“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it
” - Daniel Kahneman
Here are many of the handouts and questionnaires I use currently (autumn '09) when working with people suffering from panic disorder, agoraphobia, OCD or depersonalization/derealization disorder.
“Without courage other values wither away into mere facsimiles of virtue
” - Rollo May
In May 2013, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) published a new evidence-based clinical guideline on "Social anxiety disorder: recognition, assessment and treatment". They state: "This clinical guideline offers evidence-based advice on the recognition, assessment and treatment of social anxiety disorder in children and young people (from school age to 17 years) and adults (aged 18 years and older).
“Inspiration exists but it has to find you working.
” - Pablo Picasso
Here are a series of assessment questionnaires and handouts for Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Health Anxiety Disorder. Note that the 2010 Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies "IAPT Data Handbook" recommends using the GAD-7 to monitor progress in Generalized Anxiety Disorder and the short 18-item version of the Health Anxiety Questionnaire to monitor Health Anxiety progress.
GAD, 2 question screen - answering "yes" to either of the two screening questions on this sheet suggests it's worth checking for a diagnosis of full Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) - for example by using the GADQ (see below).
“ The secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient. ” - Francis Peabody
Here is a mixed bag of handouts and questionnaires. Most are spin-offs from CBASP (pronounced 'seebasp') - the awkwardly named cognitive behavioral analysis system of psychotherapy. There are also a few handouts which are adapted downloads from the neurosciences site "The brain from top to bottom". When in 2000, Keller et al reported on the very impressive results obtained by treating chronic depression with a mixture of CBASP and antidepressants, it seemed likely that a big step forward had been taken in improving the lot of chronic depression sufferers. The "CBASP research results" handout (below) gives the abstracts for 14 research papers that are both relevant to CBASP and also highlight other important related themes like th
“People say how creative the All Blacks are, but creativity is just practice that's camouflaged. It comes from hard work.
” - Wayne Smith, All Blacks rugby coach
Here are a series of forms, questionnaires and handouts that I use regularly in my work. The problem solving diagram is a recurring theme - both at the start of therapy and as a sheet to return to when reviewing and considering additional therapeutic options. Other sheets are classic variants on the tools used by many cognitive behavioural therapists - with occasional alternatives and additions, that I've come up with over the years, thrown in as well.
“ Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease Natasha was suffering from, as no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine. ” - Leo Tolstoy
Depression assessment scales come in two basic forms - interviewer/clinician rated and sufferer/patient rated. As stated in the background information on the IDS/QIDS questionnaires (see below) "There are several accepted clinician rated and patient self report measures of depressive symptoms. The most commonly used clinician rated scales are the 17, 21, 24, 28, and 31 item versions of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) (Hamilton 1960, 1967), and the 10-item Montgomery-Asberg Scale (Montgomery and Asberg 1979). The most frequently used self-reports include the 13, and 21 item version of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) (Beck et al. 1961), the BDI-II (Beck et al. 1996), the Zung Depression Rating Scale (Zung 1965), the Carroll Rating Scale (CRS) (Carroll et al. 1981), and the Patient Health Questionnaire - 9 (PHQ-9) (Kroenke et al.
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
” - Albert Einstein
We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
Here are a few handouts that I've put together over the years to provide background information about depression. The development/maintenance diagram is probably the handout here that I use most - both to explain issues about depression and also for many other psychological disorders as well.
“ The body is only as open as the heart; and the heart only as open as wisdom allows. ” - Anonymous
Here are a series of forms that I use almost every session with clients, or for screening and orientation at the start of therapy:
“Empathy is innumerate.
” - Paul Bloom
Making a formal psychological diagnosis can be a mixed blessing. It has several potential advantages. If many of my symptoms can be accurately grouped under a specific psychological diagnosis, it may well help to understand what is happening, to clarify the likely time course of my symptoms, and to choose treatments that have the best chance of being effective. It's worth noting that often people suffer from more than one psychological disorder at the same time - this is called comorbidity and it is common.
I wrote in a blog posting on February 12th that Depersonalizati
