Principles and Practice of Relapse Prevention

This volume presents a comprehensive survey of the literature on relapse prevention strategies, with an emphasis on the clinical techniques employed. It draws together for the first time the available information about relapse prevention strategies in clinical psychology and addresses the problems of relapse and relapse prevention in a wide variety of disorders such as alcohol use, depression, sexual deviance, and anxiety. Throughout this text, the emphasis on prevention, prediction, and processes involved in relapse provides a focus for clinicians and researchers in their efforts to develop new clinical approaches. This book will be useful for psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, social workers, and all mental health professionals working with clients for whom relapse is a high risk. There is now a sizable body of literature concerned with the prediction, prevention, and processes of relapse across a wide range of clinical problems. Drawing together this information for the first time, this book takes the clinician and researcher through several of these common adult disorders and illustrates the ways in which relapse may be prevented with each one. An ideal resource, the book comprehensively reviews the literature, details specific clinical techniques, and reports on the experimental evaluations of these strategies. Chapter authors, representing an international array of noted experts, discuss relapse prevention strategies for alcohol problems, smoking, obesity, and anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Separate chapters also cover such clinical problems as depression, panic disorder and agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive disorders, sexual deviance, and schizophrenia. Finally, the use of relapse prevention techniques as applied to such complaints as chronic pain, marital problems, social competence, and stuttering is addressed. Each chapter, focusing on a specific problem, examines its nature, applicable treatment approaches, and the available research evidence on the rate of relapse. Clinical techniques are described, the outcome literature reviewed, and clinical and research recommendation presented. Whenever possible, tables are used to summarize the results of principle studies.