Customer Reviews

Psychiatric Drugs Explained: For Health Professionals and Users, 3e

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Now in its third edition, this is an indispensable book for mental health professionals. Although written from the UK perspective, it does list the US and UK proprietary names for drugs. It is very clearly laid out for easy reference with a comprehensive index and references for further reading if needed. The "User Issues" text boxes are a great innovation in this edition and will be of great use to any mental health professional, but in particular those organising psychoeducation or medication information groups. The book seems to be purposefully designed for quick reference, the first page of each chapter even has its own contents list with page numbers for issues covered in that chapter. If you only ever get one psychopharmacology text, this is it!

I am a physician and psychiatrist currently using this textbook for a graduate course in psychopharmacology in the United States. It is the first and only textbook I feel that comes close to the truth of what the field of psychopharmacology is really about. The information is invaluble for anyone taking psychiatric medication, anyone prescribing psychiatric medication, or anyone loving anyone on psychiatric medication. I have come over the years to see the sad truth that science these days is being severly compromised by marketplace economics. Since our science is no longer truly in the hands of scientists, it behooves us to listen to someone who has the insider knowledge about how the data is manipulated and his valuable speculations on how the drugs really work. From my view, he is an unrecognized pioneer who can give us hope and inspiration about a very important aspect of our society: the use of drugs to modify and control our emotions.

This book now goes into my library as "one" of my best on the subject. It is balanced and thorough.

This book is more of a medical-school textbook describing the major drug categories. It only mentions briefly the principal drugs in each.

Although the 4th edition was published in 2005 it does not mention many of the newer drugs like Lexapro,Trileptal, Abilify, Modafinil etc . I did not find the "User Issues" text boxes to be an innovation or of much help.

This is definitely not a book for quick reference. And it is expensive too!

While the author certainly knows his subject, I found the book difficult to read. He gave too much detail, and often some sentences were difficult to understand. I hope that there are some simpler books than this one out there.