Sourcebook of Interactive Practice Exercises in Mental Health

As a primary or an adjunct mental health therapy, written practice exercises have proven an effective, low-cost way for clients to transfer gains made in therapy to the challenges of daily life and relationships. These interactive workbooks expand on earlier self-help and distance writing methods along a continuum of healing approaches, from the proactive and preventive to the therapeutic and rehabilitative. But despite their appeal, large-scale access to high-quality materials hasn’t always been readily available—until now.

The Sourcebook of Interactive Practice Exercises in Mental Health gives professionals a library of replicable, evidence-based, clinically robust protocols and workbooks for a broad range of clinical and non-clinical conditions, suitable for individuals, couples, and families. Luciano L’Abate places practice exercises in the context of current mental health and technological advances, offering guidelines for administration, helpful case studies, and caveats for those new to this type of intervention, and features a wealth of complete protocols in these major areas: psychological disorders from the DSM-IV, including depression, anxiety, phobias, and PTSD, couple and family concerns, from intimacy to domestic violence to children’s adjustment to divorce, lifelong learning: assertiveness, emotional competence, social skills, and more, family support skills: preparation for marriage, parenthood, and adoption´, plus exercises derived from widely-used psychological tests (e.g., the Beck Depression Inventory, the MMPI), behavior lists, and others.

Clinical psychologists, mental health professionals, and psychotherapists will find the Sourcebook of Interactive Practice Exercises in Mental Health a therapeutic treasure chest filled with new approaches to intractable issues or unreachable clients, new means of viewing typical problems, even new ways for talk therapy to work with words.

• self-help

From the reviews:

"Luciano L'Abate has provided an outstanding resource that is destined to be a classic in every mental health clinician's library. This magnificent text provides a plethora of practice exercises designed for both specific and general conditions...The author integrates his decades of training and experience as a clinical psychologist, as well as a renowned marriage and family therapist, and outstanding psycotherapist to produce one of the gems that is no doubt destined to be on bookshelves for a long time to come." (Frank M. Dattilio, Ph.D., ABPP, Harvard Medical School,  Boston, MA)

“In his book Sourcebook of Interactive Practice Exercises in Mental Health, Luciano L’Abate has provided a collection of practice exercises for clients that allows for an extension of the therapeutic session. The goal of the book is to provide a broad spectrum of exercises that can be used with a variety of clients–a library tool kit. … a resource for professionals primarily in counseling settings, coaching, and self-help practices. … Students would find the book a very expensive resource for a limited population.” (Robert A. Bischoff, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 56 (38), September, 2011)

• Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA

  Luciano L'Abate

Luciano L’Abate, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Georgia State University, Georgia, Atlanta, USA where he was Director of the Family Psychology Training Program and the Family Study Center. He completed his Ph.D., at Duke University, with post-doctoral specialization at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. He worked in the Psychiatry Departments of Washington (St. Louis) and Emory (Atlanta) Universities Schools of Medicine before moving to Georgia State University, where he spent his entire academic career. He was in part-time private and consulting and clinical practice for 42 years. He has published (author, co-author, edited, and co-edited) 37 books, 3 are in press, as well as over 250 papers in scientific and professional journals.

Policies and ethics