Acceptance & Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders: A Practitioner's Treatment Guide to Using Mindfulness, Acceptance, And Values-Based Behavior Change Strategies (Hardcover)

by Georg H. Eifert (Author), John P. Forsyth (Author), Steven C. Hayes (Foreword) "Over the last forty years, behavior therapy has led the field in the development of empirically derived and time-limited psychological interventions to assist those suffering..." (more)
Key Phrases: commitment therapy for anxiety, life enhancement exercises, mainstream cognitive behavioral therapies, Anxiety News Radio, Goal Achievement Record, Full Experience (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A Revolutionary Approach to Treating Anxiety Disorders

This much-anticipated book is the first how-to guide to offer a detailed and practical application of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to the treatment of persons suffering from any of the broad class of anxiety disorders. In a lucid and readable style, the book brings to life the ACT approach to alleviating human suffering. The book provides clear and flexible, session-by-session guidelines for applying and integrating acceptance, mindfulness, and value-guided behavior change methods into a powerful and effective anxiety treatment approach. It offers strategies that work to remove barriers to change and foster meaningful movement forward. Theoretical information in the book is supported by detailed examples of individual therapy sessions, worksheets, and experiential exercises—as well as new assessment measures that make learning and teaching these techniques easy and engaging. The book comes with a CD-ROM that includes easily reproducible electronic versions of these materials.

From the Publisher
From this much-anticipated book, therapists will learn how to integrate acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) treatments for anxiety disorders into their practices. It is the first text to adapt ACT principles and techniques specifically for the treatment of anxiety disorders, presenting them in a clear and systematic step-by-step format.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 287 pages
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications (July 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572244275
• ISBN-13: 978-1572244276
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #119,675 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars intriguing, elegant, and practical, August 25, 2005

By	Todd B. Kashdan - See all my reviews

The authors have integrated an extremely large body of work on mindfulness, acceptance, emotion regulation, cognitive and behavioral treatments, and anxiety into a concise and readable book. To my knowledge, this is the first book to provide a step-by-step handbook for clinicians interested in using mindfulness and acceptance based techniques with clients who are suffering. Thus, this is an enormous asset to all health professionals.

The title of the book is deceptive because it is not just relevant to anxiety disorders. It is also relevant to understanding and working with general human suffering. Additionally, this is an excellent text for researchers and graduate students, as well as anyone who wants to apply these principles to their own lives (without necessarily seeking professional help).


Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
George Mason University

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The first effective unified protocol for anxiety disorders, February 14, 2006

By	Jorge Saavedra "Koke Saavedra" (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Eifert and Forsyth come up with the first unified treatment for all anxiety disorders that actually works--an accomplishment that deserves a place in the history of psychotherapy. They do a superb job at making their protocol accessible to therapists that are new to acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), including students. In the first chapters of the book, the authors explain with both rigor and clarity what ACT is all about, and contrast it with CBT. In a nutshell, while CBT focuses on symptom management and reduction, ACT focuses on symptom acceptance and doing, in spite of all the inner stuff that may show up, for purposes of living a chosen, valued life. ACT claims convincingly that the road to a good life and mental health is not trying to feel good, but to become able to do what is required (i.e., act) to live a meaningful life, guided by a person's valued directions. ACT is a new, powerful therapy, already with remarkable empirical support, that combines the best of what the psychotherapy world has to offer, that is, acceptance- and mindfulness-based, as well as experiential and existential-humanistic therapies with behavioral interventions, in particular exposure. Maybe exposure work, perhaps the main contribution of the behavioral traidition to psychotherapy, best illustrates the contrats between ACT and CBT: while in CBT exposure is undertaken with the purpose of reducing symptomatology, in ACT it is undertaken with the purpose of increasing behavioral flexibility, i.e., expanding the behavioral repertoire of the person in the presence of anxiety provoking stimuli, and ultimately actualize willingness to move in the direction of the person's values. A truly extraordinary book, and a must read for any therapist who hopes to remain in the cutting edge of his profession. Finally, the editors at New Harbinger Publications deserve praise for the vision and creativity they have put into publishing ACT literature during the last few years. The book by Eifert and Forsyth is a remarkable outcome of such efforts.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A valuable book for any clinician's library, September 27, 2005

By	Brian P. Marx (Temple University, Philadelphia PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In the wake of the growing popularity of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a number of books have been written that detail the ACT philosophy and approach to therapy. However, none is better than the recently published Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders by Georg H. Eifert and John P. Forsyth. Although the book is focused on treating anxiety disorders, the principles and techniques that are discussed are so far reaching that they are pertinent to the treatment of other types of psychopathology. Thus, this book is simply not just a `must read' for those who specialize in treating anxiety disorders but rather it is a book from which any psychotherapist at any level could benefit. What sets this book apart from others that describe the ACT and other like-minded approaches to therapy is that the authors have made the concepts easily digestible and the text effortless to read. At the same time, however, the authors have managed to keep the philosophy and approach undiluted. The techniques and "how-tos" are also presented in caring detail and integrated along with guidelines for case conceptualization. Another asset of the book is that the authors make every attempt to ground their approach in the state of the art psychological science. Not all "how-to" therapy books are as successful as this one in translating science into practice.
The book is divided into three sections. The first section entails a brief discussion of the ACT approach as well as an overview of the anxiety disorders and how more traditional cognitive-behavioral approaches conceptualize and treat anxiety disorders. In the next section of the book, the construct of anxiety and the findings from previous research are reframed in a manner that is consistent with ACT. The distinction between what is changeable (a person's overt behavior) and what is not (what happens beneath the skin) is also given some discussion in this section. The final section of the book is a detailed protocol that can be used to treat anxiety disorders. The authors nicely take the reader through the protocol step by step, from treatment orientation through the practicing of mindfulness-type exercises to value-guided action.
All in all, Eifert and Forsyth's Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders is a terrific piece of work that both clinicians and researchers will undoubtedly find useful in testing basic assumptions about human psychological functioning, informing treatment development efforts, and evaluating the helpfulness of ACT-oriented approaches. This book offers important direction and perpetuates the sense of hopefulness and excitement that we are, once and for all, on the verge of ameliorating human suffering.