Main description:

The Perspectives approach to psychiatry focuses on four aspects of psychiatric practice and research: disease, dimensional, behavior, and lifestory. In Systematic Psychiatric Evaluation, Drs. Margaret S. Chisolm and Constantine G. Lyketsos underscore the benefits of this approach, showing how it improves clinicians' abilities to evaluate, diagnose, and treat patients. Drs. Chisolm and Lyketsos use increasingly complex case histories to help the mental health provider evaluate patients demonstrating symptoms of bipolar disorder, psychosis, suicidal ideation, depression, eating disorders, and cutting, among other conditions. The book also includes an exercise that simulates the Perspectives approach side by side with traditional methods, revealing the advantages of a method that engages not one but four points of view. Featuring a foreword by Drs. Paul R. McHugh and Phillip R. Slavney, the originators of the Perspectives approach, this innovative book will be used in psychiatric training programs as well as by practicing mental health clinicians.

Contents:

Foreword, by Paul R. McHugh, M.D., and Phillip R. Slavney, M.D.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: The Concepts behind the Approach
1. An Introduction
2. The Psychiatric Evaluation
3. The Life-Story Perspective
4. The Dimensional Perspective
5. The Behavior Perspective
6. The Disease Perspective
Part II: The Approach in Action
Introduction
Case 1 Bipolar Disorder: Maintaining Personhood in the Face of a Disease
Case 2 A Young Man with Psychosis: The Role of Life Story and Behavior in Disease
Case 3 A Mother's Overdose: Life Story and Dimension
Case 4 A Man with Depression amidst Multiple Life Stressors: Life Story or Disease?
Case 5 A Matriarch with Memory and Mood Problems: Managing Diagnostic Dilemmas
Case 6 An Executive with Health Worries: Dimension or Disease?
Case 7 A Young Woman's Fear of Fat: An Aberration in Feeding Behavior
Case 8 A Lawyer Who Lies and Cuts: Synthesis of a Complex Case
Case 9 A Case of Bereavement: Why Psychotherapy Matters
Summary
Appendix A: The Psychiatric Evaluation
Appendix B: The Mental Status Examination
References
Index