psychopharmacology textbook

[pisekar]

Hi everyone,

I am a PGY-1 psychiatry resident and I completed my non-psych rotations. I want to start a psychopharmacology book but I couldn't decide which one is better;

1. Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology
2. Essentials of Clinical Psychopharmacology

I started to read Kaplan&Saddock but it has been really difficult to read that book during the intern year.

Appreciate for your advice

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[splik]

both are good. you may have online access too so check out your library's ebooks!

Stahl is nice and colorful. The latter has more actual content related to clinical stuff rather than the neuroscience/mechanisms and is referenced to back up the points and talks about the studies. Stahl talks about the drug classes and profiles of the individual drugs. For clinical use I prefer Stahl's Prescriber's guide which has all the drugs, and gives you dosing info, side-effects, special populations etc.

I also highly recommend the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines (as mentioned in another threat). As this is by disorder and goes through the pharmacological management step-wise of different conditions including treatment-resistant conditions, pregnancy, breastfeeding, patients with medical comorbidities, is very well referenced. Again you may have online access.

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

Colorful is a good adjective to describe Stahl’s text. If you want gray areas presented as gray, I suggest Philip Janicak’s Principles and practice of Psychopharmacotherapy.

K & S is important to study as all PGY-Is should try and plow through a general text before wondering off into the infinite world of current literature. General textbooks are not sufficient pharmacology resources. Try and get through a general text and some pharm early. If you find yourself reading journals or specific therapy texts about ITP, object relations or DBT before you have the basics, you are doing something wrong.

 

[whopper]

I've never been a fan of K&S. Each edition is either not enough or too much. Each edition's price is ridiculously expensive. The board-review book is anything but. It's a book with questions and answers but not written in the style of the board exam and about 75% of it's content is not anything you will see on the exam or anything anyone really uses.

A pet-peeve with K&S is they don't cite the specific source of information. Yes at the end of the chapter there's a bibliography but it's not specified to the exact fact given. So if you see something in the text you only have to look through about 30 sources before you can figure out where exactly it came from.

I would rather promote psychiatric textbooks from other sources.

I guess it does boil down to personal preference since not everyone processes information the same, but I've rarely met anyone that really likes K&S.

Mentioned this before. Harrison's IM is the gold-standard text in IM. It deserves that title. It's well-written, almost definitive with each disorder it has, and cites all of it's sources very well. K&S vs Harrison's is like American airport security vs Isreali airport security.

 

[FireBurns]

Maudsley is awesome. But wait until May if you are going to buy it there is a new one coming out.

They keep pushing back the release date. They just made an app for their previous version, they will probably make a new app when the new book comes out too.

 

[thepoopologist]

Not as up to date but it's a quicker read. I have the Stahl books as well.