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Director of Pharmacy and Senior Clinical Pharmacist (Psychiatry), Repatriation General Hospital Daw Park, Adelaide SA, Australia; Associate Professor, Quality Use of Medicines and Pharmacy Research Centre, University of South Australia
Published Online, October 30, 2007. www.theannals.com, DOI 10.1345/aph.1K424
Format: Information in the book is organized into intuitive categories based on the primary therapeutic indications for the drugs. This prevents duplication across different indications but can be frustrating when seeking information about a drug for indications other than the most commonly encountered uses.
Audience: This textbook should be useful for a range of clinicians, including medical practitioners, pharmacists, and nurses involved in psychiatry. The information is often more sophisticated than that required by generalists and students, but the book would be a welcome addition to the resource collections of most drug information centers.
Purpose: The text's purpose is described by its editors as the provision of a user-friendly and practical resource guide on the use of psychotropic drugs. It appears that this objective has been largely achieved.
Content: Topics on antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, mood stabilizers, and a range of other treatments used in psychiatry are discussed, including medications for the management of extrapyramidal adverse effects, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, cognitive disorders, and substance use disorders. One section addresses some newer treatments that are in clinical use but have yet to be approved by regulatory bodies. Another brief section addresses complementary therapies used in psychiatry.
Usability: There is comprehensive use of tables and charts, although comparative information that addresses intraclass nuances between different agents from specific groups is sometimes compromised. Coverage of adverse effects and drug interactions is useful, but the lack of specific monographs for individual drugs means that finding information for each drug may require some detailed searching through large sections of text.
Highlights: The sheer volume of relevant data presented is impressive, and the contemporary nature of the information reflects current treatment practices in psychiatry. The editors have made an effort to ensure that the approaches described reflect the range of practice internationally, thus providing additional useful comparative information and a contextual understanding of treatment used in a broad range of settings.
Limitations: As stated earlier, the organization of information into general therapeutic classes can compromise the accessibility of data specific to individual agents. In an attempt to provide comprehensive coverage of up-to-date material, information based on anecdotes and case reports has been included. In some cases, this is useful; in others, it is possible that undue emphasis has been provided for treatment approaches that remain unproven at present.
Comparison with Other Related Books or Products: When measured against similar, compendium-style products that are available, the book appears to be of comparable quality and comprehensiveness.
Reviewer's Summary: Overall, this book is a well-written, comprehensive, and current guide to drug therapy in psychiatry. The ring-binder format may not prove to be durable considering the heavy usage that might be expected for this type of text, but the text itself can be recommended with confidence for those seeking detailed information about the use of drugs in the management of mental illnesses.
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