American Psychiatric Pub.

Clinical manual of geriatric psychopharmacology.

For this reference text, Jacobson (psychiatry and human behavior, Brown Medical School), Pies (psychiatry, Tufts U. School of Medicine), and Katz (psychiatry, U. of Pennsylvania) integrate the clinical evidence for the particularities of geriatric psychiatry and pharmacology. Individual chapters cover basic psychopharmacology and aging, antipsychotics, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, anxiolytic and sedative-hypnotic medications, treatment of substance-related disorders, treatment of movement disorders, medications to treat dementia and other cognitive disorders, and analgesics. The authors include details on initiation and titration of medications, consensus treatment guidelines, reproductions of diagnostic scales, algorithms for workup and management of clinical problems, figures illustrating drug mechanisms, and links to Web sites providing practitioner and patient information. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Handbook of dynamic psychotherapy for higher level personality pathology.

Psychiatrists Caligor (Columbia U.), Otto F. Kernberg, and John F. Clarkin (both Cornell U.) describe a specific form of treatment for personality pathology based on contemporary psychodynamic object relations theory. It focuses on how an individual's psychological life is organized around internalized relationship patterns, referred to an internal object relations, and explores and ultimately modifies these patterns. Writing for student and practicing psychotherapists, they introduce object relations theory for those not familiar with it. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Recognition and prevention of major mental and substance use disorders.

With an emphasis on prevention or at least the earliest possible diagnosis and immediate treatment, contributors cover a wide range of related issues — from the DNA module to public policy. Topics include general principles, the state of the science of genetic risk factors for mental illness, environmental determinants of psychosis with an emphasis on drug abuse, the history of social environment's relationship with psychiatric disorders, implications of the psychobiology of the resistance to stress on the prevention of anxiety, cognitive vulnerability to depression and the implications for depression, vulnerability to alcohol and drug use disorders, treatment of the schizophrenia prodrome, adolescent neurodevelopment and its critical relationship with preventative intervention, early detection and intervention in schizophrenia, NIH policies and perspectives on prevention, and challenges for the near future from Alzheimer's disease, drug use, aggression in children, and pharmacology. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Traumatic dissociation; neurobiology and treatment.

Vermetten (military mental health and psychiatry, U. Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands) et al. compile 17 chapters on traumatic dissociation, including both empirical and therapeutic insights. Chapters explore historical, conceptual, and theoretical issues and how other areas such as attachment theory and cognitive psychology have been applied; neurobiological investigations; and issues in assessment and treatment. Other subjects addressed are memory and attentional processes, posttraumatic stress disorder, concepts from hypnosis literature, military populations, peritraumatic dissociation, psychobiology, dissociative identity disorder, innate affect theory, and eating disorders. Contributors work in psychology and psychiatry and are based in North America and Europe. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)