(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best psychiatry books

http://www.amazon.com/First-Aid-Psychiatry-Clerkship-Third/dp/0071739238

I agree, this book is great for the psych shelf :)

Tenho TOC, o que mais me incomodava eram os pensamentos intrusivos, as vezes eu via claramente eu matando as pessoas, mesmo da família, eram pensamentos bem gráficos, não só pessoas como animais também. Tenho tiques também, seja de olhar pro relógio e ver alguns números, ou colocar e tirar e colocar e tirar e colocar e tirar a chave do buraco da porta ou do carro, apagar e acender luzes, movimentos com os olhos, e mais um monte de coisa, inclusive escrever, apagar e escrever de novo, se for a mão, eu reescrevo em cima, meu caderno sempre foi cheio de palavras com a escrita grossa devido as repetições. Pensamentos que me via agarrando as pessoas e tascando-lhes beijos calientes, mesmo com minha vó, era só eu conversar com alguém que aquele pensamento vinha, podia ser meus pais, meu professor, qualquer pessoa que eu conversasse, o pensamento vinha. Ou até mesmo os pensamentos sexuais, seja na rua, seja onde for, eles apareciam, era só ver um rabo de saia e lá estava meu pensamento.

Uns 2-3 anos atrás comecei a me interessar como funcionava a mente, comecei a ler sobre Flow, porém não terminei, o livro é cheio de explicações que eu não entendia nada. Depois fui indo mais pro lado da meditação e mindfulness, comecei a ler sobre também, li esse que me abriu bem a cabeça em relação aos pensamentos e medos (muita gente pode falar "AH MAS É AUTO AJUDA", eu sei, mas pra quem ta na merda, qualquer coisa pode ajudar) hoje leio esse livro, é voltado tanto para pacientes como para terapeutas, ele explica bastante coisa sobre ansiedade, medos, tem exercícios também, fala bastante de mindfulness que seria atenção plena, tem bastante livro sobre isso, estou nele há um bom tempo já, mas quero ir até o final.

Cheguei a ler um livro sobre TOC mesmo, depois de ler os outros, esse chegou em hora certa para mim, como eu já sabia mais ou menos como o TOC agia em mim, eu lia as coisas e pensava "po, o cara em tal livro tinha falado disso", só que eu não conseguia ver como usar aquilo no TOC, eu recomendo MUITO esse livro pra quem tem TOC.

Hoje faço tratamento com fluoxetina (luvox 150mg) e psicoterapia, eu comecei a fazer e não estava em crise, já estava tomando o remédio há uns 3 meses, a terapeuta mesmo diz que hoje eu estou super bem, e eu mesmo percebo isso (eu também tinha fobia social). Acho que o auto conhecimento é super importante quando você se trata de um distúrbio mental, pra saber como como ele funciona e poder reagir a ele.


A minha terapeuta fala bastante de não se deixar levar pelos pensamentos, de estar sempre presente. Eu quando começo a pensar em coisas que sei que não são reais, ou são dúvidas do TOC, eu falo pra mim mesmo que aquilo não é real e é fruto do TOC. O que me ajuda bastante também é identificar o que é TOC e o que não é, assim eu sei quando devo me preocupar com alguma coisa ou não.


Se quiser conversar mais só mandar mp.


TLDR: Contei minha trajetória na minha guerra contra o TOC, recomendei livros e como faço pra evitar me levar pelos pensamentos.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychiatry-PRN-Principles-Reality-Steps/dp/0199561982

Psychiatry PRN best med student psych textbook ever, have met 2 of the authors-both amazing teachers


Practice classic history takes (definitely psychosis, depression, mania, if possible anxiety disorder, eating disorder)

Practice suicide/self harm/harm to others risk assessment

Practice mental state exam

Enjoy the absurdity of psych

Psychiatric Interviewing by Shawn Shea, Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder by Marsha Linehan, and CFT Made Simple by Russell Kolts.

Plenty of others ... what sort of specific topics are you interested in?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IOU9IYQ/ref=clair_cor__1?_encoding=UTF8&cor=US&priceChange=1

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If you haven't already, give this a spin

A strange read of course, but it's not how the description makes it out. I expected a kind of incoherent lore to a psychoses, it's not that. I found it particularly interesting that he goes on about his diet impacting his 'ghost bugs' and a study about gut bacteria and schizophrenia was just published

My recommendations may be a little strange. I am from Taiwan. And after I knew that my diagnosis is schizophrenia for a while, I bought a book named "Practical Psychiatric Medicine (實用精神醫學 in Chinese)" and read it. I found it is interesting and it might had helped my insight about my disorder. But after that I still had a few times something abnormal happened in my perception (but I recovered by myself).

