Psychiatry for Medical Students, Third Edition

Robert J. Waldinger, M.D.

1997
632 Pages
Editorial Reviews

ISBN 978-0-88048-770-2
Item #8770

List Price: $114.00
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Description
Contents
Editorial Reviews
About the Authors

For medical students taking their first course in psychiatry or entering their first clinical clerkship, their early encounters with psychiatric patients and their need to master vast amounts of new information on complicated illnesses can be a bewildering, grueling, and intimidating experience.

Fortunately, these newcomers have a reliable and trusted source that makes psychiatry more accessible to them. Widely used in medical schools and allied mental health curricula, the third edition of Psychiatry for Medical Students is the standard against which all psychiatric texts for beginning medical students are measured. This popular book gives medical students, primary care physicians, nurses, social workers, and psychologists a jargon-free introduction to the basics, including topics such as schizophrenia, electroconvulsive therapy, transference, and tranquilizers. The text also helps the reader develop the basic skills needed to carry out a diagnostic evaluation and provides systematic coverage of common psychiatric disorders, groups of patients, specialized psychiatric fields, special problems encountered among patients with a broad range of psychiatric conditions, and psychotherapies and somatic therapies. This updated edition incorporates the changes in DSM-IV and contains discussions of recent developments throughout the field. Filled with new references and the latest research, this book can be used as a quick reference during clinical work and a starting point for further reading.

Assessment Skills.
The clinical interview: fundamentals of technique. Psychodynamics: some basic concepts. Taking a psychiatric history. The mental status examination.
Basic Psychopathology.
Schizophrenia. Mood disorders. Personality disorders. Anxiety, panic attack, phobias, dissociative disorders, and somatoform disorders.
Special Populations.
Geriatric psychiatry. Children and adolescents. Consultation-liaison psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry.
Special Problems.
Human sexuality: function and dysfunction. Substance-related disorders and eating disorders. Suicide. Violence.
Treatment.
Psychotherapies. Somatic therapies: psychotropic medications and electroconvulsive therapy. Appendix A: Sample Psychiatric Evaluation. Appendix B: Commonly Abused Drugs. Appendix C: Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) Scale. Appendix D: Some Common Psychotropic Medications (classified by type). Appendix E: Trade Names of Psychotropic Medications. Index.

Robert J. Waldinger, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[Dr. Waldinger] has written a lean and muscular book that nicely summarizes just about everything most students will want to learn while taking their psychopathology course and psychiatry clerkship. The book is beautifully organized and written, and I could not find one wasted word.—American Journal of Psychiatry

It is a very comprehensive in scope, and in general the content is eclectic in orientation and would be considered by most psychiatrists as reflecting an acceptable main stream approach to the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illness.—Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry

Teaching medical students basic diagnostic and management principles in psychiatry is fundamental to the development of the fully trained physician. In the third edition of Psychiatry for Medical Students, Dr. Waldinger continues to provide a comprehensive overview of major syndromes, patient populations, and relevant treatment modalities. This is an outstanding book for medical students and an invaluable tool for medical educators.—Carol A. Bernstein, M.D., Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Director, Residency Training in Psychiatry, New York University Medical Center, New York, New York

Thoroughly revised and updated, this classic text for medical students is broad based, extremely readable, and comprehensive. Without compromising sophistication and complexity in this overview of psychiatry, Dr. Waldinger prepares medical students for the challenge of diagnosing and treating the broad range of psychiatric disorders they will encounter in primary care settings. If students read only one book on psychiatry, this should be it.—Cynthia N. Kettyle, M.D., Director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, Massachusetts

This easily read text teaches the medical student fundamentals in the interviewing of patients in psychopathology. The text also describes psychopathology cleanly and simply. Dr. Waldinger guides the medical student with examples on how to interview and do a complete psychiatric diagnosis. This edition is updated and uses DSM-IV terminology. Recent advances in areas such as neurotransmitter systems, genetics, antipsychotics, and antidepressants are current in this edition. The bibliography is also updated to include the most recent research findings.—Marcia Slomowitz, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Illinois