Additional Psychiatry Reading

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whackamole21

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Current 4th year about done with interviews. Any suggestions for light background reading about Psychiatry or medicine in general?

Do journal subscriptions cost a lot? I’ll probably get a psychopharm book and just do some light learning over the next six months. Not trying to prep for residency in any way, just obviously interested in the field and want to become more knowledgeable.
 
Not exactly journal articles but...

Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
This podcast from This American Life: 81 Words - This American Life

Also you can join APA/AACAP/other psych orgs for free or very cheap as a medical student and get their journals. APA has a monthly free CME course that is emailed out.
 
When I’m in your shoes next year I’ll probably be picking up Stahl’s psychopharmacology book or his prescribers guide and probably be doing some Uworld step 3 stuff just so I can get it out of the way early in residency. You gotta do 4 months of medicine 1st year so it wouldn’t hurt to get some step 3 studying under your belt so you’re not totally lost.

Good luck, hope you match at your #1!

Edit: grammar


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
Start by reading a text book. The higher level stuff can come later. Kaplan and Sadock or the APA textbook of general psychiatry are standard. Read psychotic disorders, then mood disorders, then anxiety disorders, if you get that far, circle back and hit the chapters you skipped. This will give you a much better running start than reading journals that report on the latest research that was finished 6 months ago. You would have to read two decades of journals to get a comprehensive education of psychiatry. You would be really up to date by 2038 but you wouldn't have a broad understanding of the field until you were half way to retirement. I'm all about keeping current, but you need a solid base to be credible and current.
 
I think reading a text book is best way to run screaming away from psychiatry. And sounds like a really boring spring.

My recommendation are
'Grief Observed' CS Lewis
'Trauma and Recovery' Judith Herman
'Body Keeps the Score' Bessel van der Kolk
'Miracle of Mindfulness' Thich Nhat Hanh
'Examined Life' Stephen Grosz
and maybe something from paulo freire or bell hooks.
 
mbgr2014 said:
Not exactly journal articles but...

Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
This podcast from This American Life: 81 Words - This American Life

Also you can join APA/AACAP/other psych orgs for free or very cheap as a medical student and get their journals. APA has a monthly free CME course that is emailed out.
Click to expand...

Ordered ‘Shrinks’ and ‘The center cannot hold’. Will invest in Kaplan and Sadock in the spring

Thanks all!
 
whackamole21 said:
Current 4th year about done with interviews. Any suggestions for light background reading about Psychiatry or medicine in general?

Do journal subscriptions cost a lot? I’ll probably get a psychopharm book and just do some light learning over the next six months. Not trying to prep for residency in any way, just obviously interested in the field and want to become more knowledgeable.
Click to expand...

1) Wait to see if you get an educational fund at your program - you might be able to buy books with that, saving you money. It's not necessary to read beforehand.

2) You will likely have some degree of journal access through your institution, making buying subscriptions moot. Again, wait and see.

I have a gigantic collection of articles that builds on the "100 Papers in Clinical Psychiatry" posted here a couple of years ago that I've thought about sharing, but with copyright and such I'm a little leery.
 
UW now also hosts that list of 100 articles so it is a bit easier to share with others without having to explain why some guy on an Internet forum said you ought to read them.

David Healy on the history of mania or Edward Shorter on how MDD came to be a thing are quite interesting lighter reads if you are interested in how the field got to be this way, but not everyone is interested in the long game.

Uncommon Psychiatric Syndromes is what I read between graduation and starting residency, was quite good. You will never diagnose what you are unaware of.
 
It will not help much with your clinical acumen, but definitely House of God if you have not read it yet.
 
Yup, the House of God audiobook got me through some long interview drives. Loved it
 
WisNeuro said:
A must read for anyone in the mental health field, Paul Meehl's "Why I Do Not Attend Case Conferences"

http://www.dgapractice.com/documents/meehl_case_conferences_adapted.pdf
(edited version)

http://meehl.umn.edu/sites/g/files/pua1696/f/099caseconferences.pdf
(full version)
Click to expand...

It’s an interesting article, but also super Debbie-downer, not descriptive of case conferences I learned from in residency, and not something I would prioritize reading right before getting into training, personally 🙂
 
SmallBird said:
It’s an interesting article, but also super Debbie-downer, not descriptive of case conferences I learned from in residency, and not something I would prioritize reading right before getting into training, personally 🙂
Click to expand...
Dude is definitely salty AF!
 
