Psychiatric Care of the Medical Patient

The medicalization of psychiatry is well illustrated in this virtually encyclopedic work by the editorial team of Alan Stoudemire and Barry S. Fogel. Together with their other two recent works—Medical-Psychiatric Practice, volumes one and two—the essential library of current information about medical psychiatry is formed. While this book is a revised and expanded version of their original 1987 volume,Principles of Medical Psychiatry, it is made even more useful by including numerous new chapters and topics and by updating the original work. The number of authors has expanded from 49 in the original volume to 78 in the current one. The number of chapters has expanded as well, from 33 to 45. More important, the work is substantially better written and organized, aided significantly by the extensive use of tables, giving the book the feel of a database. Several noteworthy directions have been pursued that round out this volume: