Evidence-based treatments for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) include medication and behavioral interventions. While medications have been shown to reduce ADHD-related symptoms and functional impairments across settings, effects tend to last only as long as the medication is active within the body and brain (Paykina N and Greenhill LL. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Pharmacological...

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Editor’s note: Dr. Williams is the author or co-author of a number of books. His most recently published book is Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression, Second Edition (Guilford Press, 2013) which he wrote with John Teasdale and Zindel Segal. He is also a co-author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to...

Mindfulness training (MT) helps to counter individuals’ tendency toward rumination about the past and future.Mindfulness is both the process and state of being present with whatever is happening in the moment with purposeful management of attention. This is often cultivated by sitting meditation, in which one sits in a comfortable...

Approximately half of Americans will have a psychiatric disorder that will meet DSM-IV criteria in their lifetime, with the first onset usually occurring in childhood or adolescence (Kessler RC et al, Arch Gen Psychiatry 2005;62(6):593–603). While there have been many pharmacological and psychotherapeutic advances in treating psychiatric disorders, there remains...

Western thinking about mental illness, modeled after physical disease, assumes that psychological suffering is abnormal. For example, the DSM-IV uses “clinically significant distress or impairment” to draw the boundary between normal and abnormal. Psychopathology then becomes a target for therapy.Some mindfulness-based psychotherapies question this entire notion. ACT, for instance, doubts...

When it comes to mindfulness-based therapy, it’s a true case of what’s old is new again.Mindfulness-based treatments have been described as psychotherapy’s “third wave,” coming on the heels of behaviorist approaches and cognitive interventions, respectively. While seemingly new, mindfulness can be traced back to antiquity. Current secular approaches are clinical...

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Back in 1998, for every 17 research articles devoted to negatively-oriented emotions there was only one article on positively-oriented emotions (Achor S. The Happiness Advantage. New York: Crown Business; 2011).Martin E.P. Seligman, PhD, the American psychologist who has been called the father of positive psychology, said this phenomenon is “half-baked”...

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