Theory and Practice of Psychiatry

This text offers a conversational yet detailed guide to modern psychiatry. Exploring various approaches to diagnosing and treating psychiatric disorders, it lucidly illustrates each approach's strengths and weaknesses and then suggests how to interweave them in working with patients. Using clinical vignettes, it illustrates the connections between clinical phenomenology, pathophysiology, and treatment. Later chapters offer detailed guidelines for estimating a patient's suicide and violence risk and assessing competence to consent to medical or psychiatric treatment.