Empathy in Mental Illness

Cambridge University Press, 3/29/2007
EAN 9780521847346, ISBN10: 0521847346

Hardcover, 534 pages, 24.4 x 17 x 2.9 cm
Language: English

The lack of ability to emphathize is central to many psychiatric conditions. Empathy is affected by neurodevelopment, brain pathology and psychiatric illness. Empathy is both a state and a trait characteristic. Empathy is measurable by neuropsychological assessment and neuroimaging techniques. This book, first published in 2007, specifically focuses on the role of empathy in mental illness. It starts with the clinical psychiatric perspective and covers empathy in the context of mental illness, adult health, developmental course, and explanatory models. Psychiatrists, psychotherapists and mental heath professionals will find this a very useful reference for their work.

Part I. 'Dysempathy' in Psychiatric Samples
Foreword
empathy in mental illness Peter W. R. Woodruff
1. Empathic dysfunction in psychopathic individuals James Blair
2. Empathy deficits in schizophrenia Kwang H. Lee
3. Empathy, antisocial behaviour and personality pathology Mairead Dolan and Rachael Fullam
4. Empathy and depression Lynn O'Connor, Jack Berry, Thomas Lewis, Katherine Mulherin and Eunice Yi
5. Empathy, social intelligence, and aggression in adolescent boys and girls Kaj Björkqvist
6. Impaired empathy following ventromedial prefrontal brain damage Simone Shamay-Tsoory
7. Non-autism childhood empathy disorders Christopher Gillberg
8. Empathy and autism Peter Hobson
Part II. Empathy and Related Concepts in Health
9. Neonatal antecedents for empathy Miguel Diego and Nancy Aaron Jones
10. The evolutionary neurobiology, emergence and facilitation of empathy James Harris
11. Naturally occurring variability in state empathy John Nezlek, Astrid Schütz, Paulo Lopes and C. Veronica Smith
12. Neuroimaging of empathy Tom Farrow
13. The neurophysiology of empathy Nancy Aaron Jones and Chantal Gagnon
14. The cognitive neuropsychology of empathy Jean Decety, Philip Jackson and Eric Brunet
15. The genetics of empathy and its disorders Henrik Anckarsäter and Robert Cloninger
16. Empathogenic agents
their use, abuse, mechanism of action and addiction potential Dan Velea and Michel Hautefeuille
17. Existential empathy
the intimacy of self and other Marco Iacoboni
18. Empathizing and systemizing in males, females, and autism
a test of the neural competition theory Nigel Goldenfeld, Simon Baron-Cohen, Sally Wheelwright, Chris Ashwin and Bhismadev Chakrabarti
19. Motivational-affective processing and the neural foundations of empathy India Morrison
20. Face processing and empathy Tony Atkinson
Part III. Empathic Models, Regulation and Measurement of Empathy
21. Balancing the empathy expense account
strategies for regulating empathic response Sara Hodges and Robert Biswas-Diener
22. Empathic accuracy
measurement and potential clinical applications Marianne Schmid Mast and William Ickes
23. A Perception-Action model for empathy Stephanie Preston
24. The Shared Manifold Hypothesis
embodied simulation and its role in empathy and social cognition Vittorio Gallese
25. Using literature and the arts to develop empathy in medical students Johanna Shapiro.

'In summary, this book is an excellent addition to the literature on social cognition - an ambitious attempt to draw together the multiple branches of empathy research seems to have been met with success.' Psychological Medicine