Psychotherapy and the Poverty Patient

Here is an insightful guide for the psychotherapist who works with poverty patients--those who are poor in regard to economic condition, as well as those who suffer from psychological impoverishment. The authoritative contributors offer therapeutic strategies and methods for avoiding discrimination against lower-income patients when often their inability to pay fees can affect the psychotherapy patient's treatment. Psychotherapy and the Poverty Patient will assist therapists in treating both patients afflicted with either financial or psychological poverty by addressing a variety of topics that present clinical and philosophical challenges to the practice of psychotherapy.

The chapters recount specific case examples to provide models for the treatment of lower-income psychotherapy patients and also explore the existence of a feeling of impoverishment as part of the emotional cycle of all therapy situations. Specific topics included in this fascinating volume include poverty as a medium through which the patient is engaged with his or her own life, the experience of poverty as a model for the patients feelings of oppression and limited possibilities for individual power and liberation, the influence of society's ambivalent attitudes toward the poor on the patient/therapist relationship, and the complicated ethical struggles involved in reduced fee therapeutic services. Psychotherapists with patients from all economic backgrounds will benefit from this intriguing book.