Synopses & Reviews
As a mental health professional, you know its a real challenge to help clients develop the psychological skills they need to live a vital life. This is especially true when you are working with time constraints or in settings where contacts with the client will be brief. Brief Interventions for Radical Change is a powerful resource for any clinician working with clients who are struggling with mental health, substance abuse, or life adjustment issues. If you are searching for a more focused therapeutic approach that requires fewer follow-up visits with clients, or if you are simply looking for a way to make the most of each session, this is your guide.
In this book, youll find a ready-to-use collection of brief assessment and case-formulation tools, as well as many brief intervention strategies based in focused acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). These tools and strategies can be used to help your clients stop using unworkable behaviors, and instead engage in committed, values-based actions to change their lives for the better.
The book includes a practical approach to understanding how clients get stuck, focusing questions to help clients redefine their problem, and tools to increase motivation for change. In addition, you will learn methods for rapidly constructing effective treatment plans and effective interventions for promoting acceptance, present-moment awareness, and contact with personal values.
With this book, you will easily integrate important mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based therapeutic work in their interactions with clients suffering from depression, anxiety, or any other mental health problem.
Review
Grounded in ancient wisdom and the newest scientific evidence, this book provides a host of tools for those suffering from depression. Strosahl and Robinson invite us to take a wholly new view of what depression is, and how to deal skillfully with it through strategies born of acceptance and self-compassion. Their book shows the pathways into and out of depression and gives us a vital map to see clearly where genuine peace and freedom lie.
—Mark Williams, professor of clinical psychology and Wellcome Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford
Review
Chronic stress is a marker of living life on autopilot. This book gently wakes you up. It asks you instead to live life inside non-judgmental awareness and intentionalityand to do it right here, right now, in this moment. Written in Kirk Strosahl and Patricia Robinson's usual clear, step-by-step style, it contains scores of practical tips and exercises that gently train and practice a mindful path through stress. You cannot help but be moved.”
Steven C. Hayes, PhD, cofounder of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and author of Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life
Review
“This book is a must-read not only for ACT therapists with an interest in brief therapy, but for any ACT therapist who wants to improve their efficiency and effectiveness with the model. Low on theory and high on practicality, this book is choc-a-bloc full of new tools and techniques for brief but powerful ACT interventions. You’ll be amazed at how simple and easy it makes the trickier aspects of ACT, such as self-as-context and creative hopelessness. If you want to get better results in less time with more clients, then you need to read this book right now!”
—Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap
Review
“If you are looking for a rapid way to help people reduce their suffering and make positive changes, this book can show you the way. The four questions Strosahl, Robinson, and Gustavsson provide can give you a quick handle both on what's going on with clients and on how to help them change. A nice variation on the ACT method with some new insights and additions to make it compatible with clients' and third-party payers' demands for efficient and effective treatment.”
—Bill O'Hanlon, author of Change 101, A Brief Guide to Brief Therapy, and The Change Your Life Book
Review
“Brief therapy alert: This book is valuable reading for anyone interested in time-sensitive ‘brief’ therapy. It provides theory, methodology, research evidence, and numerous clinical examples for how to help clients rapidly make significant changes. It is also an excellent introduction to the larger field of acceptance and commitment therapy, offering concepts and techniques that clinicians can adapt to their own practices. Strongly recommended!”
—Michael F. Hoyt, PhD, author of Brief Psychotherapies and Interviews with Brief Therapy
Review
This book has the wrong title. It should be: Everything You Need to Know Stated Clearly, Free of Jargon and Hype that Will Enable You to Help a Broad and Diverse Range of Clients Effectively and Efficiently. On second thought, Brief Interventions for Radical Change, like the book, is more to the point.”
Scott D. Miller, PhD, director at the International Center for Clinical Excellence, Cummings professor of behavioral health at Arizona State University, and author of The Heart and Soul of Change
Review
“Strosahl, Gustavsson, and Robinson have written an inspiring book for all clinicians to read and to use in their daily practice. The genius of focused acceptance and commitment therapy is that it not only includes new insights, but it also dispels the myths about brief interventions. This book shows that a focused approach is exactly what many people need to help them recapture a sense of being fully alive.”
