Stahl’s Essential Psychopharmacology: Prescriber’s Guide (5th edition)

Drug treatment for mental illness is an extremely contentious subject. As we pointed out when reviewing the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), (RR 2014/102) the diagnosis of such disorders is very uncertain and, to some extent, arbitrary. Mental illnesses are nearly all “spectrum disorders” – the same named disease can range in intensity from a very minor disturbance to a crippling or even life-threatening handicap. Some patients are remarkably ungrateful: a cancer patient will say “they gave me chemotherapy, which had horrible side-effects, but it got me into remission”, while a...