Melancholia
Melancholia
Max Fink, State University of New York, Stony Brook
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This book provides a comprehensive review of melancholia as a severe disorder of mood, associated with suicide, psychosis, and catatonia. The syndrome is defined with a clear diagnosis, prognosis, and range of management strategies, differentiated from other similar psychiatric, neurological, and general medical conditions. It challenges accepted doctrines in the classification and biology of the mood disorders and defines melancholia as a treatable mental illness. Described for millennia in medical texts and used as a term in literature and poetry, melancholia was included within early versions of the major diagnostic classificatory systems, but lost favour in later editions. This book updates the arguments for the diagnosis, describes its characteristics in detail, and promotes treatment and prevention. The book offers great hope to those with a disorder too often mis-diagnosed and often fatal. It should be read by all those responsible for the management of patients with mood disorders.
- Defines melancholia as a recognisable syndrome affecting a large number of depressed patients
- Describes the disorder in terms of signs, symptoms and characteristics
- Details strategies for treatment and prevention
- Supplemented throughout with illustrative case vignettes
Reviews & endorsements
"Taylor and Fink are right to call attention to the current neglect of melancholic depression...The authors' emphasis on the special nature of melancholia serves as a welcome reminder that we should pay more attention to this blackest form of mood disorder."
Samuel H. Barondes, The New England Journal of Medicine
"...the historical information and broad understanding of the complex subject matter will be valid for many years to come."
Victoria A. Shea, M.D., Psychiatric Services
"The book elegantly integrates genetic predispositions, environmental stressors, temperament, and neurophysiology to both explain what is known about the causes of melancholia and to chart a research agenda.... should be required reading for younger clinicians and residents trained under the hegemony of categorical classification systems..."
Cynthia M. A. Geppert, MD, PhD, MPH, Psychiatric Times
"I doubt anyone has ever written as comprehensive a book on any aspect of mood disorder.... Overall an outstanding work, thorough and precise. It is written at several levels, and can be read by anyone, no matter what level of training or professional expertise."
Roy Sugarman, Ph.D., Director of Clinical and Neuropsychological Services, Brain Resource Company, Ultimo, Australia
Metapsychology Online Reviews
Product details
February 2010Paperback
9780521131247
564 pages
244 × 170 × 29 mm
0.89kg
Available
Table of Contents
- List of patient vignettes
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1. Melancholia: a conceptual history
- 2. Melancholia defined
- 3. Defining melancholia by psychopathology
- 4. Defining melancholia: laboratory tests
- 5. Examination for melancholia
- 6. The differential diagnosis of melancholia
- 7. Suicide in melancholia
- 8. Electroconvulsive therapy for melancholia
- 9. Achieving effective ECT
- 10. The validity of the pharmacotherapy literature in melancholia
- 11. Basic pharmacotherapy for melancholic patients
- 12. Pharmacotherapy of melancholia: complicating circumstances.
