Clinical Manual to Psychosomatic Medicine: A Guide to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry

More concise, practical, and clinically oriented than other available texts, Clinical Manual of Psychosomatic Medicine: A Guide to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry is designed to aid today's busy clinicians with bedside and office consultation. This manual presents the distilled wisdom of two highly experienced consultation-liaison psychiatrists and includes many illustrative figures and tables that offer quick, easy access to critical information about how to diagnose and treat psychiatric disorders in patients who have, or believe they have, other medical disorders. The authors of Clinical Manual of Psychosomatic Medicine begin by summarizing how to do effective psychiatric consultation in a changing health care environment, citing key trends such as managed health care, reallocation of health care resources, medical care, and psychiatric consultation's shift from inpatient to outpatient settings, and to multidisciplinary teams. After discussing the mental status examination, the authors examine Epidemiology, clinical characteristics, differential diagnosis, and treatment and management of various syndromes and disorders—Delirium, dementia, depression, mania, anxiety, somatoform and related disorders, and substance-related disorders (alcohol, sedatives/hypnotics/anxiolytics, opiates/narcotics, amphetamines, and cocaine)—violence/aggression and suicidality. Pharmacological issues—Patients who are medically ill are usually taking one or more medications. Therefore, consultation-liaison psychiatrists must thoroughly understand drug actions, metabolism, and elimination; the cytochrome P450 system; and drug interactions, including the risks for pregnant and breast-feeding women. Other critical issues—Pain management, personality, ethical and legal, and geriatric psychiatry issues. Special consultation-liaison topics—Pregnant/postpartum, pediatric, burn, cancer, neurology and neurosurgery, HIV/AIDS, critically ill, and impotent patients, and organ transplant donors and recipients. The work of consultation-liaison psychiatrists has been proven to reduce mortality, morbidity, length of stay, and hospital costs in general hospital patients and medical-surgical outpatients. To accommodate the shift from inpatient to outpatient settings and to the evolving importance of psychiatric care delivered within specialty and primary care settings, this invaluable reference shows how consultation psychiatrists are the ideal clinicians to provide rapid, focused, and practical diagnostic assessments and treatment recommendations. Essentially an expanded fourth edition of the Concise Guide to Consultation Psychiatry, the eminently practical Clinical Manual of Psychosomatic Medicine: A Guide to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry will be welcomed by consultation-liaison and general psychiatrists, primary care physicians, consultation-liaison/psychosomatic fellows, psychiatry residents, and medical students. This manual is an outstanding resource for didactics and clinical rotations for those in training or reviewing for board examinations.