Recovery, Meaning-Making, and Severe Mental Illness

Recovery, Meaning-Making, and Severe Mental Illness offers practitioners an integrative treatment model that will stimulate and harness their creativity, allowing for the formation of new ideas about wellness in the face of profound suffering. The model, Metacognitive Reflection and Insight Therapy (MERIT), complements current treatment modalities and can be used by practitioners from a broad range of theoretical backgrounds. By using metacognitive capacity as a guide to intervention, MERIT stretches and strengthens practitioners' capacity for reflection and allows them to better use their unique knowledge to help people who are confronting the suffering and chaos that often comes from psychosis. Clinicians will come away from this book with a variety of tools for helping clients manage their own recovery and confront the issues that accompany an illness-based identity.

Paul H. Lysaker, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He has studied and provided psychotherapy to adults with serious mental illness for over 30 years. Dr. Lysaker is an author of over 400 peer-reviewed articles and a member of the editorial boards of multiple professional journals. Reid E. Klion, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and the chief operating officer of the MERIT Institute. His previous positions include assistant professor of psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine and chief science officer at Performance Assessment Network, Inc. Dr. Klion has done work in areas ranging from psychotherapy to industrial-organizational psychology and test publishing.

List of Tables Preface About the Authors Section I: Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Framework of MERIT 1. Introduction 2. Metacognitive Impairment and Serious Mental Illness 3. Understanding the Process of Metacognition 4. Assessing Metacognition and its Role in Severe Mental Illness Section II: Preconditions for MERIT and the Eight Core Elements 5. Preconditions for Implementing MERIT6. Overview of the MERIT's Elements and Element 1: The Agenda 7. Element 2: Insertion of the Therapist's Mind 8. Element 3: Eliciting the Narrative Episode 9. Element 4: Defining the Psychological Problem 10. Element 5:Reflecting on the Therapeutic Relationship 11. Element 6: Reflecting on Progress 12. The MERIT-IF and Assessment Metacognition During Sessions 13. Element 7: Stimulating Self-Reflection (S) and Awareness of the Other (O) 14. Element 8: Stimulating Mastery (M) Section III: Implementation, Clinical and Technical Issues 15. Practical Treatment Considerations and Learning MERIT 16. Common Clinical Issues 17. MERIT: Past and Future Appendices Appendix I. MERIT Intervention Framework (MERIT-IF) Appendix II. The MERIT Therapist Adherence Scale (MERIT-TAS)