Books by Steven A. Frankel, M.D.

Complexity in Health Care: undervalued factors impacting  outcome, Springer International Publishers,  in production (due to be published 2021)

Integrated Care for Complex Patients: A Narrative Medicine Approach, Springer International Publishing, 2018
This book presents case-based descriptions of inclusive, multispecialty and multidisciplinary clinical care of complex cases. Cases range from  primary care patients with complex medical and psychiatric comorbidity, to those requiring specialty care, to those with potentially terminal illnesses. Each category and case has its unique requirements often necessitating different models of care. The commonalities in approaching complex clinical situations is underscored. Extended case narratives written by the treating physicians, summarizing both the course of clinical care.  These descriptions lead to unique models for assessing and treating complex cases. Integrated Care for Complex Patients is a perfect guide for primary care practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists, and physicians and mental health professionals who work with complex cases. Order this book

Comprehensive Care for Complex Patients, Cambridge University Press, 2013
An innovative guide for all psychiatrists and primary care physicians who are challenged with treating clinically complex, resource-intensive patients. This book presents a new physician-led model of patient care, the Medical-Psychiatric Coordinating Physician (MPCP). Describing a new clinical approach, this guide will enable physicians and allied health professionals to significantly augment their clinical success while containing costs. The team-based MPCP model not only enhances patient treatment, but reduces redundancy and curbs excess in the use of services. This book is essential reading for psychiatrists, primary care physicians, and physicians, directors and administrators working in multidisciplinary specialty clinics. Read more.


 
Evidence from Within, Rowman and Littlefield, 2008
This book squarely addresses the question: does psychotherapy work? When does it work and how well? It proposes a practical and innovative model of psychological and psychiatric assessment and treatment. Having read this book, the practitioner will have a set of valuable new techniques for conducting a results-oriented psychotherapy. The book and the methods it advocates can be used as a practice guide for any office-based mental health clinician. Emphasized is the therapist’s responsibility to deliver a treatment that is effective and has built-in provisions for independent monitoring of treatment progress. Apart from psychological assessment and self-report questionnaires, information about diagnosis and progress comes from a finely-tuned collaboration between therapist and patient. Read more.


Making Psychotherapy Work, Psychosocial Press, 2007

So many doubts have been expressed about whether psychotherapy is effective. Yet, people rave about their therapist: how helpful she has been, how wonderful he is. What accounts for the difference between therapies that receive accolades and those that get panned? In this instructive and provocative book, Dr. Frankel sorts out good therapy from bad, effective from ineffective. Read more.


 Intricate Engagements, Jason Aronson, 1995; Rowman and Littlefield, 2004
Intricate Engagements confronts one of the fundamental challenges of contemporary psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. At each clinical moment, psychotherapists are flooded with possibilities. To manage this situation, they often take refuge in preconceived ideas about psychology and change. Intricate Engagements helps therapists find their way through and out of this maze. Dr. Frankel shows how to chart a course through the moment-to-moment uncertainty of the therapeutic situation in a way that maintains the compelling immediacy and often terrifying intimacy required for two people to influence one another.  Read more.

 Hidden Faults, Psychosocial Press, 2000
Hidden Faults explores ways to resolve stalemate and further progress in psychotherapy. Disjunctions: the spectrum of breaches in therapy, from subtle to devastating, when therapist and patient miss and confound each other. Disjunctions may briefly confuse the therapeutic partners, or even grind the therapy to a halt. Always, they provide unique opportunities for therapist and patient to understand each other and bring their work to ever more profound levels. Read more.