—Mark Williams, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oxford, and coauthor of The Mindful Way Through Depression
Review
Brief Interventions for Radical Change is an excellent resource for primary care clinicians wanting to make efficient use of their time with patients. Its a practical guide for a patient-centered, functional approach, and provides case examples with individuals, couples, and groups.”
Debra A. Gould, MD, MPH, family physician and coauthor of Real Behavior Change in Primary Care, Improving Patient Outcomes and Increasing Job Satisfaction
Review
Sameet Kumar's
Mindfulness and Prolonged Grief Workbook is a welcome and important resource for both those struggling to cope with prolonged grief themselves and for the helping professionals who are advising and supporting them.”
Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness and Lovingkindness
Review
Sameet Kumar has been working for many years as a psychologist and counselor in the field of dealing with this grief. In his wonderful new book
Mindfulness and Prolonged Grief, he shares many of the approaches to inner healing that he has developed in his practice. In particular, he demonstrates how the ancient Buddhist methods of mindfulness meditation can be used to cure both body and mind when the overwhelming darkness of grief, depression, and hopelessness sets in. His book is both practical and immediate in its presentation, offering medical practitioners and patients alike a clear guide to a traditional healing technology that has worked for centuries, and is perhaps even more relevant today than ever before.”
Glenn Mullin, author of Living in the Face of Death and The Fourteen Dalai Lamas: A Sacred Legacy of Reincarnation
Synopsis
There are hundreds of books on the market that try to help readers overcome or put a stop to depression. But what if depression isn't a thing to be gotten rid of? What if depression is a behavior that, in the context of the life of someone who is depressed, serves an important function or acts as a signal that something needs to change? Learning to understand the function and interpret the signal of depression, then, would be a much more important goal than finding out how to simply make it go away. Living well even with feelings of depression would be a more productive--and probably more attainable--goal. This workbook marks a major development in the treatment of depression. Based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), this book offers a new approach to depression. The central idea is that feelings of depression are not problems in themselves. What is a serious problem is the avoidance of pleasurable, productive activities. At first, depression may set the sufferer up for this avoidance, but sooner or later the process becomes a cycle, and the avoidance behaviors start causing more depressed feelings. When readers use the techniques in this book to evaluate their own experiences of depression, they will find out how to make changes that may or may not decrease their depressed feelings but will most certainly enrich and improve their total life experience.
Synopsis
From Kirk Strosahl, cofounder of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression develops the revolutionary techniques of this new approach into a clear, step-by-step strategy you can use to live a rich and meaningful life with depression. Includes a CD.
Synopsis
Learning to understand the function and interpret the signal of depression may be a much more important goal than finding out how to simply make it go away. Based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), this book offers a new approach to coping with depression.
Synopsis
There are hundreds of books that will try to help you overcome or put an end to depression. But what if you could use your depression to change your life for the better? Your symptoms may be signals that something in your life needs to change. Learning to understand and interpret these signals is much more important than ignoring or avoiding them-approaches that only make the situation worse. This workbook uses techniques from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to offer a new treatment plan for depression that will help you live a productive life by accepting your feelings instead of fruitlessly trying to avoid them.
The Mindfulness & Acceptance Workbook for Depression will show you, step-by-step, how to stop this cycle, feel more energized, and involve yourself in pleasurable and fulfilling activities that will help you work through, rather than avoid, aspects of your life that are depressing you. Use the techniques in this book to evaluate your own depression and create a personalized treatment plan. You'll enrich your total life experience by focusing your energy not on fighting depression, but on living the life you want.
Includes a CD.
This book has been awarded The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Seal of Merit — an award bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, our books offer powerful tools readers can use to jump-start changes in their lives.
Synopsis
Little daily hassles can often add up to big stress. In In This Moment, two internationally-renowned psychologists show readers how to connect with the present moment and find a sense of calm and serenity using a breakthrough, evidence-based program grounded in mindfulness and neuroscience. Over time, chronic stress can take its toll on mental and physical health, leading to everything from anxiety and depression to weight gain and disease. By practicing the exercises in this book, readers will learn to combat stress in healthy ways, stay balanced, and live happier lives, no matter what challenges arise.
