Sections within each chapter are clearly labeled and the text is nicely spiced with a variety of fonts and typefaces. Each chapter ends with a lengthy bibliography of items current as of the time of the Handbook 's publication. As with any medically oriented print source, the reader would be well advised to conduct an online literature search to find more current citations than those in the book. Separate subject and author indexes are found in the back of the Handbook . While the indexes do offer sufficient access points to the Handbook 's contents, their treatment of acronyms appears to be inconsistent.
Some items have entries under both the acronym and the term spelled out.
Other items, however, have entries under either the acronym or the full name, but not both. Even though the book's intended audience is probably familiar with nearly all of the acronyms in the text, a separate appendix containing the acronyms with their equivalents would be a useful addition to the Handbook. The Clinical Handbook of Health Psychology is an advanced text designed to serve the needs of practicing clinicians and students training to be health psychologists or medical practitioners. It nicely fulfills the editors' goal of helping reader's apply theory and research to clinical practice. The Handbook 's practical emphasis combined with its recognition of the creative element of the healing process make it both a useful and an interesting tool.