Brain-Based Therapy with Adults: Evidence-Based Treatment for Everyday Practice [Paperback]

John B. Arden (Author), Lloyd Linford (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470138904 | ISBN-13: 978-0470138908 | Publication Date: November 10, 2008 | Edition: 1

Brain-Based Therapy with Adults: Evidence-Based Treatment for Everyday Practice provides a straightforward, integrated approach that looks at what we currently know about the brain and how it impacts and informs treatment interventions. Authors John Arden and Lloyd Linford, experts in neuroscience and evidence-based practice, reveal how this new kind of therapy takes into account the uniqueness of each client. Presentation of detailed background and evidence-based?interventions for common adult disorders such as anxiety and depression offers you expert advice you can put into practice immediately.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“These authors in this new volume see the value in integrating the biological and psychological in a more seamless way, to both inform and drive the integrated approach further.” (Metapsychology, May 2009)

From the Back Cover

An insightful and practical guide that looks at the role neuroscience plays as it relates to the evidence-based treatment of adult disorders

Written in an accessible way, Brain-Based Therapy with Adults: Evidence-Based Treatment for Everyday Practice provides a straightforward, integrated approach that looks at what we currently know about the brain and how it impacts and informs treatment interventions. Authors Arden and Linford show how this new kind of therapy takes into account both the uniqueness of each client, as well as the requirements of standardized care under evidence-based practice—and offers mental health professionals advice that they can put into practice immediately.

Relying on research in developmental neurobiology, brain imaging, and evidence-based psychotherapeutic practices, the authors, experts in both neuroscience and evidence-based practice, cover:

• Recent neuroscientific discoveries and how these can be integrated into evidence-based interventions to create uniquely effective treatments

• Detailed background and evidence-based?interventions for many of the most common adult disorders, such as OCD,?panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and relationship problems

• Tips on helping patients re-regulate such neurodynamically important processes as sleep and the mind-body relationship

Incorporating vignettes that illustrate how to include these new treatments into effective client care, Brain-Based Therapy with Adults: Evidence-Based Treatment for Everyday Practice explains the concept of brain-based therapy in a succinct and easy-to-grasp way, enabling therapists to make practical sense of neuroscience and its application within their everyday practice.

Also Available:
Brain-Based Therapy with Children and Adolescents: Evidence-Based Treatment for Everyday Practice

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (November 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470138904
• ISBN-13: 978-0470138908
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #210,335 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Relevant and non-dogmatic, January 12, 2009

By 

Thomas W. Cohen "Tom Cohen, D.M.H." (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brain-Based Therapy with Adults: Evidence-Based Treatment for Everyday Practice (Paperback)

Brain Based Therapy with Adults
By John B. Arden and Lloyd Linford
Book Review
By Thomas Cohen, D.M.H.

Speaking as a Clinical Psychologist who has been practicing and teaching over 35 years, it is rare to find a book that conveys this much relevance, usefulness and non-dogmatic instruction.
Why would anyone want to read yet another textbook on psychotherapy? Because this book combines not only the most up to date research on psychotherapy outcome studies, but presents diagnosis and treatment in a sensible manner that follows from and is faithful to that research.
Is the book biased towards the approach of the authors and thus, like most accounts of therapy, relegated to describing solipsistic opinions? Yes, but those opinions are based more on solid research and cutting edge discoveries in neuro-science, than any other book I have ever seen. I am a psychoanalyst and thus feel the book leans too heavily towards CBT, but those accounts of CBT are dedicated to specific diagnostic conditions (e.g. anxiety disorder and OCD) that have extensive research to back up the claims. Also, the descriptions of treatment are concise and extremely informative about how CBT therapy works. CBT treatment is presented in a balanced context of its own limitations, contra-indications and the strengths of other treatments such as psychodynamic and relational/intersubjective approaches.
Considering that, as a field of study, brain science is only at its fledging beginnings, do we even know enough to create an approach that utilizes the rapidly growing body of information about how the brain works? I questioned how one could make the leap from the neuro-scientific laboratory to the consulting room. This book not only illuminates how brain studies can be applied to clinical work, but it beautifully simplifies the complexity of brain functioning into a language that can be effectively described to patients and therapeutically applied to relieve their suffering. It describes how clinicians can use brain studies to empathically bridge the gap between their own clinically distant theoretical explanations and the patient's need for understanding.
Is reading the book worth the effort? For me, the answer is a qualified yes. More than most psychotherapy books, this one created cognitive dissonance for me. For instance, I am biased towards psychoanalytic approaches to therapy and while this book does give ample weight to the psychodynamic, it emphasizes other approaches. However, its resounding emphasis is on what I would call the "intangible" aspects of therapy (what the authors describe as "common elements"). Arden and Linford state that one's method of therapy accounts for only 5% of the therapeutic success outcome measurements. Most of the variance is due to relational factors.
It is the non-verbal, emotional and interpersonal resonances that occur in the right brain-to-right brain, limbic system-to-limbic system interactions between patient and therapist that create the therapeutic relationship. This process is at the heart of the vivid and varied descriptions of the therapeutic process that this book portrays and, as such, makes it so worthwhile to read.
Finally, I imagine that many beginning, intermediate and even advanced level therapists could find this book a wealth of information for how to assess and treat the major diagnoses that confront us in our daily clinical practices: depression, anxiety, panic, OCD and PTSD. It is elegant in its succinct, innovative, practical and cutting edge approach to the challenges of psychotherapeutic practice.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Akin to the Wizard of Oz, August 9, 2009

By 

P. A. Sarr (Paekakariki, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brain-Based Therapy with Adults: Evidence-Based Treatment for Everyday Practice (Paperback)

This is a remarkable book. Aimed for the professional psychotherapist or counsellor, it also offers fascinating insights for those of us who are more likely to BE in therapy. The prose occasionally veers into the technical but those sections are easily skipped. Most of the writing is direct, even funny, and remarkable. The contributions of the physical brain to our emotional/mental states, the degree to which there are physical explanations for why we keep making the same mistakes -- and how much those patterns can be changed, well, it makes for a great read for those of us wanting to understand ourselves better. The sense for me was of that scene in the Wizard of Oz where the curtain gets pulled back and we see that the Wizard is just a little chap, much like ourselves. Which means we can all be wizards to some degree.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Synthesis, December 24, 2008

By 

Louis J. Cozolino (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brain-Based Therapy with Adults: Evidence-Based Treatment for Everyday Practice (Paperback)

In their new work Brain-Based Therapy, Arden and Linford take us a step forward in the long overdue integration of neuroscience into everyday clinical practice. Combining extensive clinical experience with an in-depth exploration of neuroscience, they emerge with the BASE model of case conceptualization which places their neuroscientific perspective in the context of emotional attunement, multilayered systems issues, and evidence-based practice.

This work is a wonderful admixture of perspectives, as aspirational as applied, and a warning shot fired over the heads of those who want to hide safely within one way to conceptualize everyone who walks through the door. I would especially encourage new students to conceptualize their clients from this model before they are overcome with any of their teachers' hardening of the categories.