Alessandra Lemma, Mary Target, & Peter Fonagy: Brief Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy: A Clinician's Guide. Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-19-960245-2,  288 pp, £19.95.

This book is an important, well-crafted protocol for mental health professionals specializing in psychodynamic psychotherapy who wish to learn more about how to work with patients presenting with mood disorders (depression and anxiety) within brief psychodynamic and interpersonal-orientated interventions. Written by three professors of psychoanalysis, each a leading authority in the field of mental health, this endeavor is a special collaboration between the Anna Freud Centre and the Tavistock Centre aimed at strengthening short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy in the National Health Service in the UK. Dynamic interpersonal therapy (DIT) is now one of the five therapies for the treatment for depression recommended by the Department of Health (iapt.nhs.uk).

In a seminal article in Nature (Collins et al., 2011), it is estimated that, by 2020, 1.5 million people worldwide will die each year by suicide and between 15 and 30 million will make a suicide attempt. In an article by Wager-Smith and Markou (2011), the WHO is quoted as estimating that depression is “to become the second biggest contributor to the global burden of disease and disability by the year 2020” (p. 743). In their article, Wager-Smith and Markou also cite Freud (1917): “The complex of melancholia behaves like an open wound.” Lemma, Target, and Fonagy (2010) comment that although depression is not fully understood, there is now strong research evidence to link vulnerability to depression to the effects of attachment experiences on the stress system. They outline that DIT's protocol draws from attachment theory, mentalization, interpersonal psychoanalysis, and object relations theory. It is also important to mention at this point that they make it clear that DIT has many commonalities—for example, the impact of early childhood on adult functioning—with several other analytic or dynamic approaches.

The book is divided into eleven chapters, followed by t