Essentials of Psychiatric Assessment

Mohamed Ahmed Abd El-Hay is Professor of Psychiatry at Tanta University, Egypt, where he teaches psychiatry and psychology to medical and nursing students at under and post graduate level. He also practices psychiatry at Tanta University, with special interest in child and adolescent psychiatry. Professor Abd El-Hay has published numerous scientific papers and books on psychiatry, psychology, and social psychology.

• 1: Introduction Information Necessary to Be Obtained; Site of the Clinical Evaluation; Methods of Obtaining Information; Methods of Interviewing; Initiating an Interview; Strategies to Get the Patient’s Rapport; Techniques to Get Information 2: Signs and Symptoms in Psychiatry Disturbed Consciousness; General Appearance Abnormalities; Disturbance in Behavior; Disturbance of Language and Speech; Disturbance of Mood and Affect; Thought Disorders; Perceptual Disorders; Disturbance of Orientation; Disturbance of Attention and Concentration; Memory Disturbance, Evaluation of Knowledge Base; Abstraction Abnormalities; Intelligence; Abnormal Insight and Judgment; Cortical Functions; Gender Identity; Disturbance of Self 3: The Psychiatric Interview Outline of Psychiatric History; Identification Data; Chief Complaints; History of Present Illness; Personal History; Mental State Examination; Medical Assessment of Psychiatric Patients; Psychological Testing; Investigations in Psychiatry; 4: Special Considerations Assessment of Children and Adolescents; Emergency Evaluation; The Violent and Aggressive Patient; Suicide; Forensic Assessment; Evaluation of Capacities in Psychiatry; Bibliography

In general, this volume seems to be geared to medical students on a psychiatric rotation, first year psychiatric residents, and graduate students in other mental health care professions. It seems to be thorough enough in content coverage and organized well enough for those particular audiences. The two most important features that should be highlighted are (a) the book’s utility as a good brief introduction to the basics of psychiatric interviewing and (b) its thorough coverage of psychiatric signs and symptoms. In addition to the need for referencing more of the included material and the addition of examples, this book could greatly benefit from the presentation of a significant amount of material in tables, such as with the types of memory disturbances. Mark Maruish, PhD, author, Handbook of Psychological Assessment in Medical Settings.Author revised the manuscript with references and tables, GPZI like this book. I like the idea of the book-it will be useful to med students and especially to medical students (so the potential audience is small). It is very well written and clear. It’s also relatively long for a small but crucial teaching point - i.e. how to do a psychiatric evaluation. My only criticism (and perhaps i missed this as i skimmed it) is psychiatric patients have cognitive difficulties so you have to work with family and sig others to understand the patient and make a diagnosis. The approach in the manuscript is mainly on the individual patients. My book is on Family and Couple Therapy takes this approach. The closest competing book in my judgment is The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice by Bob Michaels, my mentor. Ira Glick, Professor of Psychiatry, Stanford School of MedicineWorking relationships with the patient’s family is discussed in the book, GPZ