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The UK National Health Service (NHS) initiative—Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT)—commissioned the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships (TCCR) and Relate, a network of couple counselling centres, to identify competency frameworks for treating depression with couple therapy. The Expert Reference Group enthusiastically leaped at the opportunity to foster the expansion of mental health interventions legitimised by the NHS beyond existing, cognitive-behavioural approaches. Despite the high prevalence of couple distress and family breakdown throughout the UK, and the significant public mental health problem of depression within couple relationships, the authors point out that the voluntary sector has been primarily saddled to date with providing couple counselling and therapy services in the face of minimal UK governmental funding. A meagre one in every 161 IAPT sessions was of couple therapy for depression (TCCR, 2013). The book, Couple Therapy for Depression: A Clinician's Guide to Integrative Practice, went far beyond assembling a set of competencies, and provides the reader with a model (developed by TCCR) to translate these competences into an actual way of working with couples, and even into a well-articulated training programme for couple therapists.
Rather than a straightforward, how-to guide, this book can be utilised at any stage of a couple therapy. Readers can enter the book from various angles—each chapter contains highlights at the beginning, a rich set of figures, a concise summary, reflective practice questions, and reading suggestions. In addition, the authors provide a comprehensive set of appendices, which include a patient information leaflet that could be distributed or posted on a clinician's website, an outline of practitioner competences, and a useful reference list. Specifically, the book focuses on eight dynamic processes of couple therapy for depression—focusing, assessing, formulating, accepting, communicating, problem-sol