The analogous of such book in English might be "Psychiatry at a Glance" or some (relevant) parts of Khan Academy like:

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/health-and-medicine

https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/nclex-rn

Our professor assigned this book. It was thorough and I liked it at the time but I haven't returned to it until I needed to review my agency's intake assessment form.

The First Interview, Fourth Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/146251555X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_.HsMBbJVVW8S3

No excuse now!

(Except that price, gee wizz!)

You can just order it off the U.K. Amazon site.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1909494151/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_buqLzbBG0YKN5

> Indoctrination only teaches them that their decision-making process comes from an
>imaginary external source.

But then one can project responsibility for one's actions onto the imaginary authority figure and short-circuit one's own conscience, as shown in Askenasy's Are We All Nazis?.

I read something in this book or this other book saying that people that find God are more likely to remit from ASPD and BPD. They said that finding god almost imperative to recover from ASPD.

I'm highly critical of all the theist religions, tho and I don't think that their whole illogical reasoning is going to get through patients with a higher IQ.

I'm sorry you had to go through this.

The rules are very clear that this is not okay. The APA code of ethics is a good thing to read to get a sense of the rules that therapists are requires to follow. If you want something more technical http://www.amazon.com/Boundaries-Boundary-Violations-Psychoanalysis-Gabbard/dp/158562098X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377453457&sr=8-1&keywords=boundaries+gabbard is a good book about therapists who cross boundaries.

You are not responsible for this in any way. This is no ambiguity in the rules here for therapists. There is no situation where he should have been doing the things you described. No matter what you may or may not have done there is no situation where you are at fault here. Even if a client came into an office coming onto the therapist like a cheeze porn movie or something the therapist would still be to blame for doing anything. When a therapist is involved with their client in non professional ways they are taking advantage of the power dynamic that exists so it is impossible for the 2 people to have a relationship without it being exploitive.

You don't have to report anything if you don't want to. But you may want to think about the risk that what happened to you could happen to others. You might not be the only one who had this happen.

Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual 2

Psychoanalytic Diagnosis

The Psychiatric Interview

The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense

Sim’s Symptoms of the Mind

https://www.amazon.com/Studies-Every-Psychiatrist-Should-Doctor/dp/0190625082/ref=asc_df_0190625082/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312009828129&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16894957459879113186&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1028087&hvtargid=pla-487827867270&psc=1

Sorry, I need to ask, is it this one? https://www.amazon.com/DSM-5-Clinical-Cases-John-Barnhill/dp/1585624632

Or maybe this one

https://www.amazon.de/Learning-Dsm-5-r-Case-Example/dp/1615370161/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1479491751&sr=8-4-fkmr0&keywords=DSM-5+through+clinical+cases

How "quick" are you looking for? If you want to be done in under a half hour then Psych Lite might be what you're looking for. If you've got about an hour then try Psychiatry Made Ridiculously Simple. If you've got a full day, Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry may be the way to go.

this is a shitty uphill battle for you, im both angry and sorry its happening. i dont know if it may help, but checking out this book might give some insight into what you can learn and do

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199350647/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_EC5oDb79YYWQV

First Aid for the Mental Health Clerkship is a really good primer if you haven't done your psych rotation yet.

Have you done your psych rotation yet?

Because (as quoted from an earlier response of mine to a similar question): "unless you've actively been involved in trying to treat someone as they devolve into catatonia or disorganization ... seen the aftermath, observed just how limited the tools we have to combat mental illness are. Watched that struggle first hand, seen failure and recurrence after failure and recurrence ... you have no idea what you're getting yourself into."

I haven't worked in psych, I only had a 6-week rotation, though when I was an EMT I saw plenty of psych too. I rotated through a county facility, where we had inpatient, and emergency.

In psych emergency, we'd have patients primarily brought in on 5150s (72 Hour Eval / Involuntary Hold). But there wasn't the resources to actually sit down with these people regularly, explore their home resources, get them the sort of time-intensive therapy that a lot of them needed. You just had to figure out if they were going to hurt somebody RIGHT AWAY, or not. And if not, they went back out onto the street, or home.

