American Psychiatric Publishing

Evaluating and treating patients with violent ideations and behaviors can be frustrating, anxiety-provoking, and even dangerous, as errors in judgment can lead to disastrous consequences. Fortunately, there is the Textbook of Violence Assessment and Management, the first and only comprehensive textbook on assessing the potentially violent patient for mental health clinicians on the front lines of patient care. Uniquely qualified to produce this comprehensive volume, the editors have assembled a distinguished roster of contributors who, in 28 practical chapters, combine evidence-based medicine with expert opinion to address the topic of patient violence in all its diversity of presentation and expression. Dr. Simon is Director of the Program in Psychiatry and Law at Georgetown University School of Medicine, as well as the author or co-author of more than two dozen books. Dr. Tardiff, Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health at the Payne Whitney Clinic, The New York Hospital -- Cornell Medical Center, is the author of The Concise Guide to Assessment and Management of Violent Patients, an introduction to aggression management now in its second edition. Violence is both endemic to our society and epidemic in our age. Skilled assessment and management of violence is therefore critical for mental health professionals involved in patient care. The Textbook of Violence Assessment and Management includes many features designed to instruct and support these clinicians. For example: * It is the first comprehensive textbook to take the mental health professional from evaluation and assessment to treatment and management of patients who are or may become violent. * The 28 chapters address the diversity of clinical settings, patient demographics, psychopathology and treatment modalities, making this work useful as both a textbook and a reference that clinicians can consult as needed for particular cases.* End-of-chapter "Key Points" highlight the most important concepts and conclusions, allowing students to review and consolidate their learning and practicing professionals to locate critical information quickly.* Clinical case examples abound, providing rich and nuanced perspectives on patient behavior, evaluation and management.* The textbook includes a separate chapter on evaluating patients from different cultures, a competency that becomes more crucial as patient populations become more diverse. Increasing numbers of veterans are diagnosed with PTSD and traumatic brain injury. Campus tragedies such as Virginia Tech are fresh in our collective memory. This text is both timely and necessary -- not just for mental health professionals and their patients, but for the families and communities whose safety depends upon competent professional judgment.

Mentalizing, the fundamental human capacity to understand behavior in relation to mental states such as thoughts and feelings, is the basis of healthy relationships and self-awareness. A growing evidence base supports the effectiveness of mentalizing-focused interventions in the treatment of borderline personality disorder. This volume explores wider applications, construing mentalizing as a core common factor in the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions that cuts across treatment modalities and theoretical approaches ranging from psychodynamic to interpersonal and cognitive therapies. This book distills the burgeoning literature on mentalizing for clinicians of diverse professional backgrounds. The book is divided into two parts: Understanding Mentalizing fully explicates the concept of mentalizing and its foundations in developmental research and social-cognitive neuroscience; Practicing Mentalizing presents the general principles of psychotherapeutic interventions that promote mentalizing as well as a range of current clinical applications. * Mentalizing is multifaceted -- for example, pertaining to self and others as well as explicit and implicit processes -- and links to myriad overlapping concepts including empathy, metacognition, theory of mind, mindfulness, and psychological mindedness.* Two sides of research on the development of mentalizing in attachment relationships have significant clinical implications: interactions in secure attachment relationships enhance mentalizing and illuminate the conditions of optimal psychotherapeutic relationships; conversely, trauma in attachment relationships undermines the development of mentalizing and eventuates in developmental psychopathology that poses special challenges for psychotherapy.* Neuroimaging is illuminating diverse brain regions that contribute to mentalizing capacity, including a "mentalizing region" in the medial prefrontal cortex that is consistently activated in mentalizing tasks; concomitantly, research on autism and psychopathy attests to the neurobiological basis of psychopathologies in which stable impairments of mentalizing are most conspicuous.* In development and in psychotherapy, mentalizing begets mentalizing, as exemplified by a mentalizing stance that fosters inquisitiveness and curiosity about mental states in oneself and others; basic principles and clinical examples, including the use of transference, demonstrate the spirit and technique of mentalizing, capped off by a patient's first-hand account of mentalization-based treatment for borderline personality disorder.* Attachment trauma is the wellspring of disrupted mentalizing capacity, and a focus on mentalizing provides an integrative framework for psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral treatment of trauma as well as for parenting, family, and social-systems interventions directed toward interrupting the perpetuation of trauma in relationships.* Psychoeducational interventions, including patient education and structured exercises, are employed to cultivate a therapeutic alliance around mentalizing; the book includes a straightforward explanation clinicians can use with patients, "What is Mentalizing and Why Do It?" In the chapter on mentalizing interventions, the authors propose to clinicians, "You are already doing it." If the effectiveness of treatment depends on therapists mentalizing and helping their patients do so more consistently and skillfully, clinicians of all persuasions can benefit from the extensive knowledge now available to hone further their attention to this vital therapeutic process.

Thoroughly and scrupulously updated, the sixth edition of the Introductory Textbook of Psychiatry has been reorganized and rewritten to reflect the reformulated DSM-5(R) diagnostic classes, rendering all other texts obsolete. No other introductory psychiatry text incorporates up-to-date information on all of the major disorders, arranged by DSM-5(R) diagnostic class, along with current treatment information. Designed to provide medical students and beginning residents with a solid foundation and orientation to the field, the book has also been proven valuable to a variety of training programs, including advanced registered nurse practitioners, physician assistants, social workers, and psychologists. An abundance of useful features should win this new edition equal popularity and classic status: - The authors are accomplished writers as well as clinicians, and they have produced a volume that is consistent in style, very readable, and highly engaging. The redundancies sometimes encountered in a text with many authors have been avoided.- An exhaustively researched and scientifically rigorous section devoted to the neurobiology and genetics of mental illness has been included, because psychiatry is a scientific, as well as a clinical, discipline. - The detailed introduction to the psychiatric interview provides interviewing techniques, tips on taking the clinical history, and specific questions that may be asked to elicit information useful to diagnosis.- New medications have been released since the last edition, and more has been learned about existing drugs. All are addressed in detail here. - A host of reader-friendly features -- including interesting case vignettes, clinical points, chapter-by-chapter self-assessment questions, an up-to-date glossary of terms, and dozens of tables and figures -- promote learning and help the reader to gauge progress. Those studying for their board examinations will find them especially helpful. Grounded in the authors' long clinical experience and scholarly expertise, the Introductory Textbook of Psychiatry is a pedagogically sound and beautifully written text that is equal to the science and mystery of its subject. A new generation of medical students and residents will find it as interesting as it is indispensable.