrence in the older population due to disease or age-related causes of changes in brain function, calls for additional strategies to optimize functioning. Interpersonal psychotherapy for use with cognitively impaired older adults (IPT-ci) seeks to help older patients and their caregivers manage the effects of cognitive impairment, particularly in the early phase when behavior changes are often misunderstood, as well as to plan for potential future declines in cognitive functioning.Less

This online therapist guide presents an evidence-based group treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a form of major depression that recurs at the same time every year, in the late autumn-winter months. In 12 sessions over 6 weeks, therapists will help guide their clients in learning the traditional CBT elements of behavioural activation and cognitive restructuring to improve coping with the winter season. It offers guidance on cognitive restructuring to focus on challenging negative thoughts related to the winter season, weather conditions, and lack of light. A relapse-prevention component addresses early identification of negative anticipatory thoughts about winter and SAD-related behaviour changes, how patients can use the skills learned to cope with subsequent winter seasons, and they can develop a personalized relapse-prevention plan. It includes homework exercises, monitoring forms, and other useful components to supplement the patients’ work done in therapy.Less

This online workbook presents an evidence-based group treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a form of major depression that recurs at the same time every year, in the late autumn-winter months. In 12 sessions over 6 weeks, participants learn the traditional CBT elements of behavioural activation and cognitive restructuring to improve coping with the winter season. Some cognitive restructuring focuses on challenging negative thoughts related to the winter season, weather conditions, and lack of light. A relapse-prevention component addresses early identification of negative anticipatory thoughts about winter and SAD-related behaviour changes, how to use the skills learned to cope with subsequent winter seasons, and the development of a personalized relapse-prevention plan. It includes homework exercises, monitoring forms, and other useful components to supplement the work done in therapy.Less

Couple Therapy for Depression is an integrative 20-session couple therapy designed to treat depression in couples where there is also relationship distress. Following the recommendations of the UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence for a behaviourally-based couple therapy treatment, it draws on RCT studies of efficacy as well as 'best practice' in behavioural, cognitive, emotionally-focused, systemic, and psychodynamic couple therapies. Sticking closely to the competencies identified for the treatment of depression and relationship distress in couples, it outlines the ways in which couple therapists can reduce damaging interactions between couples, build emotional openness and closeness, improve communication and behaviour, change unhelpful cognitions and perceptions, and help the couple cope with the ordinary and not-so ordinary stresses that arise in the course of everyday relating. It covers the causes and consequences of depression and its impact on the adult couple. Highlighting the particular techniques needed in safe and effective work with distressed couples, it goes through the different ways in which the couple's feelings, thoughts, and behaviours need to be understood and worked with in order to reduce relationship distress. Less

Although the perceptions and realities of ageing have changed markedly over the last few decades, for practitioners working with older people, emotional problems remain a major factor of health and happiness in later life. This handbook provides a concise, authoritative and up to date guide to best practice in therapy for older people, for a wide range of mental health professionals. The introductory chapters examine the individual, social, cultural, and physical experience of ageing, and provide an essential background for a caring and professional understanding of related emotional disorders and their effective treatment. Throughout the book, key research and clinical experience is reported as underlying evidence based treatment, but the emphasis is on practical guidance for assessment and interventions, rather than detailed discussion of methodological issues.Less

The overall purpose of this book is to provide a highly practical guide for school professionals to efficiently address cases of youth with school refusal behavior at different levels of severity and complexity. School refusal behavior can consist of full or part-day absences, tardiness, skipped classes, morning misbehaviors in an attempt to miss school, and school attendance under considerable duress. School refusal behavior is a pervasive and difficult problem faced by many types of mental health professionals (e.g., psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage and family therapists), school officials (e.g., administrators, guidance counselors, school-based social workers, school psychologists), and others (e.g., pediatricians, probation officers). School refusal behavior, even in mild forms, has been shown to be a significant risk factor for social, behavioral, and academic problems in middle childhood and adolescence as well as psychiatric, economic, and occupational difficulties in adulthood. This book provides assessment and intervention strategies along a multi-tiered model that includes systemic approaches to prevent school absenteeism (Tier 1), clinical techniques for emerging or moderate cases of absenteeism (Tier 2), and educational and other procedures for chronic and severe cases of absenteeism (Tier 3).Less

Mental illness is an enormous burden worldwide, as reflected in the number of individuals who suffer from a mental disorder, the personal pain and suffering they and their families experience, the exorbitant costs of providing but also of failing to provide services, and the spillover of mental health problems into physical health (e.g., many physical maladies and earlier-than-expected deaths associated with mental illness) and functioning in everyday life (e.g., in social relations, employment, happiness, and quality of life). We have many interventions that can help, but they are not brought to the many people in need of psychological services. There are many novel models of delivering these interventions that could be scaled to reach people in need and surmount the many barriers to providing and receiving services. Promising models of delivery are drawn from physical health care, public health, business, social policy, and other disciplines and can serve to illustrate what can be done now. This book conveys new ways of delivering treatment as well as new ways of developing and investigating treatments so that they are much more likely to reach people in need. The overall goal is, or ought to be, reducing the burdens of mental illness. This book conveys novel ways of providing treatment if we adopt that goal more explicitly and draw on the best science available to achieve that.Less

This online therapist guide outlines a 30-session cognitive-behavioural treatment for bipolar depression. It provides session-by-session instructions for helping clients decrease and prevent relapse. Bipolar disorder is extremely hard to manage and this program will help clients better prepare themselves for dealing with problems and high-risk situations. Treatment is comprised of four stages: a depression-focused phase (9 sessions), a treatment-contract phase, (4-sessions), a problem-list phase (13 sessions), and a well-being phase (4 sessions). This treatment also includes a component for families to help them understand the disorder and work together with both the therapist and the patient to get the best results from treatment.Less