Brief Supportive Psychotherapy: A Treatment Manual and Clinical Approach is both an elaboration of the now well-tested research treatment manual for BSP and a primer for clinicians. It illustrates how BSP helps patients with mood and anxiety disorders to tolerate rather than avoid their powerful negative emotions. It describes the key elements of supportive psychotherapy, covering the crucial "common factors" that help make all evidence-based psychotherapies effective. These include affective arousal, helping the patient to feel understood, realistic optimism for improvement, a therapeutic ritual, clinical poise, and success experiences. BSP maximizes patient autonomy, letting the patient lead sessions, and prescribes no homework. It is an elemental, relatively simple approach for a psychotherapy, yet no psychotherapy is easy to do well. Its affect-focused approach enhances the application of all psychotherapeutic approaches. It deserves a place among evidence-based treatments in
depression treatment guidelines.