Product Description

Essential. Trusted. Indispensable. Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology has established itself as the preeminent source of education and information in its field. This much-expanded third edition relies on advances in neurobiology and recent clinical developments to explain the concepts underlying drug treatment of psychiatric disorders. In addition to redrawn art, an improved and more readable layout, and 30% more illustrations, the Third Edition has four all-new chapters on Psychiatric Genetics, Chronic Pain and Functional Somatic Syndromes, Disorders of Sleep, and Disorders of Cognition. Covered within are new neurotransmitter systems; theories on schizophrenia; clinical advances in antipsychotic and antidepressant therapy; coverage of attention deficit disorder and drug abuse; and new coverage of sleep disorders, chronic pain, and disorders of impulse control. This volume is indispensable for all students and professionals in mental health, enabling them to master the complexities of psychopharmacology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11174 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-17
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1132 pages

Review
From reviews of the Second Edition:

"All of Dr. Stahl's writing is characterized by clarity of presentation and a notable ability to transform complicated scientific principles into readily understood prose. Characteristically, he illustrates his instructions with informative, charming, and sometimes witty cartoon figures and diagrams. Dr. Stahl has a gift for teaching, and it is a pleasure to recommend this book."
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry

"Essential reading ... I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who works with psychotropic drugs - or who has the task of teaching others about them!"
American Journal of Psychiatry

"Essential Psychopharmacology offers a wide range of readers an engaging and comprehensive view of psychopharmacology. It is highly recommended to both novice and experienced researchers, who stand to gain a new or renewed appreciation for the complexity and beauty of how the nervous system mediates the behavioral effects of drugs."
Contemporary Psychology

Book Info
Univ. of California, San Diego. Textbook relies on advances in neurobiology and recent clinical developments to explain the concepts underlying drug treatment of psychiatric disorders. Includes a new chapter on gender and sexual psychopharmacology. Color illustrations. Previous edition: c1996. Hardcover, softcover also available. DNLM: Mental Disorders--drug therapy.

About the Author
Stephen M. Stahl is Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego. He has conducted numerous research projects awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Veterans Administration, and the pharmaceutical industry. Author of more than 200 articles and chapters, Dr Stahl is an internationally recognized clinician, researcher, and teacher in psychiatry with subspecialty expertise in psychopharmacology.

Customer Reviews

Good overall, but unsubtle and dodges legitimate controversies
The biochemical illustrations are excellent but the text is lacking in nuance. (Maybe that book would require another thousand pages.) The author, in my opinion, is far too keen on a strict medical model and acceptance of DSM IV TR "disorders" and outlier conditions as diseases for which there is a pill lying in wait. The text glosses over these controversies the way that Powerpoint does at a pharma sponsored CME conference.

Nevertheless the chapter on antidepressant augmentation was excellent, though in practice I think it is foolish to use lithium for unipolar depression augmentation because it is the easiest drug to overdose on (and of course one of the big selling points of the SSRIs over TCAs to begin with was the safety factor in a suicide attempt.) One treatment that I was not aware of, and I will definitely start using in refractory cases, is MTHF supplementation which appears very safe and effective.

One chapter I had a lot of problems with was sleep disorders. In my opinion, the author is too cavalier about using benzo hypnotics, despite the fact that most evidence based treatment guidelines (i.e ACOEM) specifically warn against this except as a very short-term solution. I am disappointed that he failed to mention that these a history of alcohol or drug dependence changes the whole treatment paradigm. He seems enthusiastic about the "Z" hypnotics despite the scandalous promotion of Ambien as nonaddictive, a claim the manufacturer Aventis was forced to rescind. Not to mention the literature on sleepwalking and sleep driving with this drug (the Patrick Kennedy incident may have been related to this). I was also surprised to see Ambien CR (zolpidem CR) listed as a first line drug in the "hypnotic pharmacy" on page 849, under the premise of being nonaddictive. I say, fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice shame on you. In actual practice, the best move is to ditch all forms of Ambien, and go with Lunesta or even better yet, Rozerem, and only after trying a sedative antidepressant.

I also believe that the TCAs were given too little attention for their effectiveness in pain syndromes.

The following complaint is mostly about DSM-IV-TR which is obviously not the author's fault, but I wish he hadn't gotten so drunk on Bob Spitzer's Kool-Aid. Garbage in, garbage out, and if you are medicating a questionable diagnosis you will get questionable results or the condition will get better on its own, as it would have anyway. Many would argue that the lowering of the bar for psychiatric diagnosis in DSM (i.e. autism, ADD, Major Depression, PTSD) has been a benefit as these conditions are now more reliably diagnosed and more people are getting help. That may be true, but this has come at the expense of phenomenological validity. If you and I have dysphoria and 4 other completely different symptoms, guess what, we have the same diagnosis, so what are we really dealing with? If I "hear about" a tragic event and have some anxiety symptoms I can qualify for PTSD according to the DSM. I guess Mohammed Atta caused mental disorder in 300 million Americans. Does anyone believe that? Thirty years ago, if someone told me their kid had ADD or autism, I knew exactly what to expect. Today that child may be a moderately misbehaving child with poor social skills. As Tony Soprano once sarcastically asked a school psychologist diagnosing ADD, "What constitutes a fidget?"

