Black and Andreasen’s 6th edition of Introductory Textbook of Psychiatry has been reorganised to follow the pattern of the DSM-5. This comprehensive and substantive text presents its information in three parts. Part I consists of three chapters and reviews changes to the DSM, the basics of interviewing (including specific questions that may be asked to help elicit information), and the neurobiology and genetics of mental illness. Part II, which has 14 chapters, focusses on individual diagnoses and reviews different psychiatric disorders from neurodevelopmental (child) disorders to neurocognitive disorders affecting mostly the ageing populations. Part III is made up of four chapters and looks at legal issues, psychiatric emergencies and treatment modalities. The book ends with a bibliography, glossary and index.
Diagnosis-based chapters are logically organised, which make it easy for the reader to use this book. Each chapter focusses on the salient features of the relevant mental illness and contains charts with key points, tables with the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, clinical vignettes and self-assessment questions. For each diagnosis, the authors discuss diagnostic criteria, epidemiology, aetiology, course, clinical findings, differential diagnosis and clinical management. The clinical vignettes make this book even more clinically relevant and engaging.
A notable feature of this book is that each chapter opens with a relevant quotation from Hippocrates to Nietzche, Virgil to Robert Frost. An example of this is the chapter on personality disorders, which opens with a quotation from the Father of English Medicine, Thomas Sydenham: ‘All is caprice, they love without measure those whom they will soon hate without reason’. Referring to hysteria in the 17th century, it accurately paints a picture of today’s borderline personality disorder.
Another interesting point is that the chapter on eating disorders is entitled ‘Feeding and Eating Disorders’ to reflect dysfunctional eating behaviour, and includes the new to DSM-5 binge-eating disorder.
For the European medical student and trainee in psychiatry, it would be helpful if this book had included the ICD-10 criteria. Even as it is, however, this book is a resource that most professionals working in mental health would find useful. It provides a large volume of information in a well-structured manner to give a current, concise and comprehensive overview of contemporary psychiatry.
