“Wenn ich Kultur höre. . .entsichere ich meinen Browning!” (“When/if I hear ‘culture’. . .I unlock my Browning!/release the safety on my pistol!”). This quote from Johst (not Göring) comes to mind each time health professional colleagues describe patients as clients, as I get the impulse to shoot or at least shout at someone whenever the word derived from the Latin term cliens (meaning a plebeian who lived under the protection of a patrician), as opposed to the word derived from patiens (meaning one who suffers), is used to describe a person who is sick and needs healthcare.

The authors of this slim volume on sleep, a psychologist from the University of California, Berkeley, and a psychiatrist from the University of Pittsburgh, are unrepentant promoters of “client” as a term to describe the people they treat; so, my immediate reaction on receiving this book for review was negative. The central core of this text is a detailed description of a system for intervening with sleep disorders and promoting healthy sleep, which they call TranS-C (Transdiagnostic Sleep and Circadian Intervention). TranS-C owes a lot to cognitive behavioral therapy, and may turn out to be useful, but as there has been only one small randomized controlled trial applying the technique to a few people with bipolar disorder so far, its utility for the bulk of patients is as yet unproven. Even if it does help some people, it would not assist those of our patients whose core symptoms include forgetfulness, rendering it hard for them to learn new techniques.

Despite my prejudices, I was impressed by the fact that the authors emphasize the gross global maldistribution of mental health services (clustered in affluent urban areas, hopelessly inadequate for those who are poor or live in rural areas) and know how not to split an infinitive, but they get a big black mark for not appearing to know that restless leg syndrome is a common precursor of Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.

Although the inside cover claims that the book was published in 2018, a bit of detective work at the publisher's website reveals that it was published in August 2017, which seems a bit dishonest to me. It is not expensive, but if you work mainly with older people I doubt you would find buying it to be of much use to your practice.