A practical guide to counselling clients who present with physical symptoms, but where psychological issues or problems are causing or maintaining those symptoms. The author examines the terminology and the definitions of physical or psychological illness, with examples. She describes a cognitive model, illustrated with common somatic problems, such as atypical chest pain, covering the factors which maintain the problems - as well as the client's schema, beliefs and assumptions which may underlie them - and takes the reader through the different stages of the counselling process. She then explains the psychological categories and terminology used to describe the client group, and addresses key counselling issues in working with them, including advice on how to engage the client in counselling, how to formulate and conceptualize the client's problems, and develop counselling goals with the client to help the client work towards these goals. Significant advances have been made in this field, and this practical text makes available new approaches to helping clients with psychosomatic problems, whom traditional medical practitioners have found difficult to help.
Diana Sanders is a counselling psychologist with the Oxfordshire Mental Healthcare NHS Trust and a research psychologist at Oxford University. Her publications include Coping with Periods (Chambers, 1985).
PART ONE: PSYCHOSOMATIC PROBLEMS AND WORKING WITHIN A COGNITIVE FRAMEWORK What Are Psychosomatic Problems? Definition and Diagnosis Understanding Psychosomatic Problems Key Issues in Working with Clients with Psychosomatic Problems PART TWO: APPLYING THE COGNITIVE MODEL TO COUNSELLING FOR PSYCHOSOMATIC PROBLEMS Beginning Counselling Assessment and Developing a Case Conceptualization The Middle Stages of Counselling Techniques and Coping Strategies The Middle Stages of Counselling Themes, Beliefs and Assumptions Difficulties and Problems in Counselling for Psychosomatic Problems Ending Counselling and Long-Term Coping
`There are all too few texts on the clinical challenges of working in health care. Diana Sanders... writes in a jargon-free style and includes helpful case examples to illustrate the interventions under discussion... She writes illuminatingly on the detailed processes of applying cognitive therapy in health care' - The Psychologist `Diana Sanders writes clearly and coherently within the cognitive model, making it accessible to those counsellors and psychotherapists who do not work in this way. The book is obviously grounded in clinical experience and she illustrates her points with plausible imaginary case examples which bring the text alive... for any counsellor working within a GP practice and of interest to those in private practice' - Counselling, The Journal of the British Association for Counselling
