Treating Mental Disorders: A Guide to What Works

Nathan and Gorman have provided mental health practitioners with an essential reference. No practitioner of psychotherapy or psychiatric chemotherapy can afford not to buy this book (purchase price notwithstanding). This compendium reviews treatments for major psychological disorders and offers effect size estimates for the benefits of treatment (i.e., how much better off are people after treatment than if they got no treatment at all). In addition, the authors summarize the quality of the research on which their reviews are based. They not only examine psychologically based treatments, but also medication treatments for some disorders. All practitioners and consumers should read this. As a faculty member in a clinical psychology graduate training program, I recommended this book to my students as optional reading - and almost all of them bought it because they found it invaluable. I hope this authors will choose to update this book every ten years ago (it is very recent, so it needs no updating now). If they do, I have no doubt that Nathan and Gorman will come to be inextricably associated with this monumentally practical work, the way that Gray is associated with Anatomy. Kudos to the authors for giving us this essential reference.

I have read other books on mental disease and found this one easy to read and understand without all the psychiatric jargon. The book was concise,clear,and gave both a psychosocial,as well as a psychopharmacological perspective. I recommend this book without any reservations.

The authors have done a great job of summerizing the effectiveness of a wide range of behavioral health therapies from medications to systematic desensitization and more. Clear and easy to follow. Great book!