Although called a “psychologists” desk reference, this book is in fact aimed specifically at one particular group of psychologists. Psychologists appear all over the place these days, but a psychologist involved in personnel selection, or an educational psychologist or a researcher looking into animal behaviour, will find little or nothing of relevance here. It would have been better titled “The Clinical Psychologist’s Desk Reference”. In fact I would even have preferred “The American Clinical Psychologist’s Desk Reference”: all the editors and all of the myriad contributors are American, and the content is entirely aimed at American readers. For the most part this does not matter. Psychology is pre-eminently an American science – we all follow in their footsteps. It does, however, mean that the sections on Legal Issues, Financial & Insurance Matters and parts of Practice Management are not fully relevant to readers in other countries. This strong American bias does perhaps explain why, in spite of the fact that it comes from a very reputable British publisher and is equipped with a blurb full of glowing praise for the previous editions, I have never actually come across it before, and none of the libraries I have ready access to seemed to have either of the previous editions – including the British Psychological Society Library at Senate House, King’s College London library or the London School of Economics. I had to scan all the way up to the British Library to track down a second edition. I will try to ensure that the Institute of Psychiatry and Senate House get copies of this, so we can at least make some comparisons of use when the fourth edition appears.
Having finally got hold of a copy, I have to say that my immediate impressions are very favourable. The editors compiled the first edition of 1998 by circulating the members of the American Psychological Association Division of Clinical Psychology with the question “all clinicians have a file in which they place useful checklists, guidelines and summaries. If you had such a collection what would you want in it?” They further made inventories of the desk contents of several practitioners, and interviewed others. The end page of the second edition, 2005, consisted of a tear-out sheet asking readers to let the editors know what they would like in future editions. This feature is curiously lacking in the third edition. Perhaps the editors feel that they have reached perfection and need no further suggestions?
When asked what the Psychologists’ Desk Reference includes, the editors claim that they reply “Everything essential but the tissue box”. I am not sure that this is quite strictly true, but there is certainly a great deal of useful information crammed into one volume here. There are 145 succinct chapters, divided into 12 sections: Assessment & Diagnosis; Testing; Individual Adult Treatment; Couples, Family & Group Treatment; Child & Adolescent Treatment; Biology & Pharmacotherapy; Self-Help; Ethical & Legal Issues; Forensic Practice; Financial & Insurance; Practice Management; and Prevention, Consultation & Supervision. Clearly each chapter can only cover the bare bones of the topic, indeed some of the chapters are little more than checklists, and the remainder are concise reminders of topics which all clinical psychologists should already have covered in depth – no-one should ever use this as a free-standing tool for diagnosis or therapy. As such the list of references and suggested reading at the end of each chapter is of crucial importance. I was slightly disappointed here. I would have preferred a clear distinction between items the authors happened to have referred to and those items they would recommend for further reading, and among the latter I would have liked to see more mention of useful web resources – a great many tests etc., and a lot of psychopharmacological information can be found online, but there is also a vast amount of misinformation out there. Some clearer guidance would be useful. After all, if the editors really made inventories of their colleagues’ desk resources, they must have noticed that on virtually every desk was a computer with an Internet connection – probably nearer to hand than the files they were looking for. My colleague, Sonya Lipczynska, manages to fill a column in practically every issue of the Journal of Mental Health just discussing useful websites in this field.
It was an unfortunate piece of timing that led to this book being published a few weeks after the release of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fifth edition – DSM-5 recently reviewed in these columns (RR 2014/102). Many of the chapters, particularly the first 16 making up the section on Assessment & Diagnosis had, perforce, to be based on the previous text-revised fourth edition – DSM-IV-TR, which gives them a slightly dated air. Several have paragraphs headed Anticipated DSM-5 Revisions, but that is not the same as an updated discussion.
There are occasional imbalances – why is there a chapter on Treating Women in Psychotherapy without a matching one on men, for example, and, as always, children get an entire section to themselves, while for older people, there is only one chapter on dementia and one on Practicing Psychotherapy with Older Adults. By and large, however, the editors appear to have covered the field fairly thoroughly. I could not see any obvious omissions and I have not found any inaccuracies. I was able to give this book a very brief test drive, by showing it to a gaggle of clinical psychology trainees. Their general conclusion was that it would definitely be an extremely useful revision text for students like themselves – “will it be in the Institute library”? – and that it would probably be a handy desk reference book for practitioners. They echoed my concern at it being used by other people as a working tool or even used for self-diagnosis rather than as a collection of check-lists and reminders for practitioners. I don’t see how this can be avoided.
Although parts of it are irrelevant for readers outside the USA, and some parts will need minor updating for DSM-5, all academic libraries catering for training courses in clinical psychology should seriously consider this book for acquisition. Other libraries catering for psychologists and psychotherapists may also find it useful. There are concerns about its general use, but, nevertheless, public reference libraries may find it handy as a collection of brief, accurate and informative answers to the question, “what do clinical psychologists do?” Libraries which possess the previous edition should note that there are substantial changes – several chapters were removed, presumably because readers found them less relevant, 29 new chapters added and the remainder more or less thoroughly updated.