Synopsis
Little daily hassles can add up to big, big stress. Whether youre stuck in traffic, hauling your kids out the front door in the morning, dealing with a demanding boss, or worrying about money, its easy to become overwhelmed. Stress is a normal part of daily life; but over time, chronic stress can take its toll on both your mental and physical health, leading to everything from anxiety and depression to weight gain and disease. So how can you move past the little hassles that get in the way of fully enjoying life? In This Moment will show you how to find a sense of calm and serenity using a breakthrough, evidence-based program grounded in mindfulness and neuroscience. Imagine feeling stressed, and being able to work through it by paying attention to your thoughts and feelings, moment by moment, no matter where you are or what youre doing. Its not as difficult as it sounds! Written by cofounder of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) Kirk Strosahl and pioneering behavioral health researcher Patricia Robinson, the mindfulness exercises in this book will help you strengthen the parts of your brain that support vitality and a sense of being fully present in the here and now. And with a little practice, you will learn to combat stress in healthy ways, stay balanced, and live a happier life, no matter what challenges arise.
Synopsis
Brief Interventions for Radical Change is a valuable resource for cliniciansa collection of fifteen to thirty-minute therapeutic interventions based in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) that can be used to help clients overcome any psychological difficulty, including anxiety, depression, and substance abuse.
Synopsis
For most people, grief resolves on its own, given time; but for others, grief can lead to serious psychological problems, such as depression, anxiety, anger, and an intense, inconsolable yearning for a deceased loved one. In Mindfulness for Prolonged Grief, psychologist Sameet Kumar shows readers how to overcome symptoms of prolonged and complicated grief using mindfulness meditation and mindfulness-based practices. This book invites readers to think of grief not as an obstacle, but as a powerful vehicle for growth.
Synopsis
If you have lost a loved one suddenly or traumatically, have experienced extreme trauma yourself, or simply cannot process the death of someone dear to you, the pain can be overwhelming. For most people, grief resolves on its own, given time; but for many others, grief can lead to serious psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, anger, and an intense, inconsolable yearning for the deceased.
Prolonged or complicated grief is a serious psychological condition that can leave you feeling dazed, stunned, or in shock for months or even years after your loss. Your sorrow does not diminish with time. In fact, it may even increase. No matter how much support you receive from family and friends, you simply cannot get over it.” However, there are steps you can take to begin healing.
Mindfulness for Prolonged Grief offers you real tools for overcoming the painful symptoms of prolonged grief. In the book, you will learn to relieve your pain by maintaining a healthy lifestyle, improving the quality of your sleep, and reconnecting with your lifes goals. In addition, you will discover how mindfulness exercises and guided meditations can help you process your grief, manage your intense emotions, and deal with loss without resorting to avoidant behaviors (such as addiction) as coping mechanisms.
Loss is an extremely painful part of life, but with help you can build the resilience you need to heal, and use your grief as a powerful vehicle for growth.
About the Author
Kirk Strosahl, PhD, is a cofounder of acceptance and commitment therapy, a cognitive behavioral therapy that has gained widespread adoption in the mental health and substance abuse community. He is the author of numerous articles on the subjects of primary care behavioral health integration, using outcome assessment to guide practice and strategies for working with challenging, high-risk, and suicidal clients. Along with Patricia Robinson, he coauthored the highly praised self-help book, The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression. Strosahl currently works as a primary care psychologist at Central Washington Family Medicine, a community health center providing health care to a large medically underserved population. He is well-known nationally for his innovative approach to the integration of behavioral health and primary care services. Strosahl lives in Zillah, WA.
Patricia Robinson, PhD, is a director of clinical services at Mountainview Consulting Group, Inc., a firm specializing in providing consultation for health care systems seeking to integrate behavioral health services into primary care settings. She was a member of a pioneering research team that explored primary care-based behavioral health care in the 1990s. She then moved on to refine the primary care behavioral health model and apply it to delivery of health care services to underserved people in rural America, including migrant farm workers and members of the Yakima Nation. Robinson has consulted with numerous public and private health and mental health care systems, including the United States Air Force and the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and six books, including Real Behavior Change in Primary Care, and is coauthor of The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression.
Thomas Gustavsson, MSc, is a licensed psychologist and one of the founders of Psykologpartners, a company providing psychology and psychiatry services in Scandinavia. He has worked as a consultant for several community-based services, social workers, treatment centers, schools, and primary care clinics. In addition, he is one of the pioneers in building an integrated, evidence-based psychiatry program within a large primary care system in Helsingborg, Sweden. Gustavsson resides in Rydeback, Sweden.
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