Everyone's Everyday Guide to Practical Psychiatry: A Handbook for Patients and Caregivers

A basic resource guide for patients and their families, Everyone's Everyday Guide to Practical Psychiatry provides a behind-the-scenes look at the workings of modern psychiatric practice. This one-volume guide by author and psychiatrist W. Edison Houpt delivers, in layman's terms, an overview of how doctors think, why they make their medical decisions, and what those decisions might mean. With more than ninety diagrams, charts, and tables, Houpt answers a wide range of questions regarding mental illness, psychotherapy, and treatment with drugs. He also discusses major disorders such as depression, psychosis, suicide, alcoholism, anxiety, and compulsion. Everyone's Everyday Guide to Practical Psychiatry gives information to help patients: - Follow the progression of their treatment - Partner with the doctor in a more meaningful way - Participate in the decision-making process In this guide, Houpt, helps clarify many of the misconceptions about the psychiatry practice and provides insights to help patients and their families understand mental illness and treatment.

W. Edison Houpt is a general adult psychiatrist in Los Angeles. Practicing for more than twenty-five years, his main interests are in mood disorders, thought disorders, alcoholism, and geriatric psychiatry.