Choosing Help: Your First Step Towards Better Mental Health - Softcover

Tracy Stecker

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1961293463 ISBN 13: 9781961293465

Publisher: Hatherleigh Press, 2025

Synopsis

Why is it so hard to ask for help, especially when we need it the most? There are a variety of reasons why individuals resist treatment, harming themselves and their loved ones in the process. In Choosing Help, psychologist Tracy Stecker, PhD, provides an in-depth exploration of these barriers to betterment, and the mindsets that produce them, and most importantly, how to break them down. While past strategies have focused on the family or community to help engage the individual toward treatment, Choosing Help draws on decades of research data to create an evidence-based intervention system for changing an individual's thought process to one which can embrace the choice to ask for help. With concise analysis and illuminating case studies, each chapter highlights a particular reason to resist treatment, like: 'Treatment won't work.' 'I'm not ready.' 'I don't need help.' 'I can handle it on my own.' 'I don't want 'that' type of treatment.' 'It's too hard to open up.' Whether you're wrestling with your own resistance or struggling to support someone who is, this is a vital resource for understanding why help is hard to choose - and how to make it easier.

About this title

About the Author

Tracy Stecker, PhD, is a psychologist at the Medical University of South Carolina and at the Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention in the Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Stecker’s work focuses on help-seeking behavior among individuals with mental health and substance use concerns. Her work has been nationally recognized, including by the Presidential Task Force PREVENTS in 2020. She has been funded from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Charles W. Hoge, MD, Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired) directed the U.S. military's premiere research program on the mental health and neurological effects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2002 to 2009 at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He deployed to Iraq in 2004 to improve combat stress care. A national expert on war-related mental health issues and traumatic brain injury, Dr. Hoge has testified to Congress and is interviewed frequently by national news organizations. He continues to work as a staff psychiatrist treating service members, veterans, and family members. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hatherleigh Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1961293463
• ISBN 13: 9781961293465
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256