The Healthy Management of Reality - Stanford University

past thirteen years. I have also collaborated with Eliseo Pérez-Stable and BarbaraMarín in a Spanish-language mood-management smoking-cessation intervention("Tomando Control de su Vida") that we implemented entirely through the mailand which yielded encouraging results. We have also adapted these ideas to webbasedstop smoking interventions that we are testing at www.stopsmoking.ucsf.edu(in English) and at www.dejardefumar.ucsf.edu (in Spanish). Through theseresearch studies, I have learned that the mood management ideas have relevancebeyond depression itself. For example, I recently coauthored Controlling YourDrinking (2005) with William R. Miller, in which we apply some of these ideas toproblem drinking.Based on these experiences, I began to develop the concept of the healthymanagement of reality. I began teaching this approach to the advanced trainees Isupervise in cognitive-behavioral therapy for depression at the University ofCalifornia, San Francisco, and to the group leaders who run the smoking cessationgroups in our research projects. I have found that many people are able to usethese ideas in ways that make a significant difference in their lives. I am one ofthose people. The ideas in this book have been very influential in my own life, andin the way I am raising my children. The more I use these ideas, the more I findways to make them practical. This way of thinking about life helps me makedecisions, without being constraining. In this book, I share this concept, andillustrate many of the practical implications of the concept in the hope that otherswill also find them useful.HMOR.July2005.Muñoz.doc 8