Psychotherapy and Psychopathology

One potential way to improve psychotherapy is to understand as much as possible the difficulties, needs, and vulnerabilities of clients and gear our interventions to address these issues. A strategy to achieve this goal is to learn from psychopathology research about the factors that are associated with particular diagnoses (e.g., depression, anxiety, personality disorder), such as symptomatology, clinical features, course, prevalence, comorbidity, prevalence, and etiology.

To foster the integration of psychopathology and psychotherapy, Louis Castonguay and Tom Oltmanns (2013) have edited a book aimed at two goals: (1) provide reviews of research on the nature and causes of psychological problems, and (2) derive clinical implications from this research that can be relevant to different approaches of psychotherapy. Each chapter of the book is written by teams of visible scholars, some of them recognized for their expertise in psychopathology, others for their research in psychotherapy, and many for their contributions to both of these areas of knowledge.

You will find here links for the introduction and conclusion chapters of this book.

 

You will find a link to a chapter of this book describing how the integration of psychopathology and psychotherapy can potentially improve our understanding and treatment of depression.

 

You will find here links for publications illustrating how findings from psychopathology and psychotherapy research can be combined to create a new and integrative treatment for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). This integrative treatment appears to be particularly relevant for clients with GAD that have specific problems of attachment. Newman, Castonguay, & Jacobson, 2015; Boswell et al., 2011; Newman et al., 2011; Newman et al., 2008; Castonguay et al., 2005; Newman et al., 2004.

Full references are available from Dr. Castonguay’s CV.