Evidence from Within: A Paradigm for Clinical Practice [Paperback]

This book squarely addresses the question: does interpersonal treatment, including psychotherapy, work? It proposes an innovative model of psychiatric and psychological assessment and treatment. Having read this book, the practitioner will have a set of invaluable, new techniques for conducting a results-oriented treatment. The book and the methods it advocates can be used as a practice guide for any office-based psychiatrist or mental health clinician. Emphasized is the practitioners responsibility to deliver a treatment that is effective and has built in provision for independent monitoring of treatment progress. Apart from psychometric assessment and self-report questionnaires, information about diagnosis and progress comes from collaboration between clinician and patient. The approach described has been evolved and tested by the author and his colleagues for over fifteen years. The book is clearly written and replete with clinical illustrations that capture the dilemmas typically faced by practicing psychiatrists and psychotherapists.Steven Frankel, M.D. is an associate professor at the University of California Medical School and founder and director of The Center for Collaborative Psychology and Psychiatry in Kentfield, California.

Counter to the conventional wisdom that psychotherapy is a private and confidential two-person interchange between therapist and patient, Steven Frankel presents a passionate advocacy of a therapy model involving therapist, patient, a psychologist-assessor, and often enough when indicated a family member, in an ongoing evaluative and monitoring process throughout the therapy, and into a continuing follow-up period thereafter. All the claimed advantages are vigorously propounded: far greater transparency and accountability, a more focused and self-correcting therapeutic course, a private-practice friendly situation and even economic advantage. It is a model offered for thoughtful consideration by the mental health professiolc‡