The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques Workbook Margaret Wehrenberg, WW Norton, 2012, £13.99, pb, 224 pp. ISBN: 9780393707434

Margaret Wehrenberg developed this self-help workbook following the publication of The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques in 2008. She takes the ten techniques and aims to show readers how to put them into practice. She attempts to do this by including new worksheets, exercises and self-assessment tools. Also included is an audio CD, developed to be used alongside the workbook.

The workbook is divided into four parts. Part one, ‘Assess yourself’, systematically discusses the key features of anxiety disorders and common comorbid conditions. Part two, ‘Managing the anxious body’, describes diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation and the use of imagery for relaxation. Part three, ‘Managing the anxious mind’, helps the reader to identify catastrophic thinking and cognitive distortions. The author discusses several cognitive techniques including thought-stopping and thought replacement. Part four, ‘Managing anxious behaviour’, introduces the concept of desensitisation and recommends the use of hierarchies and gradual exposure.

The workbook can be used independently of the original book. Wehrenberg refers readers to her original text at several points in this book, but these references add little. Consequently, I would not recommend that owners of the workbook purchase the original text.

The selling points of the workbook include the self-assessment tools and checklists. Checklists are used throughout and readers are encouraged to tick off symptoms they have experienced. The workbook then gives an indication of when the reader might be suffering from a disorder according to the number of symptoms experienced. The author admits that these are not validated tests but they are presented in a way that encourages self-diagnosis. The majority of the checklists are composed of questions that one would take in a standard psychiatric history. A minority seem wholly inappropriate, a notable example being the suggestion that adolescents feeling overwhelmed by the choices of where to apply to college should seek attention-deficit disorder screening.

We must not lose sight of the fact that this is a self-help book for people with anxiety disorders. The workbook’s strength lies in describing behavioural techniques such as diaphragmatic breathing and progressive muscle relaxation. The accompanying CD helps readers practise these techniques - I challenge anyone to listen to this and not find themselves more relaxed. The workbook is a good introduction to cognitive techniques. Several different techniques are briefly discussed and it is left to the reader to identify and implement those that would be useful to them. However, I doubt that one would be able to usefully apply them without additional support.