Basic Notes in Psychiatry

The novice in psychiatry requires a skeletal framework which he can clothe progressively with more detail and sophisticated understanding. Without structure the naive in the subject must fail to orientate through to a clearer conceptualization of key and relevant issues in psychiatry today. To allow for the acquisition of basic concepts, review and revision, any provisional framework should of necessity be concise and unpretentious. In this book Dr. Michael Levi has succeeded in creating a good starting point for the retention of new knowledge, which can then be built on through diverse reading and clinical experience. A. Margo, FRCPsych Consultant Psychiatrist IV Introduction The purpose of writing this book is to provide a concise summary of general adult psychiatry in the form of notes. I have based these notes on what is generally regarded to be the most easily readable and evenly 1 written textbook for the MRCPsych examination. The book is intended to have wide readership - particularly among junior hospital psychiatrists, general practitioners and medical students. In addition, the book will also be useful to psychiatric nurses, psychiatric social workers and clinical psychologists. Reference 1. Gelder, M., Gath, D. and Mayou, R (1988). Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry (Oxford: Oxford Medical Publications) v Acknowledgements I wish to thank Dr A. Margo for writing the Foreword to this book.

"'There are a great many books and journal papers that the stressed candidate will be required to read and understand before, at last, going forward into that ultimate right of passage, namely the Membership Examination of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Now all your exhausting revision work has been finally completed, I commend you to this excellent revision guide; a vital revision aid which will remind you of all you have already learned, and will help you put all this information into a logical order. It should help to ease your passage through the examination and give you a smooth landing on the other side. It has helped a great many of your colleagues who have gone before, and I hope it will do the same for you - the best of luck.' Simon Baugh, in the Foreword"