This handbook is aimed at clinicians wanting to cousel couples in hospital, community or domestic settings. Its focus is on helping the reader to form an alliance with the couple to maintain or improve health and well-being, and to show by case examples, and by evidence-based good practice, how to achieve this. It also shows how to refer the couple on when this cannot be achieved.

The chapters are divided loosely around life cycle events, starting with couples in sexual health, ante natal and postnatal care, couples with sick children, trauma, mental health, chronic illness, later life and dying. Domestic violence and cultural issues are also included. The authors are themselves clinicians and trainers in couple therapy, and have created this practice-based text to the needs of general practitioners, professionals allied to medicine, nurses, counsellors and psychotherapists, as well as those who train and supervise them.