It’s now clear that much of what therapists do for people suffering from OCD actually worsens the problem. Providing empathic reassurance, rational disputation, and coping skills to manage anxiety only serves to refuel the obsession. So how do you avoid the dead end of co-compulsing with your clients?

OCD in children can operate like a kind of cult leader, demanding acceptance of an extreme view of a perilous reality and offering solutions that can’t be resisted, no matter how absurd they may sound. Given the overwhelming fear and worry the condition generates, falling in line with the cult leader can seem like the best strategy—except that it doesn’t work.

When it comes to eating disorders, therapy can be a matter of life and death.

It’s difficult enough to offer an apology when we see the need for it and believe it’s the right thing to do. It’s far more difficult when we’re confronted with criticism we didn’t see coming, and that we don’t believe is fair.

How an understanding of the brain can inform our trauma interventions.

Out of all the hundreds and hundreds of articles that have appeared in the Networker over the past four decades, we’ve chosen a small sampling that captures the magazine’s most journalistic side, conveying not so much the eternal verities of our profession, but the sense of reading a first draft of the field’s history. Among other things, you’ll find therapeutic methods that, as exciting as they seemed at the moment, didn’t stand the test of time as well as initial forays into discussing complex issues we’re still struggling with today. We’ve also added in a few examples of writing so immediate and compelling that they have an air of timelessness. Prepare yourself for an interesting journey.

In spite of what seems to be as many different therapy methods as stars in the sky, and in spite of reams of outcome studies, no empirically studied model appears to show any real advantage over any other. Does this mean we should all pack up our framed degrees, sell our therapy books, and go into real estate? Of course not. Therapy does work—often exceptionally well—but not as routinely or predictably as we’d like. Seasoned clinicians know that practicing therapy is always more than just following the technical rules they’ve been taught. Engaging a new client is a leap into the unknown, the beginning of an exploration into uncharted human geography.

Diagnosing and treating mood disorders can be tricky, especially when it comes to an often overlooked, subtle form of bipolar II.

How have the practitioners in rural communities been responding to America’s opioid epidemic?

Canadian physician Gabor Maté believes that addictive behaviors are woven into the very fabric of our materialistic society.