Incorporating the latest developments in pharmacology and therapy, this fully revised Second Edition is an ideal quick reference for those who prescribe psychotrophic drugs for young people. New and notable features include: discussions of new drugs and health supplements; revised diagnostic terminology that accords with current DSM-IV nomenclature; reports on anti-epileptic medications; guidelines for the appropriate use of psychoactive medications; and instruction on the monitoring of physical, behavioral, and cognitive effects of various drugs. The handy spiral format makes the book easy to use.

This book offers a comprehensive survey of the current state of knowledge in the field of neuro-psychopharmacology in childhood and adolescence. In the first part, the essentials of neuro-psychopharmacology are presented in order to provide a deeper understanding of the principles and particularities in the pharmacotherapy of children and adolescents. This part includes information on neurotransmitters and signal transduction pathways, molecular brain structures as targets for psychiatric drugs, characteristics of psychopharmacological therapy in children and adolescents, ontogenetic influences on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, and pharmacotherapy in the outpatient setting. The part on classes of psychiatric medications, which covers antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics and sedative-hypnotics, mood stabilizers, and psychostimulants and other drugs used in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, provides sufficient background material to better understand how psychoactive drugs work, and why, when, and for whom they should be used. For each drug within a class, information on its mechanisms of action, clinical pharmacology, indications, dosages, and cognate issues are reviewed. In the third part, the disorder-specific and symptom-oriented medication is described and discerningly evaluated from a practical point of view, providing physicians with precise instructions on how to proceed. Psychiatric Drugs in Children and Adolescents includes numerous tables, figures and illustrations and offers a valuable reference work for child and adolescent psychiatrists and psychotherapists, pediatricians, general practitioners, psychologists, and nursing staff, as well as teachers.

The fourth edition of this enormously popular book, "highly recommended" by "JAMA", reaffirms its position as the most comprehensive and practical reference in its field. This updated, spiral-bound volume provides immediately useful information for prescribing and administering psychoactive drugs, with important information and highlighted in boxes.

In the eight years since the publication of the second edition of this Guide, psycho phannacotherapy has made many advances not only through the discovery of new medications but by the effective directing of their use to an ever-increasing variety of clinical disorders. These welcome developments are reflected in the concurrent growth and development of the Guide itself, which now enters adulthood with renewed vigor. Under the thoughtful and scholarly leadership of Dr. Alan Gelenberg, the third edition has undergone a significant transformation designed to meet the needs of the modem clinician. The panel of contributors is nearly double that of the former edition with the addition of nine new authors, who have helped in the major revision and rewriting of the text and in a broadening of the topics included. As a conse quence, the reader is assured of a thorough and thoroughly up-to-date coverage of current psychopharmacology that is both accurate and aimed at clinical utility. Having reached maturity, the third edition, while maintaining the lineaments of its earlier versions, is a considerably expanded and strengthened guide to treatment. Although now more encyclopedic in content, the new Practitioner' s Guide to Psy choactive Drugs retains the virtues of a clinical vade mecum that informed its predecessors and have eamed it a place by the patient's bedside for weIl over a decade. One may confidently anticipate its long and flourishing career in the years ahead. John C. Nemiah, M.D.