Stop The Madness ! A Quick and Effective Guide to Interrupting Irresponsible Behavior in Any Setting

This book is a concise "how-to" guide for parents, teachers, counselors, employers, and corrections officers about dealing effectively with people who persistently behave irresponsibly. Such people might include youngsters acting out to at-risk adolescents to criminal offenders. The approach presented is grounded in long-standing psychological research and the experience of practicing clinicians. Using a cognitive restructuring approach, the book presents the rationale and methods for interrupting irresponsible behavior and discusses the values of such interruption for the interrupter, for the persistently irresponsible individual, and for society.

Joyce B. Sousa holds the Masters Degree in Psychology and has several years of professional experience in counseling centers, a treatment center for young male law breakers, and a women's prison. She is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and a Certified Criminal Justice Specialist with a Master Addiction Counselor endorsement; she is also a Certified Corrective Thinking Therapist and a Certified Corrective Thinking Trainer. She has given workshops on anger, stress, anger between parent and child, domestic violence, self-esteem, and general mental health and has written several articles on these topics. She has also taught classes on parenting. Ms. Sousa worked four years at the Mental Health Center of Champaign County as a Corrections Clinician at the Correctional Center in Urbana (IL). Her duties included management of the resident population as regards self-harm or intent to harm others and identifying the mentally ill among the incarcerated to see that they were properly medicated when necessary. In addition, she conducted training for Correctional Center staff on issues including mental health, suicide risk, and substance abuse. She was the designer and coordinator of FreshStart, a program for Criminal Offenders based on a cognitive restructuring approach, and facilitated FreshStart groups at the Correctional Center. Ms. Sousa also designed the curriculum for Choices, a treatment program offered by the Mental Health Center for adolescents and their parents.

She is a founding partner of Sousa, Peacock, Sousa, & Asscoiates, a private consulting firm that conducts trainings, educational seminars, and systems analyses and designs and implements programs for social-service agencies, schools, and businesses based on a cognitive restructuring approach to human behavior. The firm also offers individual counseling and parent education groups.

Turhan "Turk" Peacock is currently pursuing a B.A. in Psychology. Mr. Peacock is a Certified Criminal Justice Specialist with a Master Addiction Counselor endorsement. He is also a Certified Corrective Thinking Specialist and a Certified Corrective Thinking Trainer. He has facilitated out-patient and in-patient groups for substance abusers. He has worked as a team leader supervising and counseling at-risk youth. He is currently the associate coordinator of FreshStart, a program for Criminal Offenders, and facilitates FreshStart groups at the Correctional Center and The Mental Health Center. In addition, Mr. Peacock has facilitated parent groups as a part of the Choices program for parents and adolescents. FreshStart and Choices are based on the Corrective Thinking approach.

He is a founding partner of Sousa, Peacock, Sousa, & Associates, a private consulting firm that conducts trainings, educational seminars, and systems analyses and designs and implements programs for social-service agencies, schools, and businesses based on a cognitive restructuring approach to human behavior. The firm also offers individual counseling and parent education groups.

Ronald W. Sousa holds the Ph.D. and for many years has been a university professor (University of Texas, Minnesota, California [Berkeley], and Illinois). His duties have long included academic administration, and he is currently Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of a number of books and articles on cultural analysis and education. A Certified Corrective Thinking Trainer (Koerner and Fawcett, l996), he is a founding partner of Sousa, Peacock, Sousa, & Associates and has conducted a number of workshops and trainings in cognitive restructuring focusing particularly on application in areas of education including discipline, classroom management, and curriculum design. He has also engaged in system design for educational institutions.