Pharmacological Treatment Of College Students With Psychological Problems

Get valuable insights into best practices and procedures for treatment

Mental health practitioners across the country are increasingly treating students by combining the use of psychotropic medication with psychotherapy. Pharmacological Treatment of College Students with Psychological Problems explores in detail this uncritically accepted exponential expansion of the practice. Leading psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers discuss the crucial questions and problems encountered in this widespread practice, and also present specific and differing models of combined therapy. This book critically examines several of the key issues, practices, and competing perspectives. Professionals working in college mental health are provided with valuable insights into best practices and procedures in split and integrated treatment.

Various clinicians beyond the psychiatric field are prescribing psychotropic medications with increasing frequency. Pharmacological Treatment of College Students with Psychological Problems presents a wide range of viewpoints on this issue, offering evidence, arguments, and recommendations to clearly illustrate the need for increased attention to the use of psychotropic medications and show how psychotherapy may be safer and more beneficial. Chapters include discussions on withdrawing from medication successfully, long term perturbation effects, and differing models of combined therapy in practice. This resource is comprehensively referenced.

Topics in Pharmacological Treatment of College Students with Psychological Problems include:

• Identification of the key issues and practices of combining psychotropic medication withcounseling in treatment
• Elements of two separate university counseling centers and how they provide combined treatment
• Emerging research on perturbation effects of use of psychotropic medications
• Best practices in the combined treatment in college settings
• Key unresolved questions that need further research
• Bringing a more sophisticated level in the practice of combined treatment with college students

Pharmacological Treatment of College Students with Psychological Problems is a valuable resource for all professionals from seasoned professionals to beginning practicum students

About The Author:

Leighton C. Whitaker, PhD, ABPP, is in private practice and Editor of the Journal of College Student Psychotherapy and has been a consulting editor for the Journal of American College Health. He is a Fellow of the Society for Personality Assessment and of the American College Health Association and was chair of the Association's mental health section. He has been Associate Professor and Director of Adult Psychology, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center; Professor and Director, University of Massachusetts Mental Health Services; Director of Swarthmore College Psychological Services; and Consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor's Job Corps. Dr. Whitaker holds a BA from Swarthmore College and a PhD from Wayne State University, and is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology. His 90 professional publications address clinical and social subjects, including the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking, Schizophrenic Disorders, Campus Violence (edited with J. Pollard, The Haworth Press, Inc.), Collective Violence (edited with H. Hall), and Understanding and Preventing Violence.

Stewart E. Cooper, PhD, ABPP, is Director of Counseling Services and Professor of Psychology at Valparaiso University. He hold Diplomates from the American Board of Professional Psychology in both Counseling Psychology and Consulting Psychology and is a Fellow of Divisions 17 (Counseling) and 13 (Consulting) of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Cooper's research has focused on the application of multivariate perspectives and methods in diverse counseling-psychology topics. He has published articles, book chapters, and monographs on prevention,psychometric analysis, substance abuse, dual-career issues, organizational consultation, and sex therapy. Most of this scholarship has been on the college population and college mental health issues. He is co-author of Counseling and Mental Health Services on Campus: A Handbook of Contemporary Practices and has authored over 50 articles in scholarly journals.

Table Of Contents:

Foreword (Thomas L. Murray, Jr.)
Preface
PART I: ISSUES AND CONCERNS
Forces Pushing Prescription Psychotropic Drugs in College Mental Health (Leighton C. Whitaker)
The Escalating Use of Medications by College Students: What Are They Telling Us, What Are We Telling Them? (Gerard Fromm)
Matters of Substance: Students' Voices (Gertrude C. Carter)
The Current Status of Prescribing Drugs for College Students: A Nascent Science or a SNAFU? (Gerald Amada)
Reality Check: What Science Has to Tell Us about Psychiatric Drugs and Their Long-Term Effects (Robert B. Whitaker)
PART II: MODELS OF EVIDENCE-SUPPORTED CURRENT PRACTICES
Combined Psychotherapy/Medication Treatment: The Valparaiso Model (Stewart E. Cooper)
The Pharmacological Treatment of Depression in College Aged Students: Some Principles and Precautions (Howard C. Blue, Louis C. Sanfilippo, and Christopher M. Young)
Does Adding Medication to Psychotherapy to Psychotherapy for Depression Improve or Worsen Outcome? (Bertram P. Karon)
Helping Individuals Withdraw from Psychiatric Drugs (David Cohen)
The Fall and Rise of Resilience: The Prevention and Holistic Treatment of Depression (Henry C. Emmons)
PART III: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The Big Picture and What Can Be Done to Improve It (Leighton C. Whitaker and Stewart E. Cooper)
Index
Reference Notes Included

Special Features:

Pharmacological Treatment of College Students with Psychological Problems

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:This book should not just be ignored as irrelevant and unimportant, but chastised for its lack of responsibility.
Description:
Purpose:The title of this book is misleading, as pharmacological treatment of college students is merely touched upon rather than given a more in-depth examination. This is not a critical examination of the use of pharmacological treatment of college students, but rather a soapbox to place blame on HMOs, the pharmaceutical industry, and "New Psychiatry."
Audience:The purpose, according to the authors, is for readers to "read and examine critically the chapters" and "to engender more widespread concern and attention to both prescribed and illicit use of psychotropic medications, to provide some answers, to suggest more critical thinking and investigation."
Features:I cannot recommend this book to anyone in the mental health field as it is currently written. The title misleads readers into thinking this book is about clinical practice and will be a balanced discussion. However, it is clearly not. With the exception of the two chapters written by psychiatrists, the remaining nine chapters are riddled with misinterpretations, old data, opinions, assumptions, and naiveté.
Assessment:The first chapter quotes a report in the New York Times of a clinical study in which 100,000 participants under 25 years of age were 2.3 times more likely than those on placebos to have acted on suicidal urges. However, if this chapter had been truly balanced, it also would have included the results of a study reported in the October 2007 Psychiatric Times that found, "Although unintended, the FDA's black-box warning has led to a decrease in the pharmacological treatment of pediatric depression and a decrease in the diagnosis of pediatric depression. At the same time, we have seen the largest increase in child, adolescent, and teen suicide since the CDC began recording these data in 1979." (Gibbons, Brown, and Mann, Psychiatric Times, vol. 24 no.12) References to tardive dyskinesia involve experiences with thorazine and haldol, but fail to include discussions of the atypical antipsychotics, which, while with their own set of limitations, provide much benefit for the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Robert Whitaker, a contributor who has had a 20-year journalism career covering medicine and science, writes that there is "no chemical imbalance," that "people diagnosed with mental disorders do not have any known chemical imbalance, and thus the drugs achieve their effects by perturbing, and sometimes profoundly so, neurotransmitter systems that, prior to drug treatment, appear to be operating normally."

What People Are Saying

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