This book details the currently available Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) programmes that are considered within the evidence base as “well established” or “probably efficacious in the future”. It is an impressive volume comprising chapters written by experts in this field, bringing together ideas on how to work with different presenting difficulties in 5- to 18-year-olds with high functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD). This dense book illustrates the vast evidence base that clearly indicates that, with modified-CBT, young people with HFOCD can benefit from treatment.

The book covers psychosocial treatments that are manualized, brief and easily transportable to clinical practice. The book summarizes treatments of varying intensity e.g. weekly outpatient to intensive, as well as documenting the research design used to assess efficacy e.g. preliminary open trials to RCTs with active comparators. Variations of the settings in which treatments can be used are considered e.g. clinic or school, as well as how to include parents in treatment; in fact there is a chapter dedicated to this.

The book is in five sections. The first includes chapters describing and examining the evidence base for CBT for children and adolescents, modifying CBT for children with HFASD, and assessment. The middle section has chapters covering treatment of a range of difficulties including anxiety, aggressive/behaviour problems, social competence and sexuality/affection. The final section concludes by synthesizing knowledge and thinking about areas for future research.

The chapter in the first section on assessment is extremely helpful in outlining reliable and validated measures to use to screen ASD, how to establish whether CBT is a suitable intervention, and how to assess co-morbid psychiatric disorders, which includes a list of psychiatric interviews that can be used with this group. This will be helpful for someone who is unaware of the measures that can be used, but equally for those who routinely assess these young people. The reader is encouraged to think about and reflect on the measures they are using, as the authors comment on the benefits and pitfalls of each. However, the bridge between assessment and treatment was not made explicit and it may have been useful for a chapter on formulation to have been included.

The format of each chapter includes a background and details of the significance of the intervention, a discussion of practical considerations, an overview of sessions, research to date and future directions. I found particularly with chapters on anxiety that the background section became quite repetitive as the evidence base on which the specific intervention was developed was the same. I also found that there were repetitions from the earlier chapter on how to modify CBT for young people with HFASD in each section. However, the advantage of this is that each could be taken as a stand alone chapter without you needing to read all introductory sections to make sense of an intervention chapter. It is rare for clinicians to read a book cover to cover in their busy clinical work, so it is helpful to use this book for stand alone chapters as and when needed.

All the authors are very generous in describing their interventions by giving detailed summaries of the packages they offer and the session by session process. This, along with the practical considerations, would make it quite easy to pick up and deliver the interventions outlined. What makes it further accessible, and eases the transition from reading to delivering the intervention, are the helpful case examples throughout.

I found this book to be helpful and I liked the mix of research and clinical applicability. I found it repetitive in places if you read it from start to finish, which may be unlikely for most readers. I would recommend this to both clinicians who have no experience in working with youth with HFASD but have experience in delivering CBT, and also to those who are experienced in working with this group who would like more ideas of various interventions out there, or for a useful review of the evidence base for each area.