Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Dedication
- List of icons
- Abbreviations used in this book
- Case 1 The man whose antidepressants stopped working
- Case 2 The son who would not take a shower
- Case 3 The man who kept hitting his wife over the head with a frying pan
- Case 4 The son who would not go to bed
- Case 5 The sleepy woman with anxiety
- Case 6 The woman who felt numb
- Case 7 The case of physician do not heal thyself
- Case 8 The son whose parents were desperate to have him avoid Kraepelin
- Case 9 The soldier who thinks he is a “slacker” broken beyond all repair after 3 deployments to Iraq
- Case 10 The young man everybody was afraid to treat
- Case 11 The young woman whose doctors could not decide whether she 117 has schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or both
- Case 12 The scary man with only partial symptom control on clozapine
- Case 13 The 8-year-old girl who was naughty
- Case 14 The scatter-brained mother whose daughter has ADHD, like mother, like daughter
- Case 15 The doctor who couldn’t keep up with his patients
- Case 16 The computer analyst who thought the government would choke him to death
- Case 17 The severely depressed man with a life insurance policy soon to lose its suicide exemption
- Case 18 The anxious woman who was more afraid of her anxiety medications than of anything else
- Case 19 The psychotic woman with delusions that no medication could fix
- Case 20 The breast cancer survivor who couldn’t remember how to cook
- Case 21 The woman who has always been out of control
- Case 22 The young man with alcohol abuse and depression like father, like son; like grandfather, like father; like great grandfather, like grandfather
- Case 23 The woman with psychotic depression responsive to her own TMS machine
- Case 24 The boy getting kicked out of his classroom
- Case 25 The young man whose dyskinesia was prompt and not tardive
- Case 26 The patient whose daughter wouldn’t give up
- Case 27 The psychotic arsonist who burned his house and tried to burn himself
- Case 28 The woman with depression whose Parkinson’s disease vanished
- Case 29 The depressed man who thought he was out of options
- Case 30 The woman who was either manic or fat
- Case 31 The girl who couldn’t find a doctor
- Case 32 The man who wondered if once a bipolar always a bipolar?
- Case 33 Suck it up, soldier, and quit whining
- Case 34 The young man who is failing to launch
- Case 35 The young cancer survivor with panic
- Case 36 The man whose antipsychotic almost killed him
- Case 37 The painful man who soaked up his opiates like a sponge
- Case 38 The woman with an ever fluctuating mood
- Case 39 The psychotic sex offender with grandiosity and mania
- Case 40 The elderly man with schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease
- Index of Drug Names
- Index of Case Studies
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Dedication
- List of icons
- Abbreviations used in this book
- Case 1 The man whose antidepressants stopped working
- Case 2 The son who would not take a shower
- Case 3 The man who kept hitting his wife over the head with a frying pan
- Case 4 The son who would not go to bed
- Case 5 The sleepy woman with anxiety
- Case 6 The woman who felt numb
- Case 7 The case of physician do not heal thyself
- Case 8 The son whose parents were desperate to have him avoid Kraepelin
- Case 9 The soldier who thinks he is a “slacker” broken beyond all repair after 3 deployments to Iraq
- Case 10 The young man everybody was afraid to treat
- Case 11 The young woman whose doctors could not decide whether she 117 has schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or both
- Case 12 The scary man with only partial symptom control on clozapine
- Case 13 The 8-year-old girl who was naughty
- Case 14 The scatter-brained mother whose daughter has ADHD, like mother, like daughter
- Case 15 The doctor who couldn’t keep up with his patients
- Case 16 The computer analyst who thought the government would choke him to death
- Case 17 The severely depressed man with a life insurance policy soon to lose its suicide exemption
- Case 18 The anxious woman who was more afraid of her anxiety medications than of anything else
- Case 19 The psychotic woman with delusions that no medication could fix
- Case 20 The breast cancer survivor who couldn’t remember how to cook
- Case 21 The woman who has always been out of control
- Case 22 The young man with alcohol abuse and depression like father, like son; like grandfather, like father; like great grandfather, like grandfather
- Case 23 The woman with psychotic depression responsive to her own TMS machine
- Case 24 The boy getting kicked out of his classroom
- Case 25 The young man whose dyskinesia was prompt and not tardive
- Case 26 The patient whose daughter wouldn’t give up
- Case 27 The psychotic arsonist who burned his house and tried to burn himself
- Case 28 The woman with depression whose Parkinson’s disease vanished
- Case 29 The depressed man who thought he was out of options
- Case 30 The woman who was either manic or fat
- Case 31 The girl who couldn’t find a doctor
- Case 32 The man who wondered if once a bipolar always a bipolar?
- Case 33 Suck it up, soldier, and quit whining
- Case 34 The young man who is failing to launch
- Case 35 The young cancer survivor with panic
- Case 36 The man whose antipsychotic almost killed him
- Case 37 The painful man who soaked up his opiates like a sponge
- Case 38 The woman with an ever fluctuating mood
- Case 39 The psychotic sex offender with grandiosity and mania
- Case 40 The elderly man with schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease
- Index of Drug Names
- Index of Case Studies
Summary
Joining the Essential Psychopharmacology series here is a new idea – namely, a case book. Essential Psychopharmacology started in 1996 as a textbook (currently in its third edition) on how psychotropic drugs work. It then expanded to a companion Prescriber's Guide in 2005 (currently in its fourth edition) on how to prescribe psychotropic drugs. In 2008, a website was added (stahlonline.org) with both of these books available online in combination with several more, including an Illustrated series of several books covering specialty topics in psychopharmacology. Now comes a Case Book, showing how to apply the concepts presented in these previous books to real patients in a clinical practice setting.
Why a case book? For practitioners, it is necessary to know the science of psychopharmacology – namely, both the mechanism of action of psychotropic drugs and the evidence-based data on how to prescribe them – but this is not sufficient to become a master clinician. Many patients are beyond the data and are excluded from randomized controlled trials. Thus, a true clinical expert also needs to develop the art of psychopharmacology: namely, how to listen, educate, destigmatize, mix psychotherapy with medications and use intuition to select and combine medications. The art of psychopharmacology is especially important when confronting the frequent situations where there is no evidence on which to base a clinical decision.
What do you do when there is no evidence? The short answer is to combine the science with the art of psychopharmacology. The best way to learn this is probably by seeing individual patients. Here I hope you will join me and peer over my shoulder to observe 40 complex cases from my own clinical practice. Each case is anonymized in identifying details, but incorporates real case outcomes that are not fictionalized. Sometimes more than one case is combined into a single case. Hopefully, you will recognize many of these patients as the same as those you have seen in your own practice (although they will not be the exact same patient, as the identifying historical details are changed here to comply with disclosure standards and many patients can look very much like many other patients you know, which is why you may find this teaching approach effective for your clinical practice).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Case Studies: Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology , pp. xi - xiiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011