Standard ACT technique doesn’t map cleanly onto psychosis. Voices, paranoia, and delusions need their own adapted approach rather than a straight copy of methods built for anxiety or depression.
The three books here cover that adaptation from different angles: a research-grounded theoretical overview, a broader clinical guide integrating ACT with related approaches, and a fully manualized group-therapy protocol.
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Mindfulness for Psychosis
Edited by Eric M. J. Morris, Louise C. Johns & Joseph E. Oliver, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013
This edited volume gathers the research base and major treatment models for ACT and Person-Based Cognitive Therapy in psychosis, drawing on contributions from researchers and clinicians across multiple countries. The chapters get specific: experiential work with voices and paranoia, assessment and case formulation, and a metacognitive approach to spirituality. Appendices include ACT metaphors adapted specifically for a psychosis population, including the Polygraph Metaphor and Passengers on the Bus. It also includes clients’ own accounts of their experience of these therapies alongside the clinical protocols.
This is the entry to start with for understanding the research and theory behind adapting ACT to psychosis, before moving into the more applied books below.
Treating Psychosis: A Clinician’s Guide to Integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Compassion-Focused Therapy, and Mindfulness Approaches within the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Tradition
Nicola P. Wright, Douglas Turkington, Owen P. Kelly, David Davies, Andrew M. Jacobs & Jennifer Hopton, New Harbinger, 2014
This guide was built as a full treatment manual rather than a single-technique guide. It works through a pre-treatment overview and implementation strategies for combining ACT, compassion-focused therapy, and mindfulness within a CBT framework, for use in either individual or group settings. It includes clinical examples and exercises throughout, plus an extensive appendix of forms covering everything from initial screening through emotion identification and voice management.
Wright is a clinical psychologist in the schizophrenia program of the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group and a clinical professor at the University of Ottawa, where she has spent her career integrating ACT, mindfulness, and compassion-focused work into CBT for psychosis specifically.
Of the three books here, this is the widest in scope. It’s not built around any single modality but around combining three related approaches into one workable clinical framework.
ACT for Psychosis Recovery: A Practical Manual for Group-Based Interventions Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Emma K. O’Donoghue, Eric M. J. Morris, Joseph E. Oliver & Louise C. Johns, New Harbinger, 2018
This is a session-by-session workshop protocol built around a single central metaphor, Passengers on the Bus. According to that metaphor, the client keeps driving toward a valued destination while frightening internal experiences ride along as passengers, without having to obey them.
Separate chapters adapt the format for caregivers, acute inpatient settings, and peer-support cofacilitators, alongside guidance on running, training for, and evaluating the groups themselves. The treatment manual section then walks through the workshop protocol itself, session by session, from a taster session through to values-based committed action.
This is built for clinicians actually running a psychosis-recovery group. It’s not for adapting individual technique or combining modalities.