Treating Childhood Psychopathology and Developmental Disabilities

Child psychology is a constantly expanding field, with dozens of specialized journals devoted to major disorders springing up in recent years. With so much information available – and the prospect of overload inevitable – researchers and clinicians alike need to navigate the knowledge base with as much confidence as they do the nuances of diagnosis and their young clients’ complex social, emotional, and developmental worlds.

Treating Childhood Psychopathology and Developmental Disabilities fills this need by summarizing and critiquing evidence-based treatment methods for pediatric patients from infancy through adolescence. After a concise history of evidence-based treatment, promising new trends, and legal/ethical issues involved in working with young people, well-known professors, practitioners, and researchers present the latest data in key areas of interest, including: (1) Cognitive-behavioral therapy and applied behavior analysis. (2) The effects of parenting in treatment outcomes. (3) Interventions for major childhood pathologies, including ADHD, PTSD, phobias, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and conduct disorder. (4) Interventions for autistic spectrum disorders and self-injuring behaviors. (5) Techniques for improving communication, language, and literacy in children with developmental disabilities. (6) Treatments for feeding and eating disorders.

This comprehensive volume is an essential resource for the researcher’s library and the clinician’s desk as well as a dependable text for graduate and postgraduate courses in clinical child, developmental, and school psychology.

(A companion volume, Assessing Childhood Psychopathology and Developmental Disabilities, is also available.)

Johnny L. Matson, Ph.D. is Professor and Distinguished Research Master and Director of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA. He is the author of 29 books and more than 350 scientific papers and book chapters. His area of clinical and research interests are developmental disabilities, autism, and severe child psychopathology.
Frank Andrasik, Ph.D. holds the positions of Professor of Psychology at the University of West Florida and Senior Research Scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. He has published approximately 200 articles and chapters and has delivered more than 450 talks on the topics of pain, stress, biofeedback, developmental disability, psychiatry, and organizational behavior management; he has also produced several texts for professionals. His most recent published texts are Biofeedback: A Practitioner’s Guide, 3^rd edition (Guilford, $80), co-edited with Mark S. Schwartz in 2003, and Comprehensive Handbook of Personality and Psychopathology, Volume Two: Adult Psychopathology (Wiley, $200), an edited volume that has just been released (with a publication date of 2006). He belongs to a number of professional societies, holding the status of Fellow in the American Psychological Association (Division of Health Psychology and Society of Clinical Psychology), American Psychological Society, and Society of Behavioral Medicine, and serving as President of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback in 1993-1994.
Michael L. Matson is a student at Louisiana State University. He is co-author of 2 books and 7 scientific papers. His research interests are in the area of developmental disabilities.