Continuing to tell you about my recent publications, most available from Amazon as ebooks or paperbacks at minimal cost.

Large Group Treatment of Psychological Problems (by Douglas Quirk)

In designing treatment workshops for maximum therapeutic benefit, we have made certain assumptions. First, it is assumed that it is necessary to build evaluation into each stage of treatment program development and implementation, so that program delivery is controlled by its results. Second, it is appropriate to include motivational elements as part of the treatment, rather than to expect that only motivated clients will be referred. Third, treatment needs to be guided by the therapist (the expert) rather than by the client (where it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind). Fourth, to ensure a powerful therapeutic effect, it is necessary that treatment be designed in such a way that it incorporates scientifically verified laws of learning and behaviour. Fifth, it is necessary for the client both to be provided with information about the basic processes involved in his or her presenting problems and their treatment, and to be shown strategies for addressing and resolving them. And finally, it is desirable, if not always necessary, for clients to have an opportunity to practice using the information and strategies with which they have been provided, so as to ensure that the treatment has really “taken,” before turning the clients loose to function on their own.

In the treatment workshops that we have offered at the OCI, measures have been taken before and after each day-long workshop, so that the effect of each workshop module could be evaluated, as well as any overall effect of the workshop series. In this book, only the post-workshop scores are reported, for the sake of simplicity. However, the scores shown are fully representative of pre- and post-workshop values, the pre- to post-workshop change scores, and subjective reports of improvements experienced by participants as a result of their workshop experiences.

Over the intervening years, (1) pre-post measures have shown that these treatment workshops produce significant effects and (2) participants in these large group treatment programs have demonstrated that they are able to use the instruction received and the skills that they have learned in the treatment workshops in day-to-day interactions in their living-unit communities, and informal comparisons between the results of large-group treatment and more intensive eight-to-ten-person groups have been very favourable to the large-group approach. In those cases where the same measures have been employed, for example, the treatment workshops have generally produced better results.

The present volume attempts to serve three functions. First, it provides for description and evaluation of four series of workshops offered at the Ontario Correctional Institute, each comprised of several modules:

Stress Management

Conflict Management

Anger Management (the Aggressiveness Program)

Relationships and Human Sexuality

Stress Management Example:

The program for stress management is designed to address all of the major requirements for the management of stress and the effects of its associated states. Components of the task are presented as separate modules as described below. Experience to date suggests that treatment of this kind can be effective when delivered in groups as large as the space can accommodate.

Orientation to stress
Relaxation/Calmness Training
Resources Installation
Stressor Events Review
Coping Strategies Training
Assertive Training
Stress Prevention Training
Systematic Desensitization

Short-term evaluation studies have been run with some of the modules from the Stress Program. For this purpose, stress and anxiety monitoring procedures were administered at the beginning and at the end of the Orientation to Stress, Relaxation/Calmness Training, Assertive Training and Systematic Desensitization components of the Stress Program, with results as shown below.

Second, this book outlines a variety of other workshops which have been neither offered nor evaluated in precisely this format to date, but which would be useful to the population in general:

Brain involvement program (generic)

Cognitive skills training program (generic)

Criminality program (generic)

Depression program (generic)

Exhibitionism program (generic)

Family relations program (generic)

Human relations program (generic)

Life-enhancement program (generic)

Life-style program (generic)

Obsessive-compulsive program (generic)

Pain management program (generic)

Substance abuse program (generic)

Traumatization program (generic)

Victim assistance program (generic)

Finally, it shows how these workshops might be combined to address a variety of psychological problems encountered in everyday life (using Anxities and Phobias as an example):

Anxieties and Phobias (example)

Anxieties and phobias are learned in a wide variety of circumstances and are expressed in a wide variety of ways. Nevertheless, there are a number of features common to these types of problems which can be addressed in large- or small-group format, as well as others which may have to be addressed individually.

The TREATMENT Program for ANXIETIES and PHOBIAS

Stress Program (generic)