A couple of days before I wrote this review I was in the unfortunate position of waiting for a delayed flight at the airport. Sans suitable reading material to pass the time, I subsequently ambled to the obligatory newsagent and was confronted by the usual hodgepodge of cerebrally “lite” reading fare which can be easily devoured in a couple of hours of boredom. However, I was faced with indecision as out of the corner of my eye I noticed the classics section and, guilty, I felt this might be an ideal opportunity for me to put a dent in my literary ignorance of a culturally significant text.

Now you are probably thinking, where is the determining tendency of this review? Well I can assure you that the airport digression is to serve an analogical purpose, albeit, flimsy. In many respects, Guide to the Psychiatry of Old Age is a text not dissimilar to your airport thriller. It gets you rapidly into the story and given its brevity (just under 150 pages) it can be read in its entirety in a very short space of time. Thus it is a much less daunting text to tackle than some of the larger “classic” encyclopedic books in the field.

Nevertheless Guide to the Psychiatry of Old Age is ambitious in its scope in seeking to cover, from an international perspective, the diversity of psychiatric disease in old age. The book has 12 chapters starting with defining old age psychiatry, then assessment and differential diagnosis of the major psychiatric conditions in old age, through to organic and then functional disorders. One oft neglected area which is covered in the book is that of alcohol and substance misuse, which is particularly pertinent given the changing demographics and graduation of the baby boomers to old age. The book ends with an overview of service models for old age psychiatry and an interesting discussion on the future of the subspeciality.

Each one of these brief chapters could (and does) constitute a whole door-stopping textbook in its own right. However, I think the authors have very deftly, in a delightful style, summarized the key aspects of old age psychiatry and each chapter ends with helpful advice on further reading which will allow an interested reader to explore a topic in more depth should they so wish.

Returning to my analogy, I need to say that there is an important difference between Guide to the Psychiatry of Old Age and your standard airport novel (in addition, of course, to the grammatically borderline nature and parsimonious plot of the latter). Guide to the Psychiatry of Old Age leaves you hungry to read and learn more rather than putting you off. In addition, it instills an enthusiasm and optimism for the practice of old age psychiatry, something which is often missing from the larger more detailed texts. Indeed the “clinical pearl” paragraphs included in the assessment chapter exemplify this in giving tips that one might only garner practically when in the company of a highly experienced and clinically proficient senior.

Thus, in conclusion, I can thoroughly recommend this book to trainees, students or even experienced professionals with an interest in the psychiatry of old age. Also, in case you were wondering about my airport reading crisis, I opted out of making a decision on which book to purchase and bought a newspaper instead.