Abstract

The development of 'ageless' mental health services means that an increasing number of clinicians are now required to work with older people. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is recognised by all recent meta-analyses as the most effective therapy, yet few clinicians are trained specifically in its usage with the elderly.

This book is a detailed guide to using CBT with older people both with and without cognitive difficulties. Reviewing its use in different settings, it covers both conceptual and practical perspectives, and details everything from causes and initial assessment to case formulation and change techniques. Case studies in both depression and dementia are used to illustrate how CBT should work and how positive effects can manifest themselves.

Suitable both for trainees and experienced therapists, this book will be essential for anybody using cognitive behavioural therapy in their work with older people, regardless of their clients' levels of cognitive ability.

This book is a welcome addition to the sparse literature on working psychologically with older people both with and without dementia, written by a respected authority with over 20 years' experience in this field... This book is a worthy addition to the literature in the area of working with older adults... I would recommend it to all therapists working or interested in working with older adults. The introductory chapters will help those with limited CBT knowledge. Those with more experience will certainly find James's passion both motivating and endearing.
Therapy Today
Although this book has the intended audience for trainees and experience therapists I believe it includes conceptual and practical perspectives which could be relevant to anyone who works with older clients undergoing CBT. The evidence based practice can be applied to anyone with a cognitive decline despite their age.
Signpost
This is an immensely ambitious book aiming to encompass a vast body of material spanning the literature on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), neuropsychology of aging, and models of cognition and memory. This makes it quite complex, but a great deal of thought has been given to how it is structured to enable the reader to make their way through...the book sites itself quite firmly in current competency based educational practice and I think has clearly been written as the result of the author's extensive experience of supervising psychology trainees. It is a very structured text, in many ways modelling the processes of agenda setting, information gathering, formulation and so on that are explored in the text...the book has some very important points to make and makes them in a well-researched and evidenced way. I think one of the most useful is about the nature of normal cognitive aging and the risk of excluding older people from genetic therapy services because fo a failure to appreciate the interaction between cognition and therapeutic engagement...Another feature of the book that I liked was the very practical emphasis on the need to be effective - to measure what you're doing, make a judgement about whether it is likely to help, and take steps to ensure that change occurs. I think this emphasis on the progression from engagement to understanding to changing and the need to achieve action beyond a shared understanding will be particularly useful to inexperienced therapists...It is a very learned and well informed treatise with some important and quite novel things to say and it packs in a huge amount of information. Will it be a useful addition to the bookshelf? Certainly, especially if you want a pithy summary of the issues that are specific to therapy with older people or if you want to encourage people to think about dementia from a CBT framework.
Dementia UK website

Ian Andrew James is Head of Newcastle Challenging Behaviour Service and Consultant Clinical Psychologist for Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Trust.
Having graduated in Psychology from the University of Aberdeen, he undertook a PhD in cognitive psychology at Lancaster University. After completing his clinical training at Newcastle University, he spent four years at Newcastle Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies Centre, undertaking work on therapeutic competence.
Ian Andrew James has published extensively in the field of mental health, training and clinical supervision, and is a regular speaker at national and international conferences. He is a lecturer on the Clinical Psychology course at Newcastle University, and now focuses on applying therapy to people with dementia.

This book is a welcome addition to the practice of psychological therapies with older people, as there is little doubt that mental health services will encounter increasing numbers of older people experiencing anxiety and/or depression in coming years... This book is both detailed and accessible. Case material is used well to illustrate the various CBT approaches that are described. Guidance is offered in an authoritative and empirically grounded manner and many of the key issues facing both experienced and trainee CBT therapists working with older people are covered. The book is therefore a useful resource for trainers, clinicians and therapists of all levels of experience... this book should be recommended reading for clinicians using CBT with older people.
The Journal of Ageing & Society
I would definitely recommend this book to my students.
Mental Health Nursing