Psychiatry for Everyman


Book Description




Big Book of Emergency Department Psychiatry


Book Description

This book focuses on the operational and clinical strategies needed to improve care of Emergency Psychiatric patients. Boarding of psychiatric patients in ED’s is recognized as a national crisis. The American College of Emergency Physicians identified strategies to decrease boarding of psychiatric patients as one of their top strategic goals. Currently, there are books on clinical care of psychiatric patients, but this is the first book that looks at both the clinical and operational aspects of caring for these patients in ED setting. This book discusses Lean methodology, the impact of long stay patients using queuing methodology, clinical guidelines and active treatment of psychiatric patients in the ED.




Textbook of Men's Mental Health


Book Description

The first of its kind, this book reflects progress in a too-little explored corner of psychiatry to show that gender plays an integral role in mental health issues for men. Textbook of Men's Mental Health provides clinicians with the information they need for understanding how certain disorders manifest differently in men -- and for recognizing how treatment responses in men differ from those in women. Multidisciplinary coverage in this groundbreaking guide draws from fields such as public health and substance abuse to create a well-rounded approach to addressing men's specific mental health problems. With contributions by today's experts in men's mental health, this work gathers the latest research about men's psychiatric issues, from the difficulties in diagnosing male depression to strategies for engaging men in marital therapy. First addressing developmental issues specific to childhood, adolescence, and old age, the text then presents treatment options for an array of problems, from anxiety to sexual disorders to posttraumatic stress disorder. This volume then addresses psychosocial issues as they apply uniquely to men, such as fathering, marriage, aggression, and overcoming the stigma of mental health treatment -- as well as a chapter on how men's ethnicity influences the effectiveness of therapy. Among the topics discussed are how men behave in intimate relationships with women -- and the mental health considerations unique to gay men psychiatric disorders more prevalent in men than women, such as substance abuse, antisocial personality, and conduct disorder up-to-date facts on male sexual functioning, covering erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, and male orgasmic disorder why disorders less common in men -- anxiety, depression, PTSD -- require different treatment than for women coverage of compulsive disorders seen in men both more frequently, such as pathological gambling and compulsive sexual behavior -- and less frequently, such as kleptomania and compulsive buying insight into how body image, a problem usually associated with women, has become a serious health issue for men, as evidenced by eating disorders, muscle dysmorphia, and steroid abuse No previous text has addressed such a wide range of issues concerning men's mental health, presented here in evidence-based coverage featuring case vignettes, key points, practice guidelines, and an extensive reference list in each chapter. Clinicians who wish to make more prudent decisions regarding the care of men with mental health issues will find this text indispensable to their practice -- and to the well-being of their male patients.







A First-Rate Madness


Book Description

The New York Times bestseller “A glistening psychological history, faceted largely by the biographies of eight famous leaders . . .” —The Boston Globe “A provocative thesis . . . Ghaemi’s book deserves high marks for original thinking.” —The Washington Post “Provocative, fascinating.” —Salon.com Historians have long puzzled over the apparent mental instability of great and terrible leaders alike: Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and others. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center, offers a myth-shattering exploration of the powerful connections between mental illness and leadership and sets forth a controversial, compelling thesis: The very qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. From the importance of Lincoln's "depressive realism" to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain, A First-Rate Madness overturns many of our most cherished perceptions about greatness and the mind.




Psychiatry for Every Man


Book Description




Breakdown


Book Description

When hospitals release seriously mentally ill patients too soon without outpatient follow-up, the patients can end up homeless, jailed, harming others, or even dead. When patients are deemed suitable for inpatient care, they can languish for weeks in hospital emergency departments before placements become available. Meanwhile, patients who fake the need for care are smoothly and swiftly moved to inpatient settings. Breakdown opens a dialogue with anyone interested in improving the system of care for the seriously mentally ill population. This book helps to answer questions such as: Is inpatient care too inaccessible to those who need it most? Do mental health professionals discriminate against mentally ill patients? Are more stringent measures needed to ensure that patients take their medication? Is borderline personality disorder too serious to be classified as just a personality disorder? Using vignettes based on real interactions with patients, their families, police officers, and other mental health providers, Lynn Nanos shares her passion for helping this population. With more than twenty years of professional experience in the mental health field, her deep interest in helping people who don’t know how to request help is evident to readers. A woman travels from Maine to Massachusetts because she was ordered by her voice, a spirit called "Crystal," to make the trip. A foul-smelling and oddly dressed man strolls barefooted into the office, unable to stop talking. A man delivers insects to his neighbors' homes to minimize the effects of poisonous toxins that he says exist in their homes. Breakdown uses objective and dramatic accounts from the psychiatric trenches to appeal for simple and common-sense solutions to reform our dysfunctional system. This book will benefit anyone interested in seeing a glimpse of the broken mental health system way beyond the classroom. It can guide legislative officials, family members, mental health professionals, and law enforcement officers toward a better understanding of the system.




The Stigma of Mental Illness - End of the Story?


Book Description

This book makes a highly innovative contribution to overcoming the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness – still the heaviest burden both for those afflicted and those caring for them. The scene is set by the presentation of different fundamental perspectives on the problem of stigma and discrimination by researchers, consumers, families, and human rights experts. Current knowledge and practice used in reducing stigma are then described, with information on the programmes adopted across the world and their utility, feasibility, and effectiveness. The core of the volume comprises descriptions of new approaches and innovative programmes specifically designed to overcome stigma and discrimination. In the closing part of the book, the editors – all respected experts in the field – summarize some of the most important evidence- and experience-based recommendations for future action to successfully rewrite the long and burdensome ‘story’ of mental illness stigma and discrimination.




The Book of Woe


Book Description

“Gary Greenberg has become the Dante of our psychiatric age, and the DSM-5 is his Inferno.” —Errol Morris Since its debut in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has set down the “official” view on what constitutes mental illness. Homosexuality, for instance, was a mental illness until 1973. Each revision has created controversy, but the DSM-5 has taken fire for encouraging doctors to diagnose more illnesses—and to prescribe sometimes unnecessary or harmful medications. Respected author and practicing psychotherapist Gary Greenberg embedded himself in the war that broke out over the fifth edition, and returned with an unsettling tale. Exposing the deeply flawed process behind the DSM-5’s compilation, The Book of Woe reveals how the manual turns suffering into a commodity—and made the APA its own biggest beneficiary.




Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness


Book Description

A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma—from the eighteenth century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy. Nobody’s Normal argues that stigma is a social process that can be explained through cultural history, a process that began the moment we defined mental illness, that we learn from within our communities, and that we ultimately have the power to change. Though the legacies of shame and secrecy are still with us today, Grinker writes that we are at the cusp of ending the marginalization of the mentally ill. In the twenty-first century, mental illnesses are fast becoming a more accepted and visible part of human diversity. Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Grinker takes readers on an international journey to discover the origins of, and variances in, our cultural response to neurodiversity. Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately hopeful, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma.