As public interest in psychedelics rises, psychologists will increasingly encounter clients who are considering or engaging in psychedelic use. This article provides an overview of key background contexts, the current landscape of psychedelic research, and the emerging clinical model of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT). The author highlights key clinical and ethical challenges psychologists face: honoring client autonomy, providing harm reduction and accurate education, navigating legal constraints, and addressing systemic inequities. Evidence-based practice considerations are discussed for all psychologists, regardless of their training in psychedelic-assisted therapy. The article concludes with a call to action for culturally humble, ethically grounded, and socially just approaches to psychedelics within contemporary psychology.

LGBTQ+ adolescents and young adults face disproportionate mental health risks due to stigma, discrimination, and minority stress, yet many clinicians receive limited training in affirming approaches to care. This paper provides an accessible overview of key concepts and clinical strategies for psychologists who may not specialize in LGBTQ+ populations. Drawing on two illustrative vignettes, we highlight how identity development, family dynamics, sociopolitical stressors, and intersectional experiences shape clinical presentation. We outline evidence-based assessment strategies, approaches for addressing microaggressions, and the integration of cultural humility and trauma-informed care. Through these recommendations, our goal is to equip clinicians with practical tools to provide validating, developmentally attuned care that promotes resilience and well-being among LGBTQ+ clients.

The use of virtual reality methods in the treatment of social anxiety is becoming increasingly prevalent over time due to advancements in technology and availability. Typically, this involves presenting clients with simulated social scenarios as part of exposure therapy. To aid practitioners interested in applying virtual reality treatment, this article highlights the relevant ethical, demographic, practice, and design considerations through a case example. Key elements include protecting client privacy, ensuring the tool is customizable to the physical and psychological needs of the client, and deciding on the type of tool to implement. These include sandbox (flexible co-creation), premade (wide application), or specialized (created specifically for your practice/client). Examples of implementing each type into the course of treatment for an individual with social anxiety are provided.

Individuals with chronic pain have higher rates of sexual dysfunction than individuals without chronic pain. Sexual health problems among individuals with chronic pain can be due to a number of biopsychosocial factors, including the actual affected body part(s), medication side effects, emotional distress, fatigue, social role change, and relationship dynamics. For many individuals, sexual health is an important part of quality of life. Sexual health can be a neglected aspect of interdisciplinary chronic pain management. This may be due to embarrassment on the part of the patient and/or provider to broach the topic, providers seeing sexual health as outside of the scope of pain management, limited provider knowledge of the topic and/or potential referral resources, and appointment time constraints. This article provides a fictional case vignette to illustrate the intersection of sexual health and chronic pain, reviews relevant literature, and provides evidence-based guidelines for improving psychologists’ ability to not only assess sexual health concerns in chronic pain settings but address them and communicate with interdisciplinary providers about the topic.

Paradoxical intention (PI) is a psychotherapeutic technique that is intended to help clients become more flexible, or at least more open to thinking about their problems, such as anxiety, from a new perspective. In line with this I have developed an approach that involves a “Panic Attack Time Line” (PATL). This PATL (a) helps the client visualize and understand what is happening during the panic attack, and (b) encourages them to understand why, when they start to have panicky feelings in their body, it will be paradoxically helpful to make these feelings worse, for example, if the attack makes their heart beat faster, they might be instructed to do jumping jacks. One of the important advantages of this PATL approach is that it can typically shorten therapy for treating anxiety disorders to just three sessions in comparison with traditional CBT protocols that typically require 6–20 sessions for achieving clinically meaningful change. Two, 3-session adult individual cases, “Fran” and “Emily,” are presented to illustrate the different ways that the PATL-grounded, PI approach can be combined with hypnosis to produce successful therapeutic outcomes. In Fran’s case, the PATL was used explicitly by itself with her and was sufficient to address her agoraphobia/panic disorder. Hypnosis was then used to extend the gains produced by PI. In the case of Emily's aviophobia, the PATL was not used explicitly with her. Rather, the paradoxical logic it embodies was used to create a paradoxical directive that was conveyed via hypnotic suggestion.

The Hogrefe Publishing series "Advances in Psychotherapy - Evidence-Based Practice" provides readers with practical evidence-based guidance on the diagnosis and treatment of the most common disorders seen in clinical practice in a compact, reader-friendly manner. Books in this series can be purchased through Hogrefe's website.

The Hogrefe Publishing series "Advances in Psychotherapy - Evidence-Based Practice" provides readers with practical evidence-based guidance on the diagnosis and treatment of the most common disorders seen in clinical practice in a compact, reader-friendly manner. Books in this series can be purchased through Hogrefe's website.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024–2025 Term was remarkable. It was an unusual “Tale of Two Terms.” The regular Term, starting in October 2024, proceeded as expected, with extensive briefing, oral arguments, and full opinions. For mental health professionals, several cases stood out: the Court upheld state laws restricting gender-transition care for minors, recognized parents’ rights to exclude their children from certain LGBTQ+ classroom materials, and ruled on cases involving disabilities, the death penalty, gun rights, and pornography. The American Psychological Association (APA) filed amicus briefs in the gender-transition and LGBTQ+ instruction cases. Meanwhile, a Second (“Shadow”) Term was dominated by a flood of emergency requests, many of them tied to Trump administration policies. These disputes, including issues related to federal grants, immigration, and executive power, were often decided without complete briefing or oral arguments. The Court generally did not provide full written opinions, leaving some ambiguities about the decisions. This article analyzes both Terms, examines public trust in the Court, and previews a consequential year ahead, with cases involving conversion therapy, transgender athletes, and pregnancy center regulations.

