Psychotherapy Case Formulation

This concise and engaging primer​ helps beginning therapists systematically organize their thoughts and ideas about a client, using an evidence-based approach to case formulation.

Formulating cases is an essential component of psychotherapy training and practice. Yet beginning therapists often struggle to organize their ideas about the client and apply theory to the case. This book is based on the author’s extensive experience teaching case formulation to graduate students. It describes a highly adaptable and evidence-based framework for conceptualizing clients and planning treatment. Applicable to both simple and complex cases, the model can be used regardless of one’s theoretical orientation. Readers are introduced to basic concepts that include the benefits of case formulation, sound decision-making, and the importance of cultural considerations, and then are led step-by-step through the action-oriented components of the model.

This book is an indispensable aid for novice and experienced therapists seeking to develop and improve upon this core competency.

Series Preface

How to Use This Book With APA Psychotherapy Videos

Acknowledgments

Introduction

I. Understanding Psychotherapy Case Formulation in Context

1. Defining Formulation: Benefits, Goals, History, and Influences
2. Sound Decision Making in Case Formulation
3. Developing a Culturally Responsive Formulation
4. Formulation in the Context of Psychotherapy Integration

II. An Integrative Evidence-Based Case Formulation Model

5. Step 1: Create a Problem List
6. Step 2: Diagnose
7. Step 3: Develop an Explanatory Hypothesis
8. Step 4: Plan Treatment
9. Evaluating Case Formulation Quality

Coda

References

Index

About the Author

About the Series Editors

Tracy D. Eells, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and vice provost for faculty affairs at the University of Louisville.

He maintains an individual psychotherapy practice, working with adults presenting with a wide variety of relationship, mood, anxiety and life problems. He regularly supervises clinical psychology graduate students and psychiatry residents. Psychological assessment is also a major part of his practice.

He has taught and conducted research on psychotherapy case formulation for more than 20 years and more recently has researched the role of computer-assisted cognitive–behavior therapy for treatment of depression. He is a fellow of APA Division 29 (Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy).

Dr. Eells obtained his PhD in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1989 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Program on Conscious and Unconscious Mental Processes of the University of California, San Francisco.

In addition to publishing many journal articles and book chapters, he is the editor of the Handbook of Psychotherapy Case Formulation, now in its second edition.

• Case Formulation in Psychotherapy
  

  This DVD presents an evidence-based, integrative method of psychotherapy case formulation that can be adapted to single-theory approaches to therapy, any specific treatment manual, or any component of a theory or manual.