Essential Psychopathology Casebook

In medical school, we become adept at memorizing diagnostic criteria, able to spout off, at a moment’s notice, the definitions for everything from autism to schizophrenia. For some diagnoses, we are aided by mnemonics — SIG E CAPS for depression, DIG FAST for mania — while other disorders require simple brute-force memorization. All of this is, we are told, to help us divide those with mental illness into neat little boxes, each with its own implications for prognosis and treatment. Textbooks traditionally have supported this simplified view of the world, providing brief case studies that serve to illustrate diagnoses and adding restricted color to the paint-by-number portraits of illness we create in our mind’s eye. Then we meet actual people with mental illness and learn that no one is coloring inside the lines. Our clear-cut diagnoses — you have it or you don’t — are replaced with nuance. Details of our patients’ lives and symptomatology blur the demarcations we have made between pathologies. It is in this space that Essential Psychopathology Casebook works to bridge the gap between textbook simplicity and the gray areas of real clinical cases. Edited by psychiatrists Mark Kilgus and William Rea, the book is divided into chapters, written by experts in the field, that each focus on a different clinical condition. It is not just the level of expertise that makes this resource stand out, however. What students and junior clinicians will most appreciate is a...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Book Reviews Disorders General Professional Psychiatry Psychological Assessment Treatment casebook mark kilgus Psychopathology Casebook william rea Source Type: news