This webinar provides a research and practice update on Alzheimer’s disease, with a focus on (1) new treatments, (2) diagnostic guidelines that rely heavily upon biomarkers and enable asymptomatic detection and diagnosis, and (3) growing prevention science. This workshop will use the 2021 APA Guidelines for the Assessment of Dementia and Age-Related Cognitive Decline as a framework to guide clinicians in navigating these developments and will provide attendees with a broad overview of Alzheimer’s disease and the psychologist’s role in assessment and intervention. The workshop describes an emerging practice opportunity for helping older adult and middle-aged clients to navigate a rapidly changing landscape.
Group therapy is a treatment modality in which unrelated people meet together with a therapist, in contrast to individual therapy or conjoint family therapy. Groups are not a second-rate approach to helping people change. In fact, groups are often the treatment of choice - especially when a client’s problem has an interpersonal component (which is usually the case). Groups offer a natural laboratory in which people can experiment with new ways of being and receive feedback from numerous others. There is great power in groups: members actually experience their interpersonal dynamics playing out in the group. A group therapist can implement techniques from other modalities in a group format. However, there are dynamics, processes, and stages of groups that are not shared with individual approaches and which offer distinctive benefits. Because so many of the problems that people seek mental health services for involve dysfunctional interactions between people, having group members actually interact with others in the group affords an opportunity for deep, experiential learning and development that is not possible in individual therapy. This seminar will emphasize how to facilitate such “here and now” interactions and processes in group work.