Treating Difficult Couples ― Helping Clients With Coexisting Mental and Relationship Disorders

This essential handbook describes effective treatments for a particularly challenging clinical population: couples struggling with both relationship distress and individual mental health difficulties. Distinguished scientist-practitioners provide detailed accounts of their respective approaches, reviewing conceptual and empirical foundations as well as clinical procedures. Included are well-established treatments for couples in which one or both partners has anxiety, mood disorders, schizophrenia, substance abuse, sexual dysfunction, or physical aggression. Also covered are emerging couple-based approaches to managing personality disorders, PTSD, difficulties related to aging and physical illness, and other problems. Following a standard format to facilitate comparison across treatments, each chapter is illustrated with detailed case material. Provided are powerful insights and tools for couple and family therapists, clinicians providing individual therapy, and students in any mental health discipline.

Douglas K. Snyder, PhD, is Professor and Director of Clinical Psychology Training at Texas A&M University. He has been recognized internationally for his programmatic research on couple therapy and is the author of the widely used Marital Satisfaction Inventory. In 1992, the American Association for Marital and Family Therapy honored Dr. Snyder with its Outstanding Research Award for his four-year follow-up study (along with Robert Wills) comparing behavioral and insight-oriented approaches to couple therapy, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Snyder has served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology and Journal of Family Psychology, and as an editorial board member of Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, Journal of Clinical Psychology, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Journal of Marriage and the Family, and the American Journal of Family Therapy.

Mark A. Whisman, PhD, is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research, which has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, has focused on the reciprocal association between relationship functioning and mental health. His other areas of interest include cognitive-behavioral and interpersonal perspectives on the onset, maintenance, and treatment of depression and relationship distress. A Founding Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, Dr. Whisman has served as Associate Editor for Contemporary Psychology and as an editorial board member of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Journal of Family Psychology, and Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice.