Based on a case study of Pat (our sandal-wearing, cat-loving psychotherapist) and her new client, James (an ambitious barrister with a potentially harmful habit he can’t stop), this graphic novel follows the anxieties, frustrations, mind-wanderings and break-throughs of each, through a year of therapy sessions together.

Plenty of opportunity to recognize your good-and-bad therapist self, and maybe even freshen up on some theory (via commentary at the bottom of each page).   More b.g.:  A review here…and an author interview here.  Enjoy.

After the Storm
By Esther Perel
As therapists, we have an unquenchable desire to find happy endings for troubled clients, especially those weathering the crisis of infidelity. But what happens months or years later to those couples once our work with them has concluded?

Hope in the Ruins
By Laurie Leitch
A disaster-tested therapist, who’s worked with the survivors of the Thai tsunami, the Sichuan earthquake, and the Rwanda genocide, offers an on-the-scene report from Haiti in the wake of its recent, unimaginably devastating earthquake.

Seeking the Silence
By Dick Anderson
At an age when many are sticking ever closer to their couches and remote controls, a restless soul decides to seize his last chance to explore the wilderness alone.

I want to propose a new competition for therapists: awards for the worst experiences doing couples therapy. My own entry would be in the category of “worst experience as a new couples therapist in the first session.” It was 26 years ago, but as they say, it feels like yesterday…

Read the rest here: Bad Couples Therapy: How to Avoid It.

Psychotherapy Networker’s

Shame-O-Phobia
By David Wexler
Shame is the least understood dimension of men’s inner experience—by both men themselves and the people who live with them. This lack of understanding may be the key to why fewer than one-third of psychotherapy clients are male.

Lions Without A Cause
By Steven Stosny
Let’s face it: love means something quite different to men and women. A look at other species of social mammals offers some remarkable insights into the biological underpinnings of this difference.

Women Treating Men
By Holly Sweet
Gender shapes the therapy relationship from the very first moment therapist meets client, especially when the client is male and the therapist is female.

Game On!
By Barry J. Jacobs
Although therapy is often considered a profession dominated by the female sensibility, a lifelong gym rat, much practiced in the arts of masculine aggression, applies the lessons of the basketball court in the consulting room.

The Tribe Gathers
By Garry Cooper
It might seem strange to think of 3,000 people getting together in the lap of hotel luxury as a “primitive tribal gathering,” but the Networker Symposium definitely isn’t your everyday psychotherapy meeting.

1. MEDSCAPE
Malpractice Dangers for Psychiatrists
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/714110 (membership required)
This article is directed toward psychiatrists, but the
information is important for all mental health practitioners.

2. AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
Therapist’s Guide for Preparing a Professional Will
http://kspope.com/therapistas/will.php
A professional will is a plan for what happens if a therapist
dies suddenly or is incapacitated without warning.

3. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
When Professionals Go To Court: Preparing To Testify
http://www.athealth.com/apps/redirect.cfm?linkid=339
The courtroom is a foreign and sometimes alien environment
for most professionals.

4. PHYSICIANS PRACTICE
Patient Records Legal Primer
http://www.athealth.com/apps/redirect.cfm?linkid=340
Here’s what you need to know about keeping, transferring,
and destroying patient records. (Complimentary registration required.)

5. CURRENT PSYCHIATRY ONLINE
Assessing Potential for Harm: Would Your Patient Injure Himself Or Others?
http://www.currentpsychiatry.com/article_pages.asp?AID=7690
Questions to ask, steps to take when evaluating tendencies toward
suicide and violence. (Complimentary registration and login required.)

6. CROSS CURRENTS
No Safe Haven: Restraints Reform Targets Traumatizing Hospital Practices
http://www.camhcrosscurrents.net/archives/spring2009/no_safe_haven.html
Over the past decade, recognition has been growing of the harms of using
seclusion and restraint in psychiatric facilities.

7. THE BAZELON CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH LAW
Campus Mental Health: Know Your Rights!
http://www.bazelon.org/l21/rightsguide.htm
This is a guide for students who want to seek help
for mental illness or emotional distress.

