Schizophrenia A Practical Primer

Schizophrenia is a devastating illness that affects approximately 2.2 million Americans and as many as 51 million persons worldwide. It is one of the top 10 causes of disability in developed countries worldwide. Because schziophrenia is a relatively chronic severe mental illness with onset in late teens and early adulthood, it requires a heightened degree of awareness to diagnose it early in order to treat it effectively. Patients with schizophrenia are encountered in many health care provider settings, not just psychiatric hospitals. Needless to say, a broad range of health practitioners need to be able to recognize schizophrenia and treat it effectively. This book will focus on providing essential, state-of-the-art information in easily digestible segments for clinicians and students. Each chapter will be laden with brief case vignettes, adapted from real clinical experience of the authors, which illustrate the issues under consideration. In our experience of teaching psychiatry, we have found that lengthy case material tends to bring up too many points that are difficult to articulate in text. The case vignettes will be realistic and to the point, facilitating quick grasp of the clinical or theoretical point being made. Further, each case vignette will include a question or two to highlight the issue at hand. Few existing books on schizophrenia offer such case studies. Additionally, each chapter will have questions interspersed to facilitate information retention. This book will also use a phase-of-illness approach to schizophrenia and its management. As we have learned more about the nature of the illness and its progression from being at risk to early illness course to late-life changes, a phase-of-illness approach provides the best context in which to discuss and integrate the various technical and theoretical aspects. It also allows us to describe treatment approaches customized to the phase in which the patient presents to us. Thus the standard exposition of diagnosis, treatment, and pathophysiology will be subsumed under the overarching perspective of phases and stages of the illness. No currently available book takes this approach. The book will be essential reading for at primary care physicians, psychiatry trainees, and early career mental health workers (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counsellors, and nurses).Reddy, Ravinder is the author of 'Schizophrenia A Practical Primer', published 2006 under ISBN 9781841845296 and ISBN 1841845299.