Cognitive Therapy For Depressed Adolescents » (1st Edition)

T. C. R. Wilkes, M.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Psychiatric Residency Program at the University of Calgary, Alberta, and Medical Director of the Adolescent Program at Foothills Hospital in Calgary. He graduated in medicine at the University of Birmingham, England, and pursued training in pediatrics in Canada and the U.K. before completing his training in Edinburgh, Scotland and Dallas, Texas. He specializes in the manifestation of affective disorders in children and adolescents and is a member of the Canadian Child Academy.

A. John Rush, M.D., holds the Betty Jo Hay Distinguished Chair in Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. The author of over 100 articles, 40 chapters, and five books on the diagnosis and treatment of mood disorders, he is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the American College of Psychiatrists, and the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Rush received the Strecker and the Charles C. Burlingame Awards for research and teaching in 1992.

Ellen Frank, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Director of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic's Depression and Manic-Depression Prevention Programs. Under grants from the national Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Frank is currently conducting a series of assessment and long-term maintenance treatment studies with individuals suffering from recurrent depression and another in the area of manic-depressive illness.

Gayle Belsher, PhD, is a staff psychologist on the Cognitive Therapy Team, Outpatient Mental Health Service of the Calgary Regional Health Authority consortium of hospitals. She is also an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary. Her work on this book was completed during a postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Based upon and adapted from Aaron T. Beck's cognitive therapy for depressed adults, this long-awaited volume provides general strategies and specific tactics for the use of cognitive therapy with depressed adolescents. Featuring strategies derived from years of clinical work and repeated testing, Cognitive Therapy for Depressed Adolescents provides patient-therapist narratives that convey a clinical feel for how this therapy works, as well as actual case vignettes illustrating effective techniques for diagnosis and treatment. Throughout, the book stresses that the approach be both interactive and educational.

The manual opens with a theoretical overview of cognitive therapy applications. Chapters present ten key principles of cognitive therapy with adolescents and techniques for assessing and diagnosing depression. Part II focuses on special issues that arise in the treatment of adolescents--developmental considerations, ways to create and sustain a therapeutic relationship, and how to involve the entire family in the adolescent's treatment.

Part III describes the macrostages and microtechniques in cognitive therapy with chapters presenting an in-depth analysis of goal setting, intervention, and termination. Part IV discusses comorbidity and strategies for working with substance-abusing teenagers, survivors of sexual victimization, and suicidal adolescents. Although the emphasis of this manual is on outpatient treatment, brief periods of hospitalization are often part of the management of depressed adolescents, so one chapter in Part V is devoted to the use of cognitive techniques in the inpatient setting, and another describes general management issues and psychopharmacological treatment. Finally, the chapter considers therapeutic failures and obstacles one encounters when working with this population.

Providing guidelines and principles of cognitive therapy techniques for the treatment of depressed adolescents, this volume will be of value to psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and counselors. These adapted techniques will also add to the repertoire of cognitive therapists who normally work with depressed adults but also encounter adolescents in their practice. Useful as a teaching text in courses that discuss new applications for cognitive therapy techniques, this book is also ideal supplemental reading in courses on psychology and psychotherapy.

Margery R. Johnson

This book describes the theory and technique of cognitive psychotherapy as adapted for use with depressed adolescents. The purpose is to provide instruction in a specific technique of short-term therapy, by modifying a well-established treatment method previously applied primarily to adult patients. The intended audience for this book is psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers who are engaged in treating adolescents and who already have experience with different forms of therapy. This book takes a technique of short-term therapy that has proven effective in the treatment of depression in adults and adapts it for use with a younger patient population. The book describes the technique in considerable detail, including clinical vignettes and examples of patient-therapist dialogue. Also included are examples of the charts and "homework" assignments used in this method of treatment. The authors also include sections on using this mode of treatment in different settings and with patients with other conditions in addition to depression. This book provides a very useful adaptation of a specific therapy technique for a rather large segment of the patient population, namely the depressed adolescent. It would be of considerable interest for anyone treating this patient population, especially in this era of emphasis on short-term treatment.