Handbook of Psychiatry for Primary Care; Allwood CW, Gagiano CA; eds. 326 pages. New York: Oxford Univ Pr; 1997. $29.95. ISBN 0195711823. Order phone 800-451-7556.
Field of medicine: Primary care and internal medicine.
Format: Softcover book.
Audience: Physicians and nurses who treat patients with mental problems.
Purpose: To provide practical answers to common problems in a convenient handbook that can be used in conjunction with a standard psychiatry textbook.
Content: This book consists of 38 short chapters written by 30 academic psychiatrists from South Africa. There are no illustrations, but several practical algorithms and tables are included. Chapters address such standard psychiatric conditions as depression, substance abuse, and somatoform disorders, but other topics, such as epilepsy, sleep disorders, legal interventions, and community psychiatric care, are also covered.
Highlights: The writing is clear and concise, and good examples of the use of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV) in evaluating mental illness are provided. The chapters on behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy, and pharmacologic therapy are practical and clearly written. The unique influence of culture on mental illness is also well presented.
Limitations: The chapters on the mental health and legal systems in South Africa are of little use elsewhere. Only one validated screening instrument for evaluating potential psychiatric illnesses, the Mini-Mental Status Examination, is presented. There is minimal direction for selecting appropriate psychopharmacologic agents for elderly persons and even less for drug use in children.
Related reading: Although the Handbook of Psychiatry for Primary Care is specifically targeted for primary health care providers working in South Africa, its simplicity makes it useful for busy practitioners everywhere. It is small and can easily be carried in a pocket, unlike other, comparable books, such as the MGH Guide to Psychiatry in Primary Care, by Stern, Herman, and Slavin (McGraw-Hill, 1998), which is written in an outline style but is still much larger.
Reviewer: B. Clair Eliason, MD, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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