Treatment of Late-Life Depression, Anxiety, Trauma, and Substance Abuse

Working with older adults no longer means working exclusively with frail or disabled people. Older adults are healthier now on average than in decades past, but they still require specialized care. Mental health providers are seeing a growing number of older patients in their practice and may have little experience in the best methods for working with them. To fill that gap, Patricia A. Arean assembled this volume of best practices in treating mental disorders in late life. It includes an overview of geropsychology and the training resources available to help clinicians develop the competencies they need to work with older adults. Chapters focus on evidence-based treatments for late-life depression, anxiety, trauma, and substance abuse disorders, including cognitive behavioral therapy, problem solving treatment, behavioral activation, interpersonal therapy, relaxation training, exposure therapy, substance abuse relapse prevention, and motivational interviewing. Detailed case examples in each chapter illustrat

Patricia A. Arean is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF, USA and is a licensed Clinical Psychologist. Dr. Arean is an international expert on effectiveness of behavioral interventions for mood disorders, in particular for her work in adapting these interventions for a variety of health and mental health settings (primary care medicine, assisted living settings, social service settings, mental health settings), and more recently for her work in mobile health applications. Since 1994, Dr. Arean has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles on these topics and has been funded by SAMHSA, NIMH, NIA, NIDDK and the Hartford Foundation. She is currently funded by NIMH to study the effectiveness of "brain games" on mood and the effectiveness of mobile health apps on mood. Her work has won national recognition, resulting in an early career award from APA, a Mid-Career Award from NIH for her work on disseminating evidence based practices and The Award for Achievements in Diversity in Mental Health from the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry. Dr. Arean currently leads an interdisciplinary research team consisting of researchers from diverse backgrounds, including social work, nursing, psychiatry, family and general medicine, medical sociology and clinical psychology.