The recommended treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) incorporating exposure and response prevention (ERP), which is effective for approximately 50% of patients. However, there has been little advance in treatment outcomes since the introduction of ERP in 1979. It has been suggested that some…

Awareness during surgery is estimated to effect between 40,000 to 140,000 patients per year in the United States, and there is a growing literature suggesting that this event can lead to the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The current article describes treatment implemented from a manualized protocol of a woman diagnosed with…

Despite being the most effective treatment available, as many as one third of patients who receive exposure and response prevention (ERP) for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) do not initially respond to treatment. Recent research suggests that the n-methyl d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor partial agonist D-Cycloserine (DCS) may speed up the course…

Nadler (this issue), in his commentary of our article, "Addressing Relapse in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Panic Disorder: Methods for Optimizing Long-Term Treatment Outcomes" (Arch & Craske, 2011), argues that we misrepresent the role of panic attacks within learning theory and overlook cognitive treatment targets. He presents several case…

Although prolonged exposure therapy (PE) is considered an evidence-based treatment for PTSD, there has been little published about the use of this treatment for older adults with comorbid early-stage dementia. As the number of older adults in the United States continues to grow, so will their unique mental health needs. The present article…

Mindfulness-based interventions (e.g., MBSR; Kabat-Zinn, 1990; MBCT; Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002) have demonstrated effectiveness in a number of distinct clinical populations. However, few studies have evaluated MBCT within a heterogeneous group of psychiatric adult outpatients. This study examined whether a wider variety of patients…

Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans diagnosed with psychiatric disorders commit suicide at a higher rate than the general population (Kang & Bullman, 2008). Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been identified as a risk factor for suicide in veterans (Bullman & Kang, 1994) and is the most common mental disorder among Iraq and Afghanistan…

In this article we illustrate how we utilize acceptance and mindfulness techniques in our treatment (Culturally Adapted CBT, or CA-CBT) for traumatized refugees and ethnic minority populations. We present a Nodal Network Model (NNM) of Affect to explain the treatment's emphasis on body-centered mindfulness techniques and its focus on psychological…

Massed exposure has gained acceptance as an effective method to treat anxiety disorders. When using this intervention in patients presenting with more than one anxiety disorder, specific treatment options need to be discussed. Should exposure be applied in sequential order for each of the comorbid disorders? Or can exposure sessions also be…

What, exactly, do individuals with social phobia fear? Whereas fear of anxiety-related bodily sensations characterizes and defines panic disorder, is there a fundamental focus of anxiety that unifies individuals under the diagnostic category of social phobia? Current conceptualizations of social phobia suggest several possible candidates,…

Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for bulimia nervosa (BN). However, among patients with BN, symptom improvement is more pronounced for behavioral eating symptoms (i.e., bingeing and purging) than for body image disturbance, and the persistence of body image disturbance is associated with relapse. The need for more…

Therapist competence in assigning homework was used to predict mid- and posttreatment outcome for patients with Cluster C personality disorders in cognitive therapy (CT). Twenty-five patients that underwent 40 sessions of CT were taken from a randomized controlled trial (Svartberg, Stiles, & Seltzer, 2004). Therapist competence in assigning…

Although body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) has been described in the literature for more than a century, there has been only a limited focus on the development of cognitive behavioral treatments for BDD. Our case report provides a detailed description of a course of cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) for an individual with BDD. The patient was…

It has long been assumed that one of the reasons clients maintain improvement after psychotherapy is that they learn skills during the course of therapy and continue to apply them once therapy has ended. While research on homework completion and psychotherapy outcome provides support for this assumption, there has been no direct examination of…

Since the first description of cognitive therapy of paranoid delusions appeared in the literature, the empirical support for cognitive behavioral therapy in treating psychotic symptoms has been widely established. The aim of the present case study is to show how the behavioral experiment can be used as a powerful tool to change delusional thinking…