Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse,   ISBN:9781572307063

Customer Rating: 

The authors of this book have devised one of the best strategies for countering bouts of serious depression. Indeed, mindfulness-based therapies have become a hot topic in the field of psychology, and for good reason. The evidence shows that when simple forms of meditation, relaxation, nonjudgmental observation, and acceptance are added to traditional therapies, the results are longer-lasting, and our own research at the University of Pennsylvania supports this (see Newberg and Waldman's forthcoming book, How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist. Taking up a mindfulness practice reduces a patient's need to return to therapy, and the more serious the problem, the more effective this strategy becomes. For the general reader, I recommend The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappinesswhich comes with a CD filled with relaxation and meditation exercises.

Customer Rating: 

Four starts for the clinician, two for the help-your-selfer. I felt that this book was well written; clinical, yet readable. This is a great book for the clinician or the clinician-in-training to give them a good overview. After reading this, the clinician would be ready to be trained in the techniques described in the book. This book does not give any practical skills, it describes the historical background for depression and MBCT and outlines the research that the authors conducted and the training they received.

Because it has no real practical skills (no how-to), it is a poor choice for anyone that wants to learn how to do this stuff on your own-DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY! Jon Kabat-zinn has a book on the same subject that IS a how-to and I would recommend that you look there, particularly since these guys received all of their training in the subject from him and his program; you might as well get it from the original source of the process (OK so Buddha was the REAL first, but JKZ has made it a simpler program and tied it to depression).

Customer Rating: 

This book is an excellent exposition of Segal, Williams, and Teasdale's therapy using a combination of Meditation, Yoga, and Cognitive Therapy.
It very generously shares their program and patient homework notes and would give any therapist the basis for development of their own program.

Customer Rating: 

CBT theorists tend to present in a lucid fashion ideas that have been therapeutically effective for centuries, or in the case of Mindfulness, millennia. Unfortunately, the authors of this book, in fine CBT tradition, manage yet again to misappropriate the work of others and call it 'a new approach'. There is nothing new in what CBT does, other than to re-label as 'evidence-based' the ideas of other innovators after some dubious random-control trials. If the reader wishes to avoid supporting the political recycling of every other therapy ever created, he/ she would better serve patients, clients and self by reading original texts from, for example, Buddhism, which are more authentically authored than CBT's eclectic bag of techniques. However, as with any heavily funded political movement, I suspect that the CBT movement will continue selling old rope as new as long as we want knowledge served up as fast food. It's enough to make any self-respecting therapist relapse into depression!

Customer Rating: 

A fantastic book explaining the basics behind previous research and how we've come to arrive at the new mindfulness-based concept. Highly recommended for new clinicians wanting to further expand their understanding to a brief background of the cognitive aspect of relapse of depression as well as the direction future research appears to be heading.