Textbook of psychosomatic medicine

Extensively updated in this second edition, The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychosomatic Medicine: Psychiatric Care of the Medically III is the preeminent reference for this new subspecialty, which has grown from a field relying on clinical experience and theory into a discipline grounded in empirical research with relevance throughout medical care.

The authors and editorial board who shaped this text include psychiatrists and clinicians from nine countries with particular expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric conditions in complex medically ill patients. This book captures the diversity of the field, whose practitioners -- scholars, physicians, and clinicians of varied backgrounds -- represent a multiplicity of perspectives and do not always agree on some issues.

A quarter of the chapters are entirely new, and all have been extensively revised.

This comprehensive text � Presents a detailed approach to psychiatric assessment and consultation in medical settings� Covers general principles in evaluation and management, legal and ethical issues, and psychological reactions to illness� Examines a variety of psychiatric symptoms and disorders in the medically ill, including dementia, depression, eating disorders, sexual dysfunction, and substance abuse� Reviews disease- and organ system-specific issues associated with 20 medical specialties, including epidemiology and risk factors; the effects of the psychiatric disorder on medical disorders and, conversely, the effects of medical diseases on the psyche; clinical features; diagnosis and assessment; differential diagnosis; management; and treatment� Summarizes psychiatric treatment in the medically ill, including psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, and palliative care Up-to-date, scholarly, and encyclopedic in scope, this text also reflects an understanding that the clinician must approach each patient as a unique individual coping with illness and medical treatment.

A central task of the psychiatrist working with the medically ill is to empathically apprehend each patient's subjective experience of illness in order to design therapeutic interventions that modulate the patient's behavioral or emotional responses, decrease the patient's distress, and improve the patient's medical outcomes.

Clinicians who evaluate and treat medically ill patients with psychiatric disorders will turn to The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychosomatic Medicine time and time again for guidance in this task.