Brief Therapy and Eating Disorders: A Practical Guide to Solution-Focused Work with Clients

This is a very well written and professionally informative book.The drawback to most professional works dealing with counselling practice is the way the information is presented--often much incisive information but presented without what I term the practical thread of application.This book is written intelligently and is immensely practical, a genuine pleasure to read.The author explains why she uses solution based short therapy and then reviews other methods of counselling, discusses each area of the process with case histories of anorexics,bulimics and so on plus their family interactions.My practice involves a general medicine practice ,with large chunks of family counselling interspesed, and this book is so useful both for initial assessment and management of eating disorders and many other aspects of life for teens and adults.It cannot sort out all patient issues and there are of course, referrals onwards,but it has worked very well for many of my patients.The astounding thing for many doctors is that so many of our patients have eating issues and we can offer so much by some of the simple steps in this book, which does not assign blame to any one, but instead actually makes patients sit back in wonder and lead "alternate lives" as the book puts it.We are often so guilty of ignoring the tentative feelers put out by patients as to "other concerns" of theirs,extending beyond medication, and this book offers the best first steps and often all the steps that are required.It will not tie up hours of your time,and yet leaves you with a sense of having helped your patient beyond medication,and referring them onwards at the appropriate time if need be. I cannot recommend it highly enough.