Robert J. Ursano – författare

Care of Military Service Members, Veterans, and Their Families serves a critical need, which has been highlighted by recent reported rates of combat-related stress disorders and traumatic brain injury, as well as increases in suicide rates among service members and veterans over the past decade and the distress and challenges faced by their children and families. More than 2.5 million Americans currently serve in the U.S. military on active duty, in the Reserves, or in the National Guard, and more than 20 million civilians are veterans. Although patients are viewed here in the context of military service, they seek health care in military, veteran, and civilian settings, and their mental health concerns are as diverse as those encountered in the civilian population. This book is designed for clinicians in all care settings and provides thorough coverage of U.S. military structures and cultures across the armed services, as well as detailed material on the particular mental health challenges faced by service members and their families.

• A full overview of the military lifestyle is provided, including the life cycle of the military (recruitment to retirement), service subcultures (Navy, Army, Marines, Air Force, and Reserve and Guard components), challenges of military life for service members and families (moves, deployments, etc.), and military mental health. Material on military culture provides insight for practitioners who may not be familiar with this population.• The book focuses on collaborative care, particularly between the military health care system and the Veterans Administration, providing clinicians with strategies to mitigate stigma and other barriers to care through mental health service delivery in primary care settings.• The incidence of traumatic brain injury among service members has increased because of the use of improvised explosive devices, and an entire chapter is devoted to diagnosing and treating these injuries as well as educating patients and their families on the condition.• The families of service members face significant challenges, and several chapters are devoted to the needs of military children, the families of ill and injured service members and veterans, deployment-related care, and caring for the bereaved.

The book''s comprehensive review of resources available to military service members, veterans, and families both ensures high-quality care and reduces the workload for treating physicians. Care of Military Service Members, Veterans, and Their Families is an authoritative and much-needed addition to the mental health literature.

Developing skills in psychodynamic psychotherapy and its techniques is a lifetime endeavor. The third edition of this volume from American Psychiatric Publishing''s enduringly popular Concise Guides series serves as an excellent starting point for mastering these vital skills -- skills that can be applied to many other psychiatric treatment modalities, including other psychotherapies, medication management, consultation-liaison psychiatry, outpatient and emergency room assessment and evaluation, and inpatient treatment.

In a compact guide -- complete with glossary, indexes, tables, charts, and relevant references -- designed to fit into a lab coat pocket, the authors • Provide the clinician with an updated introduction to the concepts and techniques of psychodynamic psychotherapy, describing their usefulness in other treatments. For example, psychodynamic listening and psychodynamic evaluation are best learned in the context of psychodynamic psychotherapy training but are applicable in many other psychiatric diagnostic and treatment methods.

• Convey the excitement and usefulness -- as well as the difficulties -- of psychodynamic psychotherapy and its techniques, including case examples.

• Show the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of psychotherapy in general, and of psychodynamic psychotherapy in particular -- issues of special importance in the evidence-based practice of medicine and mental health care.

• Explain the advantages -- and limitations -- of each form of psychodynamic psychotherapy: brief, long-term, and intermittent. For example, psychotherapists must be able to recognize patterns of interpersonal interaction without engaging in the "drama." Thus, they must learn to recognize and understand their own reactions as early indicators of events transpiring in the treatment and as potential roadblocks to a successful treatment.

Complementing more detailed, lengthier psychiatry texts, this volume''s 15 densely informative chapters cover everything from basic principles to patient evaluation, resistance and defense, transference and countertransference, dreams, beginning and termination of treatment, management of practical problems, brief and supportive psychotherapy, and psychotherapy of borderline personality disorder and other severe character pathologies.

Mental health care professionals everywhere will turn to this practical guide again and again as an invaluable resource in creating and implementing effective treatment plans for their patients.

In our increasingly dangerous world -- brought into urgent focus by the September 11, 2001, attacks -- the need to manage the psychiatric consequences of traumatic events and disasters has never been greater. The editors of this powerful reference summarize our current understanding of the complex psychological, behavioral, and social responses to disaster, and present a compelling case for intensifying our focus on delivery and intervention efforts.

In just five chapters, 16 distinguished contributors examine the impact of trauma from the personal to the community level. This critical book • reviews the neurobiologic and neuroanatomic responses to severe traumatic events, focusing on posttraumatic stress disorder to show how an initially adaptive response becomes maladaptive by producing long-term adverse consequences.• discusses the psychiatric epidemiology of disaster, presenting a guide for clinicians in identifying and following groups at high risk for developing psychiatric disorders and an empirical blueprint for developing community interventions.• details the impact of traumatic stressors on children, using the 9/11 terrorist attacks to illustrate many points and debunking the myth that children are more resilient than adults -- thus reinforcing their assertion that we need to improve the delivery of mental health services to traumatized children.• presents material from an international consensus conference on the psychological interventions following mass violence, reviewing the psychological impact of disasters (including risk and protective factors) and acute interventions for trauma (e.g., psychological debriefing, treatment of traumatic grief, pharmacotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and interventions for children).• concludes with the special dilemmas posed by weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological, nuclear, radiological, and high-yield explosives, discussing the attributes that make these weapons especially effective as instruments of terror and offering recommendations on how nations can enhance preparedness against these weapons.

This volume is a must-read for educators, students, residents, clinicians, and social workers -- in short, anyone interested in helping to heal the psychological fallout from traumatic events and disasters.