All of this inclusiveness, whether the motive is compassionate or monetary, creates enormous problems in psychopharmacological comparisons. Older antidepressant and other psychopharm studies were done with severely ill patients with pure pathology. Today, the subjects may have a self-limited condition thanks to the changes in DSM. The success numbers for most of the SSRI studies are as inflated as today's home run totals in baseball and cannot be compared to the data from 25-30 years ago on TCAs and MAOIs. In other words, I don't buy a lot of the head to head comparisons and ratings in the text based on incomparable studies. Data is emerging that these are actually much more efficacious than the SSRI's which the author considers (along with the majority of psychiatrists) to be first line treatment. But let's be honest--the reason for this is defensive medicine, not because the new drugs are better. In fact, every senior psychopharmacologist knows that short of ECT, nothing works for refractory cases like Parnate, which is hardly ever used anymore. However, I do give the author of coming to the defense of MAOIs with some great illustrations about how the dietary problems with this group are completely overblown.

Despite these problems, I credit the author for a monumental undertaking. Obviously anything this prolific and robust will contain material with which some practitioners disagree. That would be no different if I had written it myself.

James O'Brien, M.D.

impressive
Essential Pharmacology is comprehensive and most informative. Diagnostic subjects range from mood disorders to ADHD to Fibromyalgia. The text elucidates genetics and mechanism of action through the liberal use of cartoons which are for the most part illuminating but are at times trivial. My only complaint is the lack of information on eating disorders. Which has more to do with the general ignorance of the subject vs. an editorial neglect.

Útil pero cuestionable
Útil: La cantidad de información resumida, sistematizada y esquematizada, de fácil y amena lectura.

Cuestionable: Para empezar, no tanto el grado de simplificación, como el grado de parcialización, fragmentación y reducción de los contenidos referentes al funcionamiento normal y anormal del Sistema Nervioso Central, con un sesgo explícito hacia aquellos aspectos que ayudarían a entender mejor el supuesto funcionamiento de los psicofármacos, y con un sesgo implícito hacia la altamente cuestionable premisa de que los psicofármacos que hoy conocemos actuán verdaderamente sobre los fenómenos fundamentales de la "fisiopatología" neuro-psiquiátrica (suposición cada vez más cuestionable). Stahl parece querer explicarnos por qué y cómo es que funcionan los psicofármacos (con esquematismos que a menudo llegan a ser no sólo inaceptablemente sobresimplificados, sino también francamente inverosímiles), sin la menor intención de explicarnos por qué y cómo -si todo lo que nos explica es cierto- es que funcionan tan modestamente y en un porcentaje a veces tan reducido de pacientes. Como resultado, el aprendiz se verá tentado a basar sus prescripciones en el supuesto conocimiento de por qué tal o cual fármaco DEBIERA funcionar en tal o cual paciente (o en tal o cual síntoma!), sin preguntarse más bien por la evidencia acerca de si dicho fármaco funciona o no funciona realmente, y hasta qué punto... El posible riesgo de todo esto, es una peligrosa tendencia a la sobreprescripción y a la malprescripción (el posible beneficio, el mantenido enriquecimiento de la industria farmacéutica).

También parece cuestionable el enfoque akiskaliano de los trastornos del ánimo (que conduce a una mayor prescripción de profilácticos de fase, antipsicóticos atípicos y otros), y la presunción (a la DSM) de que todos los trastornos del ánimo merecen el estatuto implícito de enfermedad (en el sentido de la medicina científica), y deben ser tratados por lo tanto con medicamentos. El resultado, nuevamente: la sobreprescripción, incluyendo aquí la indicación de fármacos para el tratamiento de crisis vitales, reacciones vivenciales, dificultades de adaptación, cuadros de estrés laboral, disfunciones conyugales y familiares, y un larguísimo etcétera; todos casos que, cumpliendo los criterios diagnósticos de un 'episodio depresivo mayor' u otros, cabrían también (o 'en vez') en la categoría de reacciones depresivas, depresiones neuróticas / neurosis depresivas, disforias histeroides, depresiones caracterológicas, cuadros de ajuste, etc. Ningún clínico honesto y experimentado puede creer que esta distinción -esfumada como por arte de magia por el DSM- haya dejado de ser fundamental en la práctica.

Por último, la cantidad de afirmaciones del tipo 'pudiera ser que', 'es probable que', 'hipotéticamente' o 'teóricamente', no hacen más que alimentar todas nuestras dudas, si bien trasuntan un loable matiz de honestidad de parte del autor (hasta el punto de que en algunos pasajes nos advierte algo así como: las cosas son mucho más complejas y bien distintas en la realidad, pero bueno, vamos a hacer como que son así como se las estoy mostrando en estas laminitas tan lindas y explicativas, para que no nos compliquemos la existencia...). No deja de ser interesante, en todo caso, que la así llamada 'psiquiatría biológica' (supuestamente, la más 'científica' de 'las psiquiatrías') termine aglutinando tantas conjeturas, supuestos y especulaciones como cualquier corriente psicológica de los últimos cien años (y quizás más...)

En suma: Un libro digno de ser leído y estudiado, PERO con el sentido crítico bien despierto...