Anxiety & Depression
Anxiety and depression may be common client issues, but treating them can be challenging. They underlie and intermingle with other conditions, manifesting in a variety of ways. These articles explore powerful approaches to treating OCD, GAD, panic attacks, eco-anxiety, and more. Learn from experts like Lynn Lyons, Judith Beck, David Burns, Rick Hanson, and others.
Depression & Depressive Disorders
The stories in this section examine the wide spectrum of depressive mood presentations clinicians encounter in practice, from major depression and dysthymia to trauma-linked and treatment-resistant forms. They also speak to the clinical realities of working with anhedonia, shame, and stalled motivation. You'll find expert guidance on addressing challenging symptoms that consider attachment history, co-occurring conditions, loss, global events, invalidation, and temperament. Throughout these pieces, gain insights on how to move beyond symptom reduction and work to restore agency, connection, and meaning in clients' lives.
Eco-Anxiety
A growing number of clients are experiencing distress about climate change, environmental collapse, and ecological uncertainty. This distress, better known as eco-anxiety, often shows up as panic, grief, anger, or numbness. These articles help therapists identify and address eco-anxiety as a rational response to real threats. Clinicians will find language for exploring moral distress, fear, and activist burnout. Learn how to help clients stay emotionally engaged and connected--to others and to the planet--without tipping into helplessness or chronic overwhelm.
General & Social Anxiety
These articles contain clinically focused explorations of how chronic worry, anticipatory fear, and interpersonal inhibition shape clients' lives. They go beyond standard approaches, digging into the subtle developmental and cultural factors that shape how anxieties can present. Find case-based discussions of cognitive- and exposure-based work, somatic and mindfulness strategies for management, and compassion-focused approaches to perfectionism and shame. Learn how to best support clients as they navigate uncertainty, expand their window of tolerance, and gradually reengage with valued activities and relationships.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
In this collection of articles, clinicians address the complexities of OCD treatment across symptom themes including contamination, responsibility, harm, morality, and identity. Our expert contributors dig into the entrenched reassurance cycles and family accommodations that can worsen symptoms. They also illustrate how we can best support clients--and manage our own anxieties and doubts as therapists along the way. Learn more about helping clients relate differently to intrusive thoughts, loosen their reliance on compulsions, and reorient their lives around what they value most.
Treating depression with electricity or magnets may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but it’s currently at the center of a raging debate. Read more
"Bittersweet" invites us to better understand and celebrate the wistful, sensitive people in our lives—and in our therapy practices. Read more
Understanding some of the most common ways anxiety can look in therapy can provide us with guideposts to intervene strategically and support better outcomes... Read more
We can use our discomfort with clients to learn how to help them. Read more
Rather than a pure focus on relieving symptoms, researchers and clinicians would benefit from exploring the rich inner life of the OCD sufferer and its hidden... Read more
In the face of environmental anguish, a therapy icon turns to grassroots activism and finds hope, healing, and connection. Read more
Real world events are enough to cause anxiety in anyone. See how this therapist helped an anxious client see the world in a new way. Read more
Making accommodations for socially anxious kids can be easier than getting them off their phones and out of their rooms—but it’s also dangerous. Read more
An anxious mom steps out of her fortress of solitude and onto the martial-arts mat. Read more
Watch this Networker Live event with "Girls on the Brink" author Donna Jackson Nakazawa. Read more
In this Networker Live event, editor in chief Livia Kent talks with author Lynn Lyons, LICSW, about anxiety and families. Read more
Psychologist Elizabeth Allured is helping therapists and their clients contend with anxieties about the world’s climate crisis. Read more
Our willingness to face shared existential struggles right alongside our clients can make exposure therapy not only tolerable, but transformative. Read more
To help our clients grow into their most fulfilled selves, we can do more than mitigate negative or enervating thoughts. Read more
Encouraging anxious clients to face their fears is widely accepted as the gold-standard approach for treating anxiety-related disorders, including OCD. But a... Read more
When the pandemic first struck, I was concerned about its impact yet able to handle the anxiety about infection pretty well. After all, managing anxiety is my... Read more
Andrew has started showing symptoms of OCD. He’s struggled with anxiety for a while, but the pandemic seems to have been a tipping point for him. His... Read more
Given the wildfires, Covid variants, hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes and periods of social unrest that abound these days, the world can feel like a scary... Read more
Over the last year and a half, therapists have been pushed to the limit listening to clients worry, ruminate, grieve, and suffer in magnified ways. And we’ve... Read more
An encounter with a superstar teaches a young woman about courage. Read more
In the throes of depression, a therapist searches for a magic bullet. Read more
A terrifying journey shows just how much psychotic delusions are embedded in the unquestioned essence of a person’s thinking—as true as ocean, ground, and... Read more
It’s a truism that climate change has become an existential crisis. Can a new book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist help mitigate ecological despair? Read more
In this genuinely hazardous COVID-19 environment, how can therapists help kids and families reject their OCD safety rituals? Read more
We can’t guarantee certainty about anything, really. But some of us become haunted by needing to know for sure. We call this unrelenting need the Reassurance... Read more
Helping hyperaroused clients learn to manage overwhelming emotions is like helping them steer a ship in stormy waters, says therapist and mindfulness... Read more
In challenging times, these simple sensorimotor interventions for depression can be easily used in sessions. Read more
What strategies do psychotherapy's most effective therapists use to treat depression? Trauma expert and bestselling author Janina Fisher breaks down nine... Read more
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