"The Evidence-Based Guide to Antipsychotic Medications" is a table-rich, comprehensive overview of current knowledge regarding the use of antipsychotic medications to treat a broad range of psychiatric conditions, from anxiety disorders to schizophrenia.

The Evidence-Based Guide to Antipsychotic Medications is designed to provide both clinicians and residents with focused, comprehensive, and clinically relevant information regarding the use of antipsychotic medications to treat a broad range of psychiatric conditions -- from mood and anxiety disorders to substance abuse, personality disorders, and schizophrenia. The volume editor is a renowned psychiatrist and author with more than 25 years of experience in both clinical and research settings diagnosing and treating patients with mood and psychotic disorders. In addition, each of the volume's 13 contributors is an expert with many years of clinical experience to draw on.The book is down-to-earth and reader-friendly and is structured for maximal utility in both coverage and format: Key Clinical Points cap each chapter, synthesizing and summarizing the knowledge you can take away, and serving both as a refresher for those using the book as a reference and as a study aid to master the material. Both FDA-approved and off-label use of antipsychotic medications are addressed, reflecting the reality of clinical practice on the front lines. Use of antipsychotic medications in both the pediatric and geriatric populations, a potentially controversial subject, is addressed in a nonsensational, straight-forward manner. The Appendixes provide a wealth of information in tabular format, including drug tables (names, strengths, formulations, pharmacokinetics, and dosing); advice on initiating and monitoring antipsychotic medications; common side effects and their management; and special considerations for use during pregnancy and breastfeeding. The Evidence-Based Guide to Antipsychotic Medications is the first in a new series that strives to take evidence-based psychiatry from gold standard to standard practice. Scientifically up-to-date and rigorous, yet accessible and easy to understand, this volume stands alone as an indispensable resource on the topic.

The use of evidence-based guidelines and algorithms is widely encouraged in modern psychiatric settings, yet many practitioners find it challenging to apply and incorporate the latest evidence-based psychosocial and biological interventions. Now, practitioners have an outstanding new resource at their fingertips. How to Practice Evidence-Based Psychiatry: Basic Principles and Case Studies accomplishes two goals: it explains the methods and philosophy of evidence-based psychiatry, and it describes ways in which psychiatrists and other mental health specialists can incorporate evidence-based psychiatry into their clinical practices. Uniquely relevant to psychiatric clinicians, this is the only book on evidence-based medicine specific to the field of psychiatry that addresses integrated psychopharmacology and psychotherapies. This new book first provides an expansion on the popular text the Concise Guide to Evidence-Based Psychiatry, updating the sections on clinical trials, the teaching of evidence-based medicine, and the effective treatment of patients with complex comorbid conditions. It then allows experts from a variety of specialty areas and practice settings to describe how they incorporate the latest evidence and outcome studies into interesting and inspiring cases of their own. The book starts with the assumption that clinicians must adapt guidelines, algorithms, other sources of evidence, and the interpretation of this evidence to each individual patient. It describes basic statistical concepts in an easily understood format and offers separate chapters devoted to systematic reviews and meta-analyses, clinical practice guidelines, diagnostic tests, surveys of disease frequency, and prognosis and psychometric measurement. It also presents an easily relatable discussion of many of the major issues of evidence-based psychiatry, such as use of the "Five-Step" evidence-based medicine model. The first section can be used both as an introduction to the topic and a ready reference for researching the literature and appraising evidence. The second section includes relevant case examples of major psychiatric disorders, and the third presents case examples from diverse treatment settings. In these sections, 24 contributing clinicians from a variety of practice settings discuss situations in which they followed aspects of evidence-based care. The text includes tables and charts throughout the text, including algorithms, guidelines, and examples of simple, therapist-devised measures of progress, further enhance learning, retention, and clinical practice. How to Practice Evidence-Based Psychiatry: Basic Principles and Case Studies is a valuable new tool that will help residents, practicing psychiatrists, and other mental health workers find the most useful and relevant information to inform and improve their everyday practices.