8. CONTEMPORARY PEDIATRICS
Adolescent Patients and Their Confidentiality: Staying Within Legal Bounds
http://www.athealth.com/apps/redirect.cfm?linkid=341
The authors discuss a teen’s right to confidential healthcare.

1. Shame on You! by Sara Martin
2. Spiritual Power Tools: Support for Your Soul, by Jane E. Hart
3. Object Relations and the Developing Ego in Therapy, by Althea Horner
4. Internal Family Systems Therapy, by Richard Schwarz
5. Father Daughter Incest, by Judith Herman
6. The Courage to Heal, by Ellen Bass
7. Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, by Carl Jung
8. Synchronicity, by Carl Jung
9. The Ego and the Id, by Sigmund Freud
10. Anger, by Thich Nhat Han
11. Anything by Irvin Yalom
12. Childhood Antecedents of Multiple Personality, by Richard Kluft
13. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, by Peter Levine
14. For Your Own Good, by Alice Miller
15. Many Lives, Many Masters, by Brian Weiss
16. Too Scared to Cry, by Lenore Terr
17. Dancing the Dream, by Jamie Sams
18. DSM-IV -TR
19. Real Boys, by William Pollack
20. Reviving Ophelia, by Mary Pipher
21. The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz
22. Toward a New Psychology of Woman, by Jean Baker Miller
23. Obedience to Authority, by Stanley Milgram
24. Touchpoints, by T. Berry Brazelton
25. Invisible Heroes, Survivors of Trauma and Treatment, by Bellaruth Naparstek
26. The Skills of Helping, by Lawrence Shulman
27. Anything by Carol Gilligan
28. The Culture of Shame, by Andrew Morrison
29. Finding Space: Winnicott, God, and Psychic Reality, Ann Belford Ulanov
30. Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, William Worden
31. Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, Sue Johnson
32. Anything by Diana Fosha
33. The Sexual Healing Journey, by Wendy Maltz.
34. The Depression Workbook, by Copeland
35. Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, by Bourne
36. Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook, by Davis, Eshlman & McKay
37. Self-Esteem Workbook, by Schiraldi
38. Repeat After Me, by Claudia Black
39. A Hole in the Sidewalk, by Claudia Black
40. Anger Control Workbook, by McKay & Rogers
41. PTSD Workbook, by Williams & Poijula
42. The Wellness Recovery Action Plan, by Mary Ellen Copeland
43. On Becoming a Person, by Carl Rogers
44. Toward A Psychology of Being, by Abraham Maslow
45. Social Workers’ Desk Reference, edited by Albert R. Roberts and Gilbert J. Greene
46. Trauma and the Therapist, by Laurie Pearlman and Kay Saakvitne
47. Collaborative Treatment of Children and Adolescents, by Glen Saxe
48. The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog, by Bruse Perry
49. Building the Bonds of Attachment, by Daniel Hughes
50. Attachment Based Family Therapy, by Daniel Hughes
51. Trauma Stewardship, by Laura van Dermoot Nybeck
52. Neurobiology for Clinical Social Work: Theory and Practice, by Applegate and Shapiro,
53. The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, by Jack Kornfield

David P. Diana (interviewed in WTCI here) has just released a new book,

Preface

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
— Viktor E. Frankl (1984)

A career in mental health is rewarding and challenging, inspiring and at times discouraging, open and yet surprisingly restrictive. These dichotomies define the core of a life spent in service of the psychological and emotional well-being of others.

Since I began my mental health career in 1994 I’ve heard much talk about the sacrifices one makes when choosing the life of a behavioral health care provider. It is a noble endeavor indeed! However, this book is not about burdens and sacrifice. It’s about innovation, opportunity, and abundance. It is also about change and about breaking free in a profession where few see how this can possibly be done.

This book honors the caretaker in you while giving equal importance to your own well-being. A career in the behavioral sciences offers a vast reservoir of opportunity, more so than at any other time in our profession’s history. But those opportunities are sometimes diffi cult to see and hear. This book is about those untapped opportunities.

The history of our profession reveals a discipline that, since its inception, has challenged the status quo in pursuit of truth and understanding. Innovation, curiosity, a sense of wonder and growth were all bedrock principles.

But what are we to make of the mental health profession today? Are we living those bedrock principles? Are they available to us?

