ABSTRACT
The central question addressed in this chapter is: What specific psychotherapy protocols and psychological interventions have been found to be effective for adults and older adults with a range of psychological problems? Or, put more succinctly: What works for adults? In this chapter, evidence for the effectiveness of specific psychotherapy protocols and psychological interventions with specific psychological problems in adulthood and later life will be reviewed. Traditional psychiatric categories (such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, etc.) have been used to organize material in this chapter. As was noted in the opening of Chapter 4, these categories may be ideologically unacceptable to service users and psychotherapists, many of whom view psychiatric diagnoses as being on a continuum with normal development and functioning, or as a reflection of systemic rather than individual constraints. However, the organization, administration, and funding of clinical services and research programmes are framed predominantly in terms of such categories, and so these have been used to organize the material in this chapter. For each problem area, extensive computer and manual literature searches for relevant evidence were conducted using the same methodology as described in Chapter 4. For computer searches PsychInfo, Medline and other databases were used. For manual literature searches, bibliographies of authoritative texts in the area were consulted (e.g. Castonguay & Beutler, 2006; Nathan & Gorman, 2007; Roth & Fonagy, 2005).
