ABSTRACT
Only after the nature of Adjustment Disorder is clearly grasped can the clinician start to formulate a treatment plan. In general terms, it can be said that Adjustment Disorder follows a rather uniform pattern. There is a psychosocial event whose nature is of unusual severity from the individual's perceptual system. Because of this, the patient overreacts emotionally, often unleashing negative feelings about self, others, and life in general. Because of this emotional overreaction, the patient starts to engage in nonproductive, even self-defeating, behavior. After a while, this inappropriate behavior becomes a habit, which reinforces the negative feelings and the self-defeating action, thus creating a vicious cycle from which it becomes more difficult to break away as time goes by. To summarize, the Adjustment Disorder process follows five steps:
Psychosocially stressful event.
Negative perception.
Overreaction with negative feelings.
Inappropriate action.
Emotional vicious cycle.
