To many doctors, nurses and allied health practitioners, the world of child and adolescent mental distress and disorder is alien territory, mentally marked with a sizeable ‘off-piste’ sign (definitely somebody else's business). Paradoxically, a significant proportion of children and young people, perhaps as much as 10%, are thought to have at some point in their development a significant mental health difficulty that they, their parents or teachers will be unable to deal with adequately without professional help. For some time now there has been an increasingly high-profile campaign for all agencies to accept that child and adolescent mental well-being is everybody's business.

The aim of this handbook is for ‘practitioners at the front line in emergency departments to be better trained, more informed and better prepared’ to address the challenges that children, adolescents and their families present as mental health concerns. I suspect the book will be most welcome to colleagues from accident and emergency departments, as dealing with young people must represent additional stress within already highly demanding work.

The book also provides an overview of child and adolescent mental health that will be of interest to many child and adolescent psychiatrists. Despite my 10 years as a consultant in this field, I found that I was learning some useful new information or that things I half knew were being helpfully clarified – for example, the differential grid for (self-induced) cutting and a very thorough overview of how to assess the mental state of a potentially suicidal youngster (which, in certain cases, can be a stressful business even for the most experienced psychiatrist). There is a very helpful chapter on consent and capacity which is an increasingly tricky area in this age group, although I would have preferred a bit more specific detail on the Scottish legal perspective.

Overall, this handbook should definitely be read by all senior trainees in child and adolescent psychiatry and will be very useful to many others involved in this increasingly significant area of healthcare.