Treating Mental Disorders: A Guide to What Works - Hardcover

Nathan, Peter E.; Gorman, Jack M.; Salkind, Neil J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195102282 ISBN 13: 9780195102284

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999

Synopsis

For layperson and professional alike, Treating Mental Disorders: A Guide to What Works offers a comprehensive and highly readable compendium of the best psychotherapeutic and drug treatments available today. A more accessible distillation of the award-winning professional book, A Guide to Treatments That Work, this volume has been thoroughly revised to be more user-friendly while drawing upon the same outstanding empirical research as its predecessor.
Devoting chapters to thirteen types of mental disorder, Peter E. Nathan, Jack M. Gorman, and Neil J. Salkind employ a question and answer format to clearly communicate the latest knowledge on the wide variety of treatments available today. Each chapter discusses the definition and diagnosis of a particular disorder and then emphasizes which treatments work best, considering both psychotherapies and drug options, combinations of the two, as well as the pros and cons of each therapy. Topics include: childhood disorders, eating disorders, sleep disorders, sexual disorders, substance abuse, image disorders, depression and bipolar disorders, anxiety disorders and phobias, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, and disorders of aging. Each chapter concludes with a section that supplies the reader with additional information on a given disorder, including books, Internet sites, and addresses of advice groups and professional organizations.
Accessible, completely up-to-date, and easy to use, Treating Mental Disorders is the best place to start for anyone seeking help for any number of mental disorders and an essential reference for psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and anyone else involved in providing treatment for mental illness.

About this title

About the Author

Peter E. Nathan is the University of Iowa Foundation Distinguished Professor of Psychology and the editor of Behavioral Approaches to Alcoholism and Alcohol Use and Misuse. Jack M. Gorman is Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Deputy Director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He is the author of The Essential Guide to Mental Health and The Essential Guide to Psychiatric Drugs. Neil J. Salkind is Professor of Educational Psychology and Research at the University of Kansas and the author of Child Development. Drs. Nathan and Gorman are the coeditors of the prize-winning professional book, A Guide to Treatments That Work (OUP).

From Kirkus Reviews

A concise but dry outline of the current standards of medical care for mental illness. Psychologists Nathan and Salkind, and psychiatrist Gorman divide the treatments into two basic types, which are often used in combination: psychosocial and pharmacological. After brief introductory notes on finding professional help for those with mental disorders, the authors address 13 categories of illness: disorders of childhood (attention-deficit, conduct), eating, sleep, and sexual disorders, substance use disorders, somatoform and dissociative disorders, depresssion and bipolar disorders, anxiety and phobia disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, and disorders of aging. For each, they organize their information into a question/answer format (e.g., ``How common is conduct disorder? . . . Are there specific characteristics of these children's families that make them different from other families? . . . Two of the strongest indicators are a history of criminal behavior and alcoholism''). Advice on how to proceed is brief, sometimes terse, and not always terribly helpful; the summary for anorexia tells us, for instance, that it ``appears relatively infrequently . . . we don't know much about this mental illness, but it is a serious condition that requires medical care''. However, resources for further reading and guidance are given for each disorder. Best as a starting point in looking for help and as a summary of the standard medical position on these mental illnesses. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0195102282
• ISBN 13: 9780195102284
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208