Description

Based on years of teaching psychiatry to medical students and residents, this single-authored textbook offers a conversational yet detailed guide to modern psychiatric theory and practice. Exploring various approaches to psychiatric disorders--including neurobiology, dimensional personality assessment, behavioral science, and psychodynamic and cognitive theories--it lucidly illustrates each approach's strengths and weaknesses and suggests how clinicians can interweave them in working with patients. Using clinical vignettes and recent research findings to illustrate the connections between phenomenology, pathophysiology, and treatment, it covers all of the major psychiatric disorders and includes tables listing their DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria.

The book offers balanced coverage of of subjects that receive scant attention in other introductory textbooks, including the limitations of the DSM-IV categorical approach to psychiatric diagnosis, controversies surrounding the dissociative disorders and "recovered memories," and the prescription of stimulant medications to children with suspected attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Later chapters provide practical guidelines for estimating a patient's risk of suicide and violence and for assessing competence to consent to medical or psychiatric treatment. In eschewing a dry recitation of clinical syndromes for an engaging discussion aimed at teaching the reader how to "think psychiatrically," the book will appeal to medical students, psychiatric residents, mental health clinicians, and primary care physicians.

Reviews

"I believe that this text has a really good chance of competing for departmental usage in the USA because it offers what the competing texts do not-namely a structure for thinking in psychiatry beyond description and DSM-IV operationalism...well-organized and comprehensive for medical students...a fine book."--Paul McHugh, MD, Henry Phipps Professor of Psychiatry, Director, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Psychiatrist-in-Chief, the Johns Hopkins Hospital

"This is the best single-authored text for medical students I have read. In fact, I would be happy if residents knew all that was in this book. It is well-organized, comprehensive, very up-to-date, clearly written, with an historical perspective. The case examples and the tables amplify the text considerably. The most important aspect of the book, however, is that the author has taken the mystery out of psychiatric disorders. The presentation of psychiatric disorders is balanced and comprehensive rather than reductionistic. The result is a clear guide that demonstrates how contemporary psychiatrists conceptualize the increasing complexity of psychiatric disorders."--Gary J. Tucker, MD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine

"Theory and Practice of Psychiatry is an academic treasure. It provides a comprehensive review of contemporary psychiatry. Whether discussing the disease models for psychiatry, the life story theories, dimensions of personality, or behavioral issues which present to psychiatrists, the volume offers an organized and clinically useful approach to understanding the issues, salient research findings, and treatments for the disorders within psychiatry. As a single-authored text it avoids the overlap and uneveness of many multi-authored texts. This book will allow the reader to integrate all the perspectives of psychiatry. It should be in the personal library of all psychiatrists whether they are at the level of resident or seasoned clinician."--homas N. Wise, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Product Details

576 pages; 25 line illus; 7 x 10; ISBN13: 978-0-19-514937-1ISBN10: 0-19-514937-8

About the Author(s)