How to use the therapeutic play zone to help young children face difficult situations. Read more

Psychotherapists are usually on the front lines of mental health treatment, trained to spot and assess everything from changes in mood to unusual physical... Read more

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

Far too often, trauma survivors appear to progress in therapy and then go home and fall right back into the same old patterns of negative emotion and... Read more

Stress responses aren't only vested within the sympathetic nervous system’s capacity to support fight-or-flight behaviors. There’s another defense... Read more

Emotion is the most important motivating force bringing clients to our offices in the first place. Nevertheless, therapists are often strangely queasy in the... Read more

In his latest book, Peter Kramer argues that medications represent the best, most effective tool for fighting the bleakness of depression. Read more

Sometimes there’s no need for a detailed assessment of a client’s entire life history and their family relationships, especially when the desired outcome... Read more

In a brief video, Susan explains how to create moments of emotional sharing so deep that they automatically translate into couples' lives. Read more

Questions have been raised about whether the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy, the field’s most researched treatment model, has been overstated. Read more

Over the years, I’ve found that I’ve needed a solid, research-backed clinical model, which would guide me in sessions and keep me grounded during... Read more

Emotion shapes and organizes our experience and connection to others. It readies us for specific actions and motivates us to change—research now confirms all... Read more

IFS founder Dick Schwartz believes a genuine state of self-compassion entails a journey into multiple parts of yourself that may include the good, the bad, the... Read more

Since it was introduced as an anesthetic in the 1970s, ketamine has occupied an uncertain pharmacological status. It’s been used as both a Vietnam-era... Read more

It can be hard to get around your young clients’ defense systems so that the good, therapeutic information gets through. Charlotte has a way to get around... Read more

As therapists, we must recognize the complexity and ambivalence at the core of human experience. People run into problems when their lives are dictated by... Read more

While the number of people in psychotherapy keeps declining, surveys reveal that potential clients would still rather talk to a therapist than fill a... Read more

The case of a young man hearing voices shows how even problems that first appear to be extreme can be resolved by empowering clients to alter subtle aspects of... Read more

 A few decades ago, when young therapists like myself watched Salvador Minuchin, Virginia Satir, Carl Whitaker, or other leading lights, it was like... Read more

While widely acknowledged to be the most empirically supported therapy ever invented, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is often criticized for being too... Read more

Sometimes psychoactive medication can work wonders with agitated young clients in the throes of a psychological emergency. But psychiatrist Robert Hedaya, an... Read more

Steven explains that clients are rarely cured by medication or therapy alone. Read more

It’s not within the standard protocol of talk therapy to tap on clients’ acupuncture points as they focus on a problem or goal. Even therapists convinced... Read more

In this brief video clip, Richard explains how trauma survivors can have a dialogue with the damaged inner parts—the “Exiles”—by first consulting their... Read more

Over the last 150 years, we’ve seen waves of mass infatuations with psychotropic drugs—antidepressants being the latest. While all these drugs are... Read more

The chemical effect of psychoactive meds is only part of their impact. In fact, people often develop complex relationships with the pills they take. Read more

For many therapists, an air of mystery surrounds the role of psychopharmacology in mental health treatment. Here's a step-by-step tour of the complexities of... Read more

Does our growing understanding of the brain and the prospect of further scientific discoveries mean there’s a new generation of magical pills on the horizon? Read more

After wading through the controversies and contradictions in the research literature on SSRIs, a critic of Big Pharma explains why he thinks these drugs may... Read more

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