P Kennedy (ed) Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-533972-7 and ISBN 978-0-19-533973-4

The manual and workbook contain step-by-step detailed procedures for assessing and treating specific emotional and psychological problems and diagnoses in individuals with a spinal cord lesion. The guide describes a time-limited group program that teaches various adaptive coping skills.

The therapist guide aims at improving skills to assess stress, teach a range of coping skills that can be used to tackle stress and provide an opportunity for interacting with other people who had similar experiences of SCI. The Coping Effectiveness Training method is the result of a long-term learning and evaluating process. After an introduction to stress and coping, consecutive chapters, corresponding to sessions, deal with assessing and managing stress, problem solving, managing emotions, changing negative thinking, maladaptive/adaptive coping and social support. The workbook highlights the goals for each session, and provides an introduction, theoretical background and homework sheets that help to put theory into practice. At the end, several problem-solving worksheets and thought records are added. The joint effort offers an in-depth practical guidance to learn how to cope effectively. This type of training will substantially help health-care providers in this field.