FAQ’s

Interpersonal Communication and Mental Health would be useful to mental health counselors because it covers depression, anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders, trauma, eating disorders and substance abuse. When working with a client with any of these diagnoses, it can clue you in to particularities of the client’s communication that are associated with that mental health disorder. It can draw your attention to features of a client’s communication that you may not have otherwise noted, but which may be important in the client’s ongoing development and maintenance of healthy relationships. It can also provide an explanation for aspects of a client’s communication that you may otherwise have found puzzling. The book also outlines very specific details, such as pauses and smiles, of what healthy communication looks like so you have a point of comparison to aim for with your clients.

The book as a chapter specifically focused on substance abuse disorders. It examines the ways we communicate about difference substances, how communication skills are associated with various types of substance abuse, issues related to communication in family-of-origin including family structure, intimacy and power, and communication in family-of-choice. With its focus on details of communication, it fills in gaps in what is available to counselors in other available texts.

The book has a chapter focusing on trauma. It looks at communication skills such as pauses, eye contact, and touch and how they interrelate with trauma. It also examines power, self-disclosure, and support in families-of-choice and communication in complex family trauma.

Interpersonal Communication and Mental Health is useful to the communication student because it shows clear links between details of interpersonal communication and specific mental health conditions. It will help the student of communication develop applications of their knowledge of communication in the field of mental health. In addition, it can serve as a starting point for the student’s own research because it has, literally, hundreds of references that they can use as a jumping off point.

This book offers detailed links between specifics of 6 different mental health diagnostic categories (anxiety disorders, depression, psychotic disorders, trauma, eating disorders, and substance abuse) and particular aspects of interpersonal communication. These links can help psychology and counseling students apply their knowledge of psychological and counseling practice to real-life situations in situation-specific ways. It can also be a resource for their own original research, because it synthesizes hundreds of journal articles, it gives a sense of where the literature is at in a given topic area and provides references to get students started for their own literature review.

This book is written at a level for upper-division undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It would be useful in these classes because it synthesizes, in accessible language, hundreds of articles from classic to current research in interpersonal communication and depression, anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders, trauma, eating disorders, and substance abuse. It also offers a model of interpersonal communication and mental health which can serve as a base-line theoretical perspective for beginning your instruction on the topic. Finally, there are two chapters that cover interpersonal communication in healthy relationships. These chapters are useful when you have students who do not have a background in interpersonal communication, and they are also useful to remind students whose coursework in interpersonal communication has been several years ago of what they know. In addition to being useful in the classroom, the book can serve as a catalyst for students’ research projects. The reference list provides hundreds of primary source citations to get them started and the synthesis of these articles in the text of the book can stimulate their curiosity to delve into research on their own.

It is not uncommon for people in these roles to encounter those with mental health conditions. Knowledge of communication patterns associated with specific disorders could be very helpful in understanding and responding usefully to the client. It can also help in interacting with and experiencing empathy for families of those with mental health disorders. It can explain why your usual response to a family may not be helpful in this particular situation.

Interpersonal Communication and Mental Health can be helpful for families and friends because it identifies patterns of communication that are particular to specific mental health disorders (anxiety disorders, depression, psychotic disorders, trauma, eating disorders, substance abuse). By understanding that these communication behaviors are part of the mental health disorder, it may help you to have more patience with what would otherwise be inexplicable behaviors. In addition, knowing what these behavior patterns are can give you the opportunity to choose how you respond more intentionally, which may end up with different interactional results.

If you have an anxiety disorder, depression, a psychotic disorder, trauma, an eating disorder, or substance abuse, you may find both the chapters on healthy interpersonal communication and the chapter specific to your mental health disorder helpful. The chapter specific to your disorder will identify specific patterns of communication that research has identified as being associated with your disorder. Knowing these patterns can allow you to look to see whether you communicate in this way and if so, whether you want to work to change your communication patterns in this area. This ability to choose offers you the possible opportunity to have more control over your life and behavior. The chapters on healthy interpersonal communication can give you a target to aim for should you decide to work to change your communication patterns.