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that covers topics from mobility disabilities to mental health disabilities to healthrelated disabilities. The final section focuses on the human-service practice framework. The material in these chapters is dedicated to the practical aspects of a human-service worker serving members of disability communities. Specifically, the authors discuss topics like assessments, empowerment, and models of practice. These three sections provide a foundation from which students and instructors may launch into particular disability-related issues. Overall, Disability offers opportunities for readers to explore many aspects of disability as it relates to human development and social contexts. Mackelprang and Salsgiver provide a good structure in their work that should give instructors plenty of support in planning courses around the subject matter and providing training for students who wish to engage members of disability communities. Together with additional texts from recent literature on disability-related topics, Disability should be a solid text for any social work and disability course. Reference Oliver, M. (1995). Understanding disability: From theory to practice. New York: St. Martins Press.

Therapy and the Postpartum Woman: Notes on Healing Postpartum Depression for Clinicians and the Women Who Seek Their Help K. Kleiman (2009)
New York: Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-415-98996-1. 334 pages

Karen Kleiman, MSW, states that the purpose of her book Therapy and the Postpartum Woman: Notes on Healing Depression for Clinicians and the Women Who Seek Their Help is to provide an inside view into the world of therapy with postpartum women (p. xxi). She achieves this purpose by writing a very clear and straightforward book. Reading the book feels like having a conversation with Ms. Kleiman rather than being instructed by her on how to approach counseling with women suffering from postpartum depression. Kleiman uses many case examples from her more than twenty years of practice to highlight her thoughts on various treatment approaches, the research on treatment effectiveness, and the use of alternative and complementary approaches to treatment. The book is comprised of thirty-eight chapters that are divided into four parts. Part 1, The Framework: Women, Babies and Therapy, is comprised of nine chapters that detail how to approach working with women suffering from postpartum
Robert H. Keefe, PhD, ACSW, is associate professor in the School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

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depression, including how to create a helpful and healing milieu, diagnose postpartum depression, and use therapeutic models to treat the disorder. Part 2, The Tools: Doing What Works, is also comprised of nine chapters that consider the beginning stages of therapy and include questions to ask as part of an assessment, medication evaluation, effort to collaborate with the client, and decision on use of alternative therapies. Part 3, The Work: Clinical Challenges, is made up of thirteen chapters that deal with specific issues common to women with postpartum depression, such as frightening thoughts many new mothers have about mothering, breastfeeding, sleeplessness, bonding with the newborn, psychosis, and burnout. Part 4, The Healing, is comprised of seven chapters that focus on the process of recovery from depression and are developed largely from Kleimans practice experience rather than from evidence-based research. Finally, Kleiman provides six appendixes, including the postpartum pact she uses to join with her postpartum clients; suicidality assessments that she uses with women who have elevated scores on postpartum depression scales indicating a risk of suicide; symptom checklists that help therapists target their assessments; initial session instructions for women to take care of before attending to other tasks; phone assessments to help agency support staff screen and prioritize which clients with postpartum depression need to be seen for therapy before other clients; and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, used by many clinicians and researchers to screen for postpartum depression. Although the book makes an excellent contribution to social work practice, a few issues are of concern. First, the book is very focused on female therapists. Although Kleiman does not advise against male therapists providing therapy to postpartum clients, she does indicate that, in her experience, female therapists tend to be better suited to the types of clients she has counseled. Kleiman also focuses very little on the father (however, it should be noted that she has authored a book titled The Postpartum Husband: Practical Solutions for Living with Postpartum Depression, which details what husbands can do to take care of themselves while also helping their wives deal with postpartum depression). Moreover, she focuses mostly on individual therapy and provides very little guidance on how to work with postpartum women in group or family therapy. Throughout many chapters, her treatment recommendations are based not on research but her own experiences, which may not be generalizable to therapists in other treatment settings. As such, the recommendations are rather idiosyncratic and so provide limited guidance to the solo practitioner or the practitioner who does not have access to other professionals skilled in working with postpartum-depressed women. Finally, because many health providers do not screen women for postpartum depression (Logsdon, Wisner, Billings, & Shanahan, 2006), I wished Ms. Kleiman would be more specific in guiding the therapist who is new to working with postpartum women on how to interface effectively with physicians and other health providers on whom social workers need to call for medical assistance such as psychiatrists, pediatricians, obstetricians, and gynecologists.

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Despite these limitations, Ms. Kleiman is to be commended for contributing to the growing body of literature on postpartum depression that, to this date, social work researchers have largely ignored. Therapy and the Postpartum Woman will make an excellent contribution to the library of any social work practitioner working with new mothers and social work researchers conducting research on maternal and child health care. Reference Logsdon, M. C., Wisner, K., Billings, D. M., & Shanahan, B. (2006). Raising the awareness of primary care providers about postpartum depression. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 27, 5973.

Community Health Care in Cuba Susan E. Mason, David L. Strug, & Joan Beder, Editors (2009)
Chicago: Lyceum Books. ISBN (paper) 978-1-933478-72-2. 288 pages

Community Health Care in Cuba is an edited book intended to familiarize the reader with the unique aspects of the Cuban health-care system with its focus on community-based and universal-integrated care. The twenty-one chapters are written by authors familiar with the Cuban health-care system, having either practiced or traveled and conducted research in Cuba. The book is appropriate for individuals who desire detailed information on the structure and implementation of Cubas integrated health-care system, as well as for a general audience wanting to get a better understanding of an alternative to the health-care system with which we are familiar in the United States. The book is divided into several sections that could be used independently. It begins with a historical overview and development of the Cuban health-care system. This overview is critical to an understanding of how Cubas health care evolved from colonial times to the present: the current structure grew out of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. The revolutionary government held as an underlying philosophy that health care was a basic human right and was the responsibility of the state. The resulting system established national health care that included universal coverage, access to all communities (including rural areas that previously were unserved), a holistic approach to health, and community participation in health initiatives. Service delivery was focused on physician-nurse teams that lived in the communities/ neighborhoods in which they worked. Many of these teams subsequently added social workers and other health professionals. The authors do an excellent job of
Bari Cornet, MSW, MPH, is field consultant and lecturer at the School of Social Welfare at the University of California at Berkeley.

Copyright of Best Practice in Mental Health is the property of Lyceum Books, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

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