Existential Concerns and Cognitive-Behavioral Procedures

Part 1: Introductory Issues.- Chapter 1: Existentialism and the problems of being.- Chapter 2: Existentialism and its place in contemporary cognitive-behavior therapy.- Part 2: Death.- Chapter 3: Death awareness and terror management theory.- Chapter 4: Fears of death and their relationship to mental health.- Chapter 5: Creative approaches to treating the dread of death.- Part 3: Isolation.- Chapter 6: Existential Isolation: Theory, Empirical Findings, and Clinical Considerations.- Chapter 7: Isolation, loneliness and mental health.- Chapter 8: Social prescribing: A review of the literature.- Part 4: Identity.- Chapter 9: Identity and the Courage to Be: From Kierkegaard to Covid-19.- Chapter 10: Yet you may see the meaning of within: The role of identity concerns and the self in psychopathology.- Chapter 11: Clarifying identity and the self in a CBT context.- Part 5: Freedom.- Chapter 12: Freedom, responsibility and guilt.- Chapter 13: Failed potentialities, regret and their link to depression and related disorders.- Chapter 14: Reframing the past and the treatment of existential guilt and regret.- Part 6. Meaning.- Chapter 15: On the need for meaning.- Chapter 16: Meaninglessness, depression and suicidality: A review of the evidence.- Chapter 17: Letting go, creating meaning: The role of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in helping people confront existential concerns and lead a vital life.

Ross Menzies completed his undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees in psychology at the University of NSW. He is currently Professor of Psychology in the Graduate School of Health, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). In 1991, he was appointed founding Director of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at the University of Sydney, a post which he held for over 20 years.  He is the past NSW President, and twice National President, of the Australian Association for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (AACBT). He is the previous editor of Australia's national CBT journal, Behaviour Change, and has trained psychologists, psychiatrists and allied health workers in CBT around the globe. Professor Menzies is an active researcher with nearly three decades of continuous funding from national competitive sources. He currently holds over $AUS7 million in research funding. He has produced 10 books and more than 200 journal papers and book chapters and was the President and Convenor of the 8th World Congress of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies (WCBCT) in Melbourne in 2016. He has recently been appointed a founding director and Treasurer of the newly formed World Confederation of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies (WCCBT). Ross lives with his wife and three youngest children in the inner west of Sydney.

Rachel Menzies is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Sydney, where she completed her honours, masters and doctoral degrees in psychology. She published her first paper on death fears in Clinical Psychology Review as an undergraduate student, and followed this by convening a symposium on the topic at the 8th World Congress of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies in Melbourne in 2016. Her experimental work on fear of death and psychopathology has been published in several leading journals, and she can regularly be heard on national and international radio, popular podcasts and at relevant public events (e.g. The Festival of Death and Dying, Adelaide