This book is perhaps the weakest of the Practice Planners that I have reviewed. What it covers is dealt with very thoroughly but it seems to be intended more for medical care providers or case managers who need help identifying psychiatric or emotional issues and interventions rather than mental health practitioners. Mental health practitioners who regularly work with serious medical problems such as MS and organ transplants may find it (and especially the software) helpful for shortening paperwork time, but may also find the suggested interventions inadequate in terms of detail or breadth. The behavioral definitions rather are also somewhat haphazard – often more simplistically physiologic care reminders rather than behavioral goals or objectives. This resource is not entirely appropriate for the average mental health private practitioner – using it requires very firm medical grounding. However, appropriate mental health treatment of these patients requires exactly such a medical background (knowledge of medications and procedures related to various medical conditions) and connections (for medical treatment, rehabilitation, and support services).

The BMTP is formatted to be used much the same as the The Complete Adult Psychotherapy Treatment Planner (CAPTP) (reviewed in Metapsychology September 1999), and can come with the same kind of software to be used with TheraScribe 3.0 (reviewed in Metapsychology September, 1999). It covers an interesting but limited number of topics:

• severe chronic medical conditions (such as asthma, cardiovascular disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, epilepsy, fibromyalgia, HIV/AIDS, irritable bowel syndrome, organ transplantation, and sickle-cell disease),
• anxiety, depression, or other emotional issues that interfere with compliance with medical treatment (anxiety related to medical or dental problems, gynecological and obstetric conditions including infertility and poor prenatal care),
• conditions that have important emotional components that can be reduced by mind-body methods or lifestyle changes (acute pain, headache, premenstrual syndrome/dysphoric disorder), and
• substance abuse that contributes to physical health problems (cigarette smoking, obesity, and prescription drug abuse/dependence).

Each of these topics is thoroughly covered from both a psychosocial and medical perspective. The chapters on anxiety related to medical problems and chronic fatigue syndrome are especially good. The chapters on pain provide an excellent treatment framework.

The topic choices are uneven and leave many holes: why have three chapters on pain but only one on a neuromuscular disorder? What about differences in treatment plan when the medical patient is a child? It is hard to understand why some chapters cover very specific complaints while others cover very broad categories. One example of the occasionally haphazard nature of this module is the “gynecological and obstetric conditions” chapter. In just 10 pages a variety of women’s health topics including poor prenatal care, postpartum depression, infertility, and menopause. While there is some overlap on the long-term goals – effective use of coping strategies, increased knowledge, and enhanced adjustment – the short-term objectives and therapeutic interventions are a jumble that would be much easier to use (and hopefully more thorough) if each topic were dealt with separately.

The reviewer would like to thank Jean Lemmon MSN CS, a psychiatric clinical nurse specialist with the Doylestown Hospital (Pennsylvania) Visiting Nurses program, for her input and assistance with this review.

Categories: Psychotherapy, MentalHealth