Dr Farrell and Ida Shaw have written a remarkable practitioner's guide for group schema therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder that will surely become the reference text for this implementation of schema therapy. Written for the practicing therapist, the writing is clear and easy to read, with multiple examples from real practice illustrating the various concepts and techniques. Though the text reads easily, this should not suggest that this isn't a well-thought out and researched academic work. Farrell and Shaw's extensive experience and research clearly establish their knowledge base and credibility for developing such a guide and manual. The ideas presented have proven successful in the treatment of BPD. Due to the clarity and exhaustive nature of the text, this book can also serve as a primer on schema therapy and BPD oriented schema therapy, in general (though the reader would be encouraged to refer to more individual therapy oriented texts by Young or Arntz).
My primary criticism of this text primarily centers around editing. Though syntax and readability are superlative, I found several typos/misspellings/punctuation mistakes that should not have escaped an editor's eye (though this review merits the same criticism). I also have an issue with the soft bound form factor of the book. As this is a practioner's guide with multiple handouts in the appendices, it would be ideal to have a spiral bound or 3ring binder edition. I would appreciate something that would lie flat and be easily copied.
For those unfamiliar with schema therapy, this is my beginners understanding of the genesis of schema therapy and Farrell and Shaw's contribution to its development:
Developed by Dr. Jeffrey Young, schema therapy is an integrative approach for the treatment of "treatment resistant" clientele. Though initially a development within cognitive therapy, Young incorporated experiential, person-centered, attachment, and behavioral therapies to remediate the deep seeded schemas (akin to core beliefs) confounding the effectiveness of cognitive therapy alone. Concurrent to the development of Young's schema therapy, Dr Farrell and Shaw were researching, publishing, and practicing the use of individual and group emotional awareness techniques in the treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Realizing that they pursuing parallel paths as much of the method and theory were comparable, Farrell and Shaw embraced schema therapy and began the process of incorporating it into their approach to group therapy. Recent research (2009) conducted on the effectiveness of BPD group schema therapy is incredibly promising, as 94% of the those receiving group schema therapy no longer met BPD diagnostic criteria compared to 16% of the treatment-as-usual group.
This last study is what stirred my interest in schema therapy. In mental health populations, those with a BPD diagnosis are some of the most stigmatized clients. Schema therapy--especially the early data on group ST--gives this population a reason to hope.
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