Author Description

Medical students and doctors starting an internship in psychiatry are under a great deal of stress and often feel unprepared to cope with the unique problems and questions that mental illness presents. This unique book offers practical guidance and encouragement in all areas of psychiatric medicine, including talking with schizophrenic patients, coping with distress and aggression, assessing suicide risk, and consoling grieving patients. Bridging the gap between undergraduate and graduate texts, this book advises on coping with unfamiliar situations and emergencies, and helps interns use new skills and make sense of their growing experience. Early chapters cover the psychiatric interview and examination, and the common presentations of psychiatric illness. These are followed by descriptions of presenting problems, principles of management, and a factual overview of the syndromes and illnesses encountered. Practical Psychiatry will prove invaluable to medical students and doctors starting out in psychiatry, but will also be useful to family practitioners, and anyone involved in this fascinating and rewarding branch of medicine.