ABSTRACT
TRUTH OR FICTION?
A couple or family in crisis is one of the most volatile situations that a mental health professional is likely to encounter during his or her career.
The mental health therapist should never be concerned with covert diagnoses in the relationships when treating depression or anxiety.
ICD-10 is the preferred diagnostic system used in North America over the DSM-IV.
Bipolar disorders are the most commonly seen disorders in couples.
A cyclothymic disorder is characterized by a prominent and persistent disturbance of mood judged to be a direct physiological consequence of drug abuse and medication.
The terms severity, psychotic remission, chronic are just a few of the specifiers used with depressive diagnosis.
There is very little research on the co-occurring relationships between marital and family distress.
When depression and marital problems are concomitant, the treatment of choice is marital therapy.
It has been found that the risk of depressive symptoms increases ten-fold in individuals when marital distress exists.
Depression in couples tends to be acute rather than chronic.
One of the focal points of disorder-specific couples intervention for both depression and anxiety is to identify secondary gain.
Pharmacotherapy has proven to be an effective adjunct to the treatment of both depression and anxiety among couples.
Social phobia is the most common type of anxiety disorder found with couples in distress.
One finding in the professional literature is that a nonagoraphobic or panic-disordered spouse may consequently experience some level of threat in response to the amelioration of the problem or autonomy of the identified patient during treatment.
In vivo exposure and interoceptive techniques have been deemed to be the least efficacious treatments for anxiety and marital problems.
