Mental Health in Coaching Practice: Approaches to Navigate Intersecting Spaces

by Anne Calleja, Ursula Clidière

As mental health becomes unavoidable in coaching, this book offers clarity at the professional edge.

Mental health is increasingly present in coaching conversations. As clients bring distress, burnout, identity questions, and psychological complexity into the room, many practitioners quietly ask:

What am I holding? What is mine to work with – and what is not?

Mental Health in Coaching Practice speaks directly to this emerging reality. Grounded in research and lived practice, the book provides a reflective and ractical guide for coaches, supervisors, therapists, and leaders seeking to respond with ethical awareness, confidence, and care – without diagnosing, treating, or stepping beyond professional scope.

Structured around seven guiding principles and a Why / What / How / Reflection framework, the book introduces two applied models – the Integrative Reflective Practice Model and the Flounder–Flourish Matrix – illustrated through case material and reflective tools. Rather than reinforcing rigid boundaries between coaching and therapy, the authors explore the nuanced, intersecting spaces between them. The focus is not on providing all the answers, it is about developing discernment – knowing what to do next, and why.

This is what one of our reviewers said (a full list of all endorsements and forewords is available upon request):

The underpinning thesis of this book – how to navigate the intersecting spaces of what we still too loosely call ‘mental health’ – is one that has long been central to my thinking: that coaching has an important, still undervalued, role to play in this field. As the authors show with elegance and intelligence, asserting rigid boundaries between what we like to call mental illness and what we choose as normative does a disservice to everyone – these areas intersect. Here is a book that provides useful definitions and firm guidance, clear maps and models, exercises and explanation, conveyed in a tone of collaborative reflection and enquiry. This is a book that you will return to again and again.



Hetty Einzig – Founder-Director, Spirit at Work; Co-Founder-Director, Purpose Power Presence