Taking Paul Meehl more seriously back in the day would have been tremendously helpful for the cognitive and brain sciences generally. We wouldn't have a replication crisis if he had not just been screaming into the void about so many things. Don't take my word for it:

The Puzzle of Paul Meehl: An intellectual history of research criticism in psychology - Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

@WisNeuro ''s suggested paper is a classic but this one is also gold: 144whysummaries.pdf | Paul E. Meehl

I think interns should probably not be reading him, though. I say this because few people in mental health are as obnoxious as first/second year clinical psych grad students who have zero experience but are pretty sure that because they have read some Meehl you can't tell them nothing. Combine that with the swagger/epistemic bravado of medical training and you have a catastrophe.

Anyone further on in training? If you are not reading him a bit and seriously grappling with what you are reading you are whistling past the graveyard.

Edit: has anyone ever produced any compelling research to disprove his contentions re: superiority of actuarial methods v. clinical interview for risk prediction?

I grow so weary of being looked to as a fortune-teller, I have half a mind to just pull my coat over my head and poke some entrails
 
Last edited:
clausewitz2 said:
Taking Paul Meehl more seriously back in the day would have been tremendously helpful for the cognitive and brain sciences generally. We wouldn't have a replication crisis if he had not just been screaming into the void about so many things. Don't take my word for it:

The Puzzle of Paul Meehl: An intellectual history of research criticism in psychology - Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

@WisNeuro ''s suggested paper is a classic but this one is also gold: 144whysummaries.pdf | Paul E. Meehl

I think interns should probably not be reading him, though. I say this because few people in mental health are as obnoxious as first/second year clinical psych grad students who have zero experience but are pretty sure that because they have read some Meehl you can't tell them nothing. Combine that with the swagger/epistemic bravado of medical training and you have a catastrophe.

Anyone further on in training? If you are not reading him a bit and seriously grappling with what you are reading you are whistling past the graveyard.

Edit: has anyone ever produced any compelling research to disprove his contentions re: superiority of actuarial methods v. clinical interview for risk prediction?

I grow so weary of being looked to as a fortune-teller, I have half a mind to just pull my coat over my head and poke some entrails
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree with all of this. I hope to have my interns come to morning report with curiosity and energy, but hopefully not cynical and resistant.
 
SmallBird said:
It’s an interesting article, but also super Debbie-downer, not descriptive of case conferences I learned from in residency, and not something I would prioritize reading right before getting into training, personally 🙂
Click to expand...

Always good to read a range of quality readings. Training is supposed to help you learn how to think and grapple with things, not just regurgitate information, which is altogether too common. Meehl publishes on a pretty broad range of things, the case conference paper just happens to be one of the more hilarious ones 🙂

clausewitz2 said:
Edit: has anyone ever produced any compelling research to disprove his contentions re: superiority of actuarial methods v. clinical interview for risk prediction?

I grow so weary of being looked to as a fortune-teller, I have half a mind to just pull my coat over my head and poke some entrails
Click to expand...

I haven't seen anything quality attempting to disprove this yet. If anyone has found something, I'd love to read it.
 
Easy reads where you learn something without trying
Shrinks (audiobook preferable)
Freud and Beyond- mitchell
The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of His Most Bizarre Cases- small
Clinical Studies in Neuro-Psychoanalysis
David Healy's books, but don't go too far and fall into the breggin crowd


Carlat report subscription, which opens up the archive.
 
mbgr2014 said:
Not exactly journal articles but...

Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
This podcast from This American Life: 81 Words - This American Life

Also you can join APA/AACAP/other psych orgs for free or very cheap as a medical student and get their journals. APA has a monthly free CME course that is emailed out.
Click to expand...

The Untold story was sick
 
WisNeuro said:
Always good to read a range of quality readings. Training is supposed to help you learn how to think and grapple with things, not just regurgitate information, which is altogether too common. Meehl publishes on a pretty broad range of things, the case conference paper just happens to be one of the more hilarious ones 🙂



I haven't seen anything quality attempting to disprove this yet. If anyone has found something, I'd love to read it.
Click to expand...

Meehl had this incredible ability to be super empirically/scientifically minded, yet very clinically open-minded and flexible at the same time. His time of training had much to with it, I'm sure (30's, 40s) but would have to imagine its a personality trait and thirst for knowledge that most of us simply lack.
 
SmallBird said:
It’s an interesting article, but also super Debbie-downer, not descriptive of case conferences I learned from in residency, and not something I would prioritize reading right before getting into training, personally 🙂
Click to expand...

