FEELING BETTER is the culmination of 3 years of exciting hard work. Everything I write, say or do connects to my belief in the importance of relationships. About 20 years ago I was working in an Eating Disorder clinic in a hospital north of Toronto and learned Interpersonal Psychotherapy, IPT. The best kept secret in Psychology. IPT, and I, believe, that if you have good meaningful constructive relationships you will feel better. This evidence based highly recommended short term model of therapy was developed originally to treat depression by Drs. Klerman and Weissman in the 1960's. Unfortunately Dr. Klerman was ill and died and the model was never publicized or disseminated in the same way that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT was.
Nonetheless, there has been a steady group of clinicians, who have persevered, and have continued to teach, counsel, study, promote and disseminate IPT. I love this model and so do the clients who use it. It is a very structured, collaborative approach that is provided in 12 sessions, and helps individuals develop tools and strategies to deal with the conflicts, stresses, transitions, feelings of unresolved bereavement and loneliness and isolation that contributes to their mood difficulties.
My colleague, Dr. Ron Frey and I were introduced by our teacher, Dr. Laurie Gillies, 20 years ago, when we both first learned IPT. We loved providing IPT and wanted to spread the word. The Institute for Interpersonal Psychotherapy was born, in order to provide mental health clinicians with training, supervision and certification for IPT.
Aside from training clinicians, we hoped that the general public would learn about IPT and when they were struggling with depression or relationship difficulties and wanted help, they would go to their doctors and ask who they could see for IPT. That was the impetus for the book. If we wrote a book for the general public, we hoped that is exactly what would happen.
We spent the next three years, hiring a writer, Jennifer Dawson, who I admire tremendously, finding an agent Trena White, from Transatlantic Agency, who found us a publisher, New World Library.
FEELING BETTER Beat Depression and Improve Relationships with Interpersonal Psychotherapy, our book, is being released in November. It is available for pre-order right now from Amazon, Indigo and Barnes and Noble.
My blog will continue to be a place to develop relationships with you, the follower and to talk about anything related to relationships and "feeling better". Thanks for taking the ride with me, I look forward to hearing from you.