The Therapy Beat

According to Michael Gelb, a world-renowned speaker on innovative approaches to enhanced learning and author of How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven... Read more

In this brief video clip, Margaret Wehrenberg, cognitive behaviorist and author of The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques, offers some facts about the... Read more

Stephen makes it clear that hard scientific evidence now exists for what most therapists instinctively know: successful therapy depends utterly on establishing... Read more

“When DSM-III came out and the major depression diagnosis was created,” Gary tells us in this brief video clip, “it was immediately clear that many... Read more

Before David Burns wraps up therapy with recovered clients, he makes sure they’re well prepared for relapse. In this brief video clip, he breaks down the... Read more

Psychiatrist and author Norman Doidge believes that while the brain has an astonishing capacity for change, brain plasticity doesn’t always work out for the... Read more

Fifteen-year-old Grace doesn’t know it yet, but her troubling anxiety symptoms are run of the mill. Like most anxious kids, it’s not the content of her... Read more

It’s one thing to throw around the scientific-sounding language of brain science, it’s another to actually develop concrete clinical procedures based on... Read more

Allen Frances—author of "Saving Normal: Has Psychiatric Diagnosis Gotten Out of Control?"—is one of DSM-5’s most outspoken critics, but his ultimate... Read more

According to Margaret Wehrenberg, when it comes to clients with panic disorders, the first thing to discern is what they’re doing to avoid panic. “The... Read more

Why do young boys tend to roughhouse while young girls lean towards relational play? According to Louann Brizendine, these and many other differences observed... Read more

Rather than continuing to lament the deficiencies of DSM-5, forensic psychiatrist David Mays wants to focus on what's ahead for the psychotherapy field. In his... Read more

Most therapists assume that, just as any rational person with a broken arm would be an eager customer for medical care, surely a person suffering from severe... Read more

Until recently, the impact of brain science on the everyday work of most therapists has been pretty limited. According to Rick Hanson, that’s because we’ve... Read more

Most therapists, when asked, report checking in routinely for client feedback and knowing when to do so. But research has found this to be far from true. Read more

Back in the late 1970s, a motley crew of Vietnam War vets, sympathetic psychiatrists, antiwar activists, and church groups undertook a crusade to have a... Read more

How can therapists acquire neuroscientific knowledge without becoming brain scientists themselves? Even more pressing, what real-life practical therapeutic... Read more

In this video clip, Regier talks about how the new definition of a major depressive disorder in DSM-5 better enables clinicians to diagnose clients who exhibit... Read more

No other single condition tests the therapeutic relationship quite so stringently, demands so much from the clinician, or combines so many disparate treatment... Read more

If we don’t open up the one-on-one therapeutic cloister, trauma sufferers may never learn how to engage in the give and take of real-life relationships. By... Read more

Most therapists find it relatively easy to feel empathy for the usual hyperaroused, vulnerable trauma client. But it can be a lot tougher to remain... Read more

Twenty-five years ago, we believed that helping trauma survivors dig into dark and unspeakable horrors would set them free. But in this new age of trauma... Read more

Brain games and grad prospects Read more

It’s commonly suggested that depression results from seeing reality too clearly. Repression, denial, and humor grease the social wheels and lead us to put a... Read more

In this video clip, Rick talks about how to activate positive mental states and help clients embody them so that they become permanent resources. Read more

Allen Frances learned first-hand how, even when motivated by the best of intentions, changes in the “bible of psychiatry” can have large-scale negative... Read more

While the publication of DSM-5 came with many surprises, few were as shocking—or as controversial—as the number of changes made to diagnosis specifiers... Read more

Asperger’s no longer exists—at least not in the DSM-5. And there are other changes, like the omission of sexual addiction, that many therapists are... Read more

Whether you’re a critic or a proponent of DSM-5, that fact that it exists and will affect your practice is undeniable. Between several new diagnoses, the... Read more

Jack Klott discusses the DSM5 and why it's a triumph in the field, despite its flaws. Read more