Handbook of Child Behavior Therapy in thePsychiatric Setting

Abstract

The thrust of this review article is the impact of our professional and scientific writing on the reputation and growth of the field of behavior therapy. How the field is being represented and how it is perceived depend largely on what is communicated to both the scientific and professional communities and the lay public. The writing must do justice to the subject matter, be targeted to a specific level of sophistication, be presented in a scholarly and conceptually well-articulated manner, be sufficiently elaborated for the task at hand and it must capture the reader's interest and excitement. Editors have a particular and unique responsibility to shape, make cohesive, and integrate a collection of professional writings by a group of specialists, each with a defined subject matter. Unfortunately, in their Handbook of Child Behavior Therapy in the Psychiatric Setting, editors Ammerman and Hersen fall short of these editorial responsibilities. The book as a whole is impaired by the lack of consistency across chapters with respect to level of sophistication, by redundancy, by an almost total absence of clinical case material (particularly troublesome in a book presuming to teach the practice of behavior therapy), and by the absence of meaningful editorial presence. Another major concern is the puzzling use and inconsistent meaning of the term “psychiatric setting” in both the title and the text (at times referring simply to “clinical setting,” and at other times to inpatient settings), and the work “psychiatric” (“psychological” is used only a handful of times in the whole volume). On the other hand, a few chapters do demonstrate what the book as whole could have done to provide knowledge, communicate ideas and issues, and dramatize the intricacies, complexities and excitement of the field.