Kaplan & Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry: Behavioral Sciences/Clinical Psychiatry

As known by many, Kaplan and Kaplan (or Kaplan and Sadock's) comprehensive textbook of psychiatry is pretty much the gold standard text book for the history and diagnosis of psychiatric illness used by all residencies and medical schools in the USA. This book is a thinned soft bound edition summary of the 2 volume comprehensive book. With this book, you still get many of the helpful tables, all of the information, and at half the price. This is no substitute for the Big book, but if you read this prior to any shelf exam in medical school, or as the basis for starting research into a disease in residency, you will have a good basis and diretion so your future searches will be easier, and the exams simple. Highly recommended, very good investment for Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, and OB-Gyn residents/students to have on a shelf, and essential to psychiatric residents/students.

This book is a synopsis of the Comprehensive textbook of Psychiatry. It is still 1500 pages, but I strongly reccommend this as the core textbook of psychiatry for a medical student to refer to for answers, or for a non-psychiatric physician to own as a knowledgeable reference book to keep at the office. It covers everything the big book does, but it cuts out some of the longer histories and things and gets to the meat of the literature, diagnosis. It still keeps many of the helpful tables as the big book. So I strongly recommend this as your everyday one stop psych reference book.

If you practice in the behavioral sciences, this book should be on your shelf. Features updated information on the diagnosis and treatment of all the DSM diagnoses as well as interesting historical information. Takes what's in the DSM and expands on it at some length, including psychotherapeutic and pharmacological interventions. Written with a surprisingly even hand towards all interventions, I have found it more useful than the DSM most of the time, especially in guiding treatment decisions. My only complaint is their decision to drop material on some of the older medications. Still, a terrific resource for the working pracitioner!

I purchased this book when it was the 7th edition, and own both 7th and 8th. I can say that as a student of medicine, this book may be overkill for some people, however, I find it to be the best "complete" text out there. With chapters on neuro A & P, DSM-IV clinical disorders, individual pharmacological agents, and even child psychiatry, it's all one needs to learn medical psychiatry. My only advice is for someone who isn't a student of clinical medicine or a medical professional, you might find it a difficult read.

This is a superb book for both the psychiatric and mental health prfessional reader and for the general public. It is well-written, thoroughly referenced and totally up-to-date. With the revolution in drug treament the authors provide a comprehensive survey of all drugs used in psychiatry. They also cover the psychodynamic concepts of Freud, Jung, Erikson and other theorists. This book is a must for anyone interested in this field.