The material presented here will teach you how to combine your understanding of human behavior with innovative business ideas, thereby giving you the best of both worlds: fi nancial success and the ability to do what you love.

Learn from the disciplines of sales, marketing, and business development, and you will bring about new levels of success no matter what your interests or what role you choose to play in the field.

The new rules in today ’ s economy are important not only for big business but for professionals in all walks of life including behavioral health care.

In a dynamic world, we know all too well that change is a constant. The question is never about deciding whether to change. The question is about what kind of change is needed.

I am taking you on a journey into new opportunity within the profession. It’s a story about you. It ’ s a story about the possibilities available to you.

And it is well worth the effort.

Purchase Marketing for the Mental Health Professional at the WTCI Bookstore.  Find David P. Diana online at davidpdiana.com.

Lifted from an NASW/Linked-In discussion board, here are twenty-four books recommended by nineteen social workers–none of them (or maybe just one), I think, on the Best-Ever Book Lists put together by WTCI readers…and therefore, maybe of interest.

1. I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t): Telling the Truth About Perfectionism, Inadequacy and Power, by Brene Brown
2. Wasted, by Marya Hornbacher
3. An Unquiet Mind, by Kay Redfield Jamison
4. The the Heart and Soul of Change, by Duncan, Miller, Wambold, Hubble
5. The Heroic Client, by Duncan, by Miller and Sparks
6. Don’t Hit My Mommy: A Manual for Child-Parent Psychotherapy With Young Witnesses of Family Violencem  by Lieberman and Van Horn
7. If You Meet Buddha on the Road Kill Him, by Sheldon Kopp
8. Building the Bonds of Attachment, by Daniel Hughes
9. Enhancing Resilence in Survivors of Family Violence, Kim M. Anderson
10. Quality of Life Therapy, by Frisch
11. Modern Psychoanalysis of the Schizophrenic Patient, by Hyman Spotnitz
12. Maps of Narrative Practice, by Michael White
13. The Barefoot Helper, by Mark Hamer
14. Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler, by Heinz Ansbacher
15. UNITAS, by Edward Eismann
16. Over the Influence, by Patt Denning
17. The Tree of Knowledge, by Humberto Maturana
18. Motivational Interviewing by Rollnick and Miller
19. Clinical Handbook of Psychological Disorders, Fourth Edition: A Step-by-Step Treatment Manual, by David Barlow
20. Trauma & Recovery, by Judith Herman
21. Return to Community: Building Support Systems for People with Psychiatric Disabilities, Paul J. Carling
22. A Little Book About Person Centered Planning: Ways to Think About Person-centered Planning, by John O’Brien & Connie Lyle O’Brien (eds)
23. Reinventing Your Life, by Jeffrey E. Young and Janet S. Klosko
24. Kaplan and Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry (you can get the abridged version), by Harold Kaplan and Benjamin Sadock

The Long Shadow of Trauma
By Mary Sykes Wylie
As the battles and controversies over the forthcoming DSM-V heat up, a determined group of trauma experts and researchers are mounting a passionate challenge to our thinking about trauma, its long-term impact, and its treatment.

Therapy in the Danger Zone
By Mary Jo Barrett
There’s no more emotionally demanding work than that with an incestuous family. A therapist offers an uncensored look at the fear, loathing, fascination—and satisfactions—of the struggle to help a family emerge from the transgenerational legacy of abuse.

The Trauma Myth
By Susan Clancy
Twenty-five years ago, it was considered a great advance when therapists first began to approach childhood abuse as a form of trauma. Now new research suggests that the trauma model of abuse may sometimes do more harm than good.

Bright-Sided

By Barbara Ehrenreich
A naysayer’s look at Martin Seligman and the Positive Psychology industry he helped create.

A system taught to me years ago by coach and entrepreneur Jeff Raim, helped me think about time management in blocks. His calendar had three types of time blocked out each day: “work” “buffer,” and “spirit.”

• Work means activity that brings you both joy and money.
• Spirit means time that replenishes your soul and increases your energy.
• Buffer is a catch-all phrase meaning everything else.

When Jeff showed me this system, I blocked out my calendar and realized that my days were mostly work and buffer time, no spirit blocks showed up. This has changed and my time feels better managed and I am much more energized.

The rest is here.