Psychiatry in practice

The need for general practitioners to be skilled in the assessment and management of mental health problems is unarguable. Among other reasons, these problems are very common in the community (and far too common to be seen exclusively by mental health professionals), and many sufferers choose to seek help from a GP, certainly in the first instance. In this book’s pages, the reader will find much practical advice: there is information about assessment techniques, useful rating scales, psychological treatments and pharmacotherapy (in some detail), and strategies for difficult behaviours (eg, for the persistently angry patient or for when a staff member is a target of anger). The style is engaging, with regular use of case studies (often revisited later in a chapter), “key facts”, other lists (oddly, referred to as figures) and tables.