So you'd get in and do hand-off: Who's in for what, what'd they do, who'd been evaluated, who hadn't, and the all important warnings of who was about to snap.

Then you'd just go and talk to them. What happened to bring them here? Any thoughts of hurting themselves? Others? People were pretty forthright. You might be the only person who actually cared to listen to them in a month, so they'd talk. Then it was either "Yeah, he/she needs to be admitted because they might hurt themselves or others still" or "Discharge" or "I need to talk to them more later." Maybe you'd call around to whatever facility they came from, or their family, and get their history and all that.

We didn't have the resources for things like Cog B therapy, etc. We'd just shuttle them into categories based on the DSM "Bipolar, Type I, Manic Phase," start them on a drug, and refer them.

If somebody needed rehab or something, we'd try to get them placed, but there probably wasn't a bed available. If they seemed like they actually were going to try, like getting clean mattered, we'd try to get them a bed at a good one, the others instead might go to one of the ones that were clearly trying to get the biggest profit margin they could muster. But even that was unlikely.

The inpatient care portion of the facility had the more severe patients. Your schizophrenics and anybody who continued to say they really wanted to kill themselves or somebody else, and anybody who still refused to talk. The nurses would corral each one in turn so they'd be ready, they'd sit down, we'd talk to them, find out if they were taking their meds, and either keep them or discharge them. Sometimes the psychiatrist would only ask one question. "Why aren't you taking your meds?" or "Do you want to talk today?" and they'd say nothing and glare, and then it was back onto the floor for them, and maybe we'd see them tomorrow. Then we'd head out to the floor for the more unruly ones, and talk to them if they'd let us, and if not, we'd keep them for longer.

You'll note that everything seems to center around discharge or not in a public facility. There just wasn't the resources for anything more. But even if we had access to more, I don't know how far we'd get them.

Because in psych, there is no cure. And the treatments are sometimes as disabling as the disease. We don't know enough about the brain yet, how it works, to really fix anything. In the best cases, we help people enough that they can manage in the world, and hold down a job and keep their family together. You do that once, it made your week. But there were so very, very few of those.

And the others, they would stick in your head. The 12 year old exhibiting early signs of schizophrenia. How you had to tell the parents what to expect, the road they were headed down. How the parents argued and yelled and blamed each other despite your best attempts to explain that it was neither of their fault. How you'd already seen where it ends up in your other patients. "What's going to happen to me?" "Well, we're going to try to start you on some medications, and then mommy and daddy are going to take you home." "I'm scared. Will I be okay?" "We're going to do our best." But you were sitting in a room full of people who didn't end up okay. The woman mumbling to herself in the corner? Same diagnosis. The guy screaming non-sensical biblical verses at every passerby? Same diagnosis. I'm not going to tell you, but I'm scared for you too, kid. I'm scared for you too.

And the housewife, back from rehab for just two days and relapsed, because before she'd left for rehab, in a drunken flurry had hid little bottles of alcohol all over the house for herself to find when sober. How she cried when she talked about her two little girls, and how they thought daddy was mean for taking mommy away. And talking things through, and and crying with her and feeling like you'd made a difference, had a catharsis. And then seeing her back two days later. Because when she tried to find and throw away the hidden bottles, she'd thought "Well, what a waste, I'll just have a bit and throw the rest away."

There were those who would scream and shout obscenities until they lost all meaning.

But the scary ones were the ones who smiled at you, who weren't outwardly angry, or sad, who patiently and happily sat, waiting to be evaluated. Because you had no idea what was going on beneath the surface.

You wanted to know the joys and difficulties of psychiatry. I once asked an attending how he coped with all that he sees on a daily basis. And he said as soon as he closes a chart, he forgets it. All of it. Everything had to stay in the chart. He said in the beginning he would have to remind himself not to think about a patient outside of work. After awhile, it was habit.

I don't know if everybody's like that, but you might not get too many responses if most people are.

Because otherwise, psych eats at you. At least, it does for me. You have to sympathize, but not empathize. Even now, when I see a psych patient, I'm drained afterwards.

You asked about the joys and difficulties.

It was only a 6 week rotation, but I don't know if I remember any joy.