Psychiatry: Past, Present, and Prospect brings together perspectives from a group of highly respected psychiatrists, each with decades of experience in clinical practice. The topics covered range from scientific discoveries of all kinds, advances in treatment, and conceptual breakthroughs. The highlights are countered by the field's negative sides: perennial indecisiveness about the boundaries of psychiatry; the limitations of a narrow approach to human suffering; the retreat from the hope of a de-institutionalised, community-based psychiatry; the divide between biological treatments and psychotherapy; the technical and ethical complexities of psychiatric research; and the low priority given to psychiatry, especially but far from exclusively in less developed countries. The result is a text full of collected wisdom which will promote the curiosity of mental health professionals about key developments in psychiatry over the past half century; sensitize the next generation of mental health professionals to the role they might play in advancing the state of knowledge about mental illness and its treatment during the course of their careers; and serve as a valuable archival resource for scholars.
This collection of viewpoints from very experienced leaders in the field of psychiatry will prove fascinating reading for psychiatrists and allied mental health professionals, such as psychologists, psychiatric social workers, psychiatric nurses and occupational therapists, both trained and in training. It will also offer the interested laity a balanced account of psychiatry's evolution since the 1950s, and its likely prospects in the 21st century. Contents: 1. Steven Hyman: Neuroscience
2. Peter McGuffin: Psychiatric genetics
3. Vishal Bhavsar and Robin M Murray: Clinical research with a focus on schizophrenia
4. Dana March and Ezra Susser: Epidemiology and causality
5. Anne Becker and Arthur Kleinman: Cultural psychiatry
6. Julian Leff: Community psychiatry
7. Norman Sartorius: Psychiatry in developing countries
8. George Szmukler: Mental health law
9. Stephen Green and Sidney Bloch: Psychiatric ethics
10. German Berrios: Diagnosis and classification
11. Don Lipsitt: Consultation-liaison psychiatry
12. Michael Rutter: Child and adolescent psychiatry
13. Catherine Oppenheimer: Psychiatry of the elderly
14. Paul E Mullen and Danny H Sullivan: Forensic psychiatry
15. Arieh Shalev: Psychological trauma
16. Jerome Jaffe: The addictions
17. Edwin Harari: Personality disorders
18. Philip B. Mitchell and Dusan Hadzi-Pavlovic: Psychopharmacology
19. Max Fink: Convulsive therapies
20. Aaron T. Beck and David J. A. Dozois: Cognitive-behaviour therapy
21. Jeremy Holmes: Psychodynamic psychiatry About the Editors: Sidney Bloch is Emeritus Professor and Honorary Consultant at the University of Melbourne and St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia. Stephen A. Green is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington D.C. USA. Jeremy Holmes is with the School of Psychology, University of Exeter, UK. |