IDK he had me at: "Reward everything—gold and garbage alike".
 
erg923 said:
Meehl had this incredible ability to be super empirically/scientifically minded, yet very clinically open-minded and flexible at the same time. His time of training had much to with it, I'm sure (30's, 40s) but would have to imagine its a personality trait and thirst for knowledge that most of us simply lack.
Click to expand...

Also, genuinely understanding the mathematics involved in the issues of concern to him allowing actual development of chains of reasoning instead of having to rely on memorized rules probably helped.
 
Sorry to bump this thread... but I began reading The Center Can Not Hold after seeing the recommendations here, and the author is so pretentious that she is unlikeable. Not sure if that is an unpopular opinion or not.
 
XannyBarz said:
Sorry to bump this thread... but I began reading The Center Can Not Hold after seeing the recommendations here, and the author is so pretentious that she is unlikeable. Not sure if that is an unpopular opinion or not.
Click to expand...

Unlikeable, seriously?

Have you won a macaurthur genius award yet?
 
XannyBarz said:
Sorry to bump this thread... but I began reading The Center Can Not Hold after seeing the recommendations here, and the author is so pretentious that she is unlikeable. Not sure if that is an unpopular opinion or not.
Click to expand...

I think you're allowed to be slightly full of yourself if you have genuinely managed to work as a law professor at Stanford as someone who heard voices not infrequently
 
XannyBarz said:
Sorry to bump this thread... but I began reading The Center Can Not Hold after seeing the recommendations here, and the author is so pretentious that she is unlikeable. Not sure if that is an unpopular opinion or not.
Click to expand...

I purchased the book after hearing her present and didn't get this feeling from either. In fact when she spoke her tone was pragmatic with what I interpreted as a bit of self-depreciating humor. Overall she came across as bright and minimally awkward but likeable. While I pictured her experiences from a clinical standpoint she was sharing her impression of her journey which has been rather remarkable.
 
I was thinking about getting something to delve into in the months leading up to residency. Is K&S Synopsis of Psych worth reading? Or would the prescribers guide be a more practical choice?
 
Not sure if it fits, but I find Paul Fletcher (@PaulPcf22) and Vaughan Bell (@vaughanbell) to be great follows on Twitter.
 
Roxas said:
Or would the prescribers guide be a more practical choice?
Click to expand...
(Gawd, why is this book so popular, it's awful in so many ways)
For a practical psychopharm book, Carlat's Medication Fact Book would be a much better choice.
You do need more than learning facts about individual drugs, however practical they are. For a fairly quick but solid read on psychopharm overview, I really liked Labbate's et al Handbook of Psychiatric Drug Therapy (it's a bit old but not at all dated, aside from not including drugs like cariprazine, which you'll read about in Carlat's).

Synopsis is a worthy investment and read, but I think your enthusiasm will wane when you meet the book in person.

As part of the time honored psychiatry residency hazing ritual, every incoming resident should have a copy of Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology (NOT the Prescriber's guide, which people often confuse when they hear recommendations for "the Stahl's book"), which will ultimately serve you well on your post call mornings as a highly effective, quite certainly non-addictive and safe side effect profile sleeping aid.
 
Amygdarya said:
(Gawd, why is this book so popular, it's awful in so many ways)
For a practical psychopharm book, Carlat's Medication Fact Book would be a much better choice.
You do need more than learning facts about individual drugs, however practical they are. For a fairly quick but solid read on psychopharm overview, I really liked Labbate's et al Handbook of Psychiatric Drug Therapy (it's a bit old but not at all dated, aside from not including drugs like cariprazine, which you'll read about in Carlat's).

Synopsis is a worthy investment and read, but I think your enthusiasm will wane when you meet the book in person.

As part of the time honored psychiatry residency hazing ritual, every incoming resident should have a copy of Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology (NOT the Prescriber's guide, which people often confuse when they hear recommendations for "the Stahl's book"), which will ultimately serve you well on your post call mornings as a highly effective, quite certainly non-addictive and safe side effect profile sleeping aid.
Click to expand...


The only known but potentially serious side effect is annoying the bejeezus out of co-residents by wild yet somehow pedantic speculation about why receptors affinities means their choice of medication was obviously dumb.
 
Speaking of reading and Stahl, I quite accidentally bumped into a brand new psychopharm text by Nassir Ghaemi, the whole intention of which is to be anti-Stahl: Amazon product ASIN 0199995486I’m getting the book. Meanwhile, based on the Kindle sample, Ghaemi’s proposed approach to psychopharm is definitely thought provoking and worth reading for any psychiatrist, but certainly not without its flaws (I see plenty of issues with his reclassification of psychiatric drugs, and it’s only the first few pages). Would love to discuss it with you guys.
 
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