This is a very well laid out treatment planner book. This book has the potential of saving a clinician many hours of writing a treatment plan. A clinician could merely write the page number, and the numbered items of what he or she would like to say. It also has areas for the clinician to add items if what he or she wants to say is not in the planner. It is written in lay terms so that the insurance companies and the clients themselves can understand the treatment plans. This helps the clinician to avoid using jargon.

In the introduction, this planner reviews the process of writing a good treatment plan. It lists six to develop the plan.

1. Problem Selection,
2. Problem Definition,
3. Goal Development,
4. Objective Construction,
5. Intervention Creation
6. Diagnosis Determination.

Each one of these steps is followed by a short explanation of what needs to be in this area. The authors state that the planner "…was developed as a tool to aid clinicians in writing a treatment plan …". This is a very important statement, since it is clear that although many areas are covered in this book, it is still only an aid and should not be used as a "Bible" for writing a treatment plan. Every client is different, and needs to be looked at individually. This treatment planner recognizes that factor.

The authors show a nice example of what a treatment plan could look like. The book is divided up into different areas of crisis. Each area of crisis is broken down into

1. Behavioral Definitions
2. Long-Term Goals
3. Short-Term Objectives
4. Therapeutic Interventions, and
5. Diagnostic Suggestions.

In this last section, the authors give possible diagnoses and corresponding identifying numbers from the DSM-IV. This has the potential to be a great time saver. It prevents the clinician from having to look in the DSM-IV for the numbers to simple diagnosis. It should in no way replace the DMS-IV, but it makes suggestions of Diagnosis to consider.

This would be a great asset to all clinicians’ libraries, but would really be most helpful to those who don’t often do older adult treatment plans. It is a very helpful guide, and I recommend it to all clinicians.

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Categories: Psychotherapy, MentalHealth

Keywords: Geriatric psychotherapy, Geriatric Psychiatry, Gerontology