"This book has been divided into three main sections. Part I deals with global issues that bear on the assessment and formulation of possible adverse effects and with pertinent concepts related to basic pharmacology, physiology, and medical monitoring. The chapters in Part II present information organized by individual organ systems or specific medical circumstances rather than by drugs or drug classes. This approach seems to provide a logical and comprehensible format that allow readers to search out information as referenced by a particular side effect (and its varied potential causes) and to locate a discussion of practical management strategies. Part III focuses on summary recommendations covering all the material presented in the book and is followed by helpful appendixes on self-assessment questions and resources for practitioners. The book is meant to serve as a ready reference that simultaneously provides scientific and scholarly discussion of available treatment options and presents their scientific rationales."--page xx.

A fully revised and updated edition of this unique and authoritative reference The award-winning A Guide to Treatments that Work , published in 1998, was the first book to assemble the numerous advances in both clinical psychology and psychiatry into one accessible volume. It immediately established itself as an indispensable reference for all mental health practitioners. Now in a fully updated edition,A Guide to Treatments that Work, Second Edition brings together, once again, a distinguished group of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists to take stock of which treatments and interventions actually work, which don't, and what still remains beyond the scope of our current knowledge. The new edition has been extensively revised to take account of recent drug developments and advances in psychotherapeutic interventions. Incorporating a wealth of new information, these eminent researchers and clinicians thoroughly review all available outcome data and clinical trials and provide detailed specification of methods and procedures to ensure effective treatment for each major DSM-IV disorder. As an interdisciplinary work that integrates information from both clinical psychology and psychiatry, this new edition will continue to serve as an essential volume for practitioners of every kind: psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, counselors, and mental health consultants.

Fluoxetine, best known by the trade name Prozac®, unlike other psychotropic drugs whose effects were serendipitously stumbled upon, was the first developed for a precise mechanism of action, that is, the ability to selectively inhibit serotonin reuptake, based upon the theory that increasing the availability of serotonin would treat major depression. Once approved by the FDA in 1987, fluoxetine quickly became the most prescribed psychotropic drug worldwide and its success in improving mood disorders has triggered the development of a large number of congener molecules, commonly known as SSRIs after their purported mechanism of action. However, a quarter of a century after its development, the idea that fluoxetine asserts its positive behavioral effect through inhibition of serotonergic reuptake is not firmly established. This book reviews several preclinical and clinical reports suggesting that the pharmacological effects of fluoxetine may be mediated by means other than the regulation of serotonin, including the regulation of gene expression, modifying epigenetic mechanisms as well as modifying microRNAs. One of the most prominent mechanisms for the therapeutic relevance of fluoxetine relates to influencing neuroplasticity by enhancing neurotropic factors, including BDNF signaling and altering adult neurogenesis. The ability of fluoxetine to rapidly increase neurosteroid levels accounts for the fast anxiolytic effects of this drug. Fluoxetine action at sigma-1 receptor or modulating glutamatergic neurotransmission as well as the combination of fluoxetine with other psychotropic drugs is discussed in relation to its therapeutic effects. While fluoxetine was primarily prescribed as an antidepressant, this drug currently represents a treatment of choice for a broad spectrum of psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder and a range of anxiety disorders. This drug even possesses analgesic actions and is a valuable therapy for stroke. This book also highlights emerging evidence on the gender-specific effects of fluoxetine, its potential adverse features, including its addiction liability in combination with psychostimulants, and the impact of perinatal fluoxetine exposure.

The New York Times bestselling examination of the revolutionary antidepressant, with a new introduction and afterword reflecting on Prozac’s legacy and the latest medical research “Peter Kramer is an analyst of exceptional sensitivity and insight. To read his prose on virtually any subject is to be provoked, enthralled, illuminated.” —Joyce Carol Oates When antidepressants like Prozac first became available, Peter D. Kramer prescribed them, only to hear patients say that on medication, they felt different—less ill at ease, more like the person they had always imagined themselves to be. Referencing disciplines from cellular biology to animal ethology, Dr. Kramer worked to explain these reports. The result was Listening to Prozac, a revolutionary book that offered new perspectives on antidepressants, mood disorders, and our understanding of the self—and that became an instant national and international bestseller. In this thirtieth anniversary edition, Dr. Kramer looks back at the influence of his groundbreaking book, traces progress in the relevant sciences, follows trends in the use and public understanding of antidepressants, and assesses potential breakthroughs in the treatment of depression. The new introduction and afterword reinforce and reinvigorate a book that the New York Times called “originally insightful” and “intelligent and informative,” a window on a medicine that is “telling us new things about the chemistry of human character.”