Immigration-related discrimination is a unique stressor that many Latine youth and families face. Youth may experience discrimination from peers, teachers, adults in their communities, and health service providers. The ubiquitous nature of these experiences can influence how Latine youth engage with their healthcare providers, which may affect the therapeutic alliance and disclosure of suicide risk. We discuss the ethical and clinical considerations when working with undocumented youth and youth from mixed-status families who might minimize their mental health concerns as a means of preventing negative ramifications to their family. Using anti-racist frameworks, the authors provide recommendations for working sensitively and responsively with immigrant Latine youth and their families. Clinicians have a responsibility to protect vulnerable communities, manage personal biases, and increase their competence to provide quality services to immigrant families. Addressing the structural and cultural stressors are necessary steps to provide culturally responsive care.

Racial trauma is often not addressed within trauma informed training, leaving lived experiences overlooked and untreated in many therapy settings. This article introduces the adaptation of Dr. Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) model to guide the professional development of therapists as they integrate racial trauma support into their clinical practice. The cultural capitals that make up this model (aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistance), when considered through a clinical lens, can be used to conceptualize salient questions and discussion points to process a client’s experiences and honor their unique strengths and stressors. This article explores how the CCW model can be used to gather information, conceptualize treatment, and intentionally create space in the therapy room for racialized experiences to be appropriately validated and addressed.

Gambling disorder (GD) poses hidden yet significant challenges for families and partners, often leaving concerned significant others (CSOs) in states of confusion, distress, and uncertainty. This article details the case of Mary, whose discovery of her partner’s concealed sports betting triggered acute emotional turmoil and relational disruption. The case illustrates how factors inherent to problem gambling such as secrecy, financial instability, and cultural normalization complicate coping and help-seeking among CSOs. Intervention emphasized comprehensive and ongoing assessment, integrative psychotherapy techniques, psychoeducation, and skills-based strategies to increase emotional processing and foster relational repair. Clinical reflections highlight the ethical dilemmas of disclosure, the balance of empathy with accountability, and the corrective impact of the therapeutic alliance as tailored to the unique relational experiences of CSOs.

Research has demonstrated that psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) can reduce anxiety, depression, and demoralization in patients with life-threatening illness. Although PAT routinely produces experiences that are spiritually or existentially meaningful, psychotherapeutic modalities that address spiritual, existential, religious, and theological (SERT) concerns remain underexplored in PAT. In this article, we introduce a novel, manualized approach to psychosocial support in PAT, Meaning and Purpose Therapy Modified for Psilocybin (P-MaP), which was adapted from the original Meaning and Purpose therapy for a multicenter clinical trial for demoralized adults near the end of life. Through the discussion of an amalgamated clinical vignette derived from experiences in this trial, we explore how principles of professional spiritual care can expand and advance psychosocial support in PAT for patients with serious and life-threatening medical illness.

The new edition of this concise and popular guide delivers up-to-date, hands-on guidance on the assessment and treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), offering a framework for understanding and helping people with this complex and challenging condition. Written by leading experts in the field, this book unpacks the intricacies of diagnosing OCD and explores models that explain the onset, development, and persistence of the disorder as well as its various manifestations.

Older adults are often underdiagnosed and undertreated for substance use disorders due to difficulty recognizing signs of substance use disorders in this population, as well as difficulty applying the DSM criteria to older adults. The current paper focuses on the prevalence of alcohol and cannabis use among older adults, as well as best practices for assessment and intervention. Through the integration of a case presentation, the current paper highlights common signs of substance use among older adults, clinical and ethical challenges in substance use disorder diagnosis and treatment among older adults, appropriate substance use assessments for older adults, and a variety of evidence-based treatment approaches that can be used with this population.

Measurement-Based Care (MBC) holds significant potential to enhance the effectiveness of the Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH) model, yet it remains inconsistently applied. This article positions MBC not as a procedural task, but as a core clinical competency that fosters therapeutic alliance, clarifies treatment goals, and promotes equitable care. Drawing from contrasting clinical vignettes, we demonstrate how tools inform clinical decision-making and enhance collaboration when applied skillfully by Behavioral Health Consultants. Finally, this article identifies cultural, structural, and operational barriers to implementation and offers pragmatic strategies to integrate MBC into routine care. By reframing MBC as a clinical competency, we advocate for its broader adoption as a standard of care within integrated behavioral health and PCBH specifically.