For medical students taking their first course in psychiatry or entering their first clinical clerkship, their early encounters with psychiatric patients and their need to master vast amounts of new information on complicated illnesses can be a bewildering, grueling, and intimidating experience.

Fortunately, these newcomers have a reliable and trusted source that makes psychiatry more accessible to them. Widely used in medical schools and allied mental health curricula, the third edition of Psychiatry for Medical Students is the standard against which all psychiatric texts for beginning medical students are measured. This popular book gives medical students, primary care physicians, nurses, social workers, and psychologists a jargon-free introduction to the basics, including topics such as schizophrenia, electroconvulsive therapy, transference, and tranquilizers. The text also helps the reader develop the basic skills needed to carry out a diagnostic evaluation and provides systematic coverage of common psychiatric disorders, groups of patients, specialized psychiatric fields, special problems encountered among patients with a broad range of psychiatric conditions, and psychotherapies and somatic therapies. This updated edition incorporates the changes in DSM-IV and contains discussions of recent developments throughout the field. Filled with new references and the latest research, this book can be used as a quick reference during clinical work and a starting point for further reading.