A pre-surgical psychological evaluation isn’t optional for most bariatric surgery candidates. The American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery requires it for accreditation, and most insurers won’t cover the procedure without one. That’s created a real clinical specialty built around a single assessment point, even though only two books cover it directly.
Both are by the same author pair, published six years apart. The later book picks up where the earlier one left off rather than competing with it.
This page contains Amazon affiliate links — if you buy a book through one, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Bariatric Surgery: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals
James E. Mitchell and Martina de Zwaan, Routledge, 2005
This book answers a basic question first: what does bariatric surgery actually involve, and what does it do to a patient psychologically? Mitchell and de Zwaan aim it as much at the surgeons, nurses, and support staff who work alongside mental health professionals as at clinicians themselves. Chapters cover the surgical procedures themselves, psychological assessment of candidates before surgery, weight and eating changes afterward, nutritional problems, and psychological management post-surgery. It closes with a chapter specifically on surgical revisions and adolescent patients – a population getting bariatric surgery more often even by 2005.
It comes with a practical extra most books on this page don’t: a standardized assessment questionnaire, freely available online, built for exactly the kind of structured pre-surgical evaluation accreditation bodies now require.
Best read as the starting point if you’re new to this specialty; the same authors’ 2012 book below goes considerably further.
Psychosocial Assessment and Treatment of Bariatric Surgery Patients
James E. Mitchell and Martina de Zwaan, Routledge, 2012
Six years is a long time in a field this new, and it shows. This book covers ground the field hadn’t even identified as a problem yet in 2005. If the 2005 book above was the introduction, this is where the field actually caught up to itself.
It goes well past the 2005 book’s basic overview into structured interviews and self-report measures for candidate assessment. It also covers cognitive dysfunction as a specific complicating factor, psychopharmacology considerations before and after surgery, and a dedicated chapter on adolescents, who were an increasingly common surgical population by the time this book was written. Two further chapters draw a distinction the 2005 book didn’t: general psychosocial problems and psychiatric disorders pre- and post-surgery, separate from a dedicated chapter on eating disorders and eating problems specifically.
Recommended as the primary reference for this specialty. Reach for the 2005 book above only if you want the more basic introduction first.