Anxiety self-help manuals based on CBT are almost a genre unto themselves, but this is the first such book to bear the name of the field’s creator, Aaron T. Beck, as co-author. Designed as a companion volume for Clark and Beck’s definitive 2009 textbook Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders: Science and Practice, The Anxiety & Worry Workbook also stands exceptionally well on its own.

Centuries ago we learned that lack of vitamin C causes scurvy and now getting enough of this vitamin is known to be a necessity for good health. For good mental health, a nurturing mother figure (“vitamin M”, if you will) is just as important.

Asperger’s as a diagnosis can appear to preclude the existence of fulfilling human relationships for the young people concerned. But Bromfield’s “relationship-based therapy” for his young clients shows that they have the same human needs for relationship as others, they just have trouble expressing them in socially proficient ways.

This book seems to contain all of human life, from the scientific details through the full range of emotions, including the extremes of love and hate. And it emanates a sense that although we all get shaken sometimes, and life is dangerous, every feeling is expressible and every situation is workable.

This book is important reading, as it competently deals with the treatment of a major health issue which is both prevalent and chronic, with strong co-morbidity. While the tone didn’t particularly engage me, I did finish the book with some insights and solid understanding.

Written by four luminaries of the mindfulness movement in psychotherapy and counselling, The Mindful Way through Depression is a self-help book in the best sense of the term, and you don’t need to suffer from depression to find it useful.

This is a rigorous scholarly text dedicated to a very real social problem, and it does try to identify successful and unsuccessful community and state-wide attempts to prevent or reduce youth problems. It doesn’t pretend to be a self-help book or parenting manual, or indeed a profound philosophical or political analysis.