A Clinician's Guide to Compassion Focused Group Therapy for the Severely Mentally Ill

Aileen Rands, Doug Benson, Amanda L. Rapacz, Gary Burlingame

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040395424
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This manual provides clinicians with guidance to conduct compassion focused group therapy with patients suffering from severe forms of mental illness.

Historically, those suffering from severe forms of mental illness face a myriad of biological, psychological, and social challenges, particularly shame and self-criticism. Compassion focused therapy is known to combat and address this suffering. This manual connects rich biological, psychological, and social theory with empirical findings and lived clinical experience. Comprising 12 modules, this clinician's guide presents psychoeducation in conjunction with intrapersonal/interpersonal exercises and process-oriented instructions to aid treatment and guide group therapy sessions.

This book, created by clinicians for clinicians, is a vital resource for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, or substance use disorder counselors, offering compassion focused group therapy in an inpatient setting.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Manual
• Key Contributions
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Introduction, Compassion, and Tricky Brain
• 2 Three Systems of Emotion
• 3 Attention Training and Mindfulness
• 4 Feeling Safe and Receiving Compassion from Others
• 5 The Compassionate Self
• 6 The Nature of Multiple Emotions and Finding Balance
• 7 Self-Criticism
• 8 Shame and Guilt
• 9 Deepening Compassion for the Self
• 10 Compassionate Assertiveness
• 11 Forgiveness
• 12 Envisioning a Compassionate Future
• Appendix A References
• Appendix B Full Jordan Example
• Index