“Life is short, the art (of medicine) long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous and judgement difficult.”
Hippocrates
It becomes much more difficult when an inadequately trained doctor has to face a sea of patients with symptoms he/she is unable to comprehend. The World Health Organisation predicts that depression will be second only to coronary artery disease as the most common cause of morbidity by 2020. Even though Medical Council of India does not entail psychiatry to be taught as a separate subject, it is for premier institutions like the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), to adequately train the undergraduate students so that once graduated, they are not found lacking in relieving their patients often and comforting them always, besides curing them sometimes, as the dictum goes. This handbook gives the medical students, a comprehensive initiation into the subject of psychiatry.
This is the fourth edition of the handbook, and has been well updated. The book has been published out of the training grants received by the Department of Psychiatry, AFMC, and is distributed free of cost to the undergraduate students. In order to simplify the comprehension, and to make it further more lucid, tables, text boxes, case vignettes, and multiple choice questions have been added.
In the initial chapters, the book gives the basics of symptomatology, classification, and examination. In subsequent chapters, the editors have dealt with the common psychiatric disorders. As well brought out in the preamble, there is an increased number of older population and in view of this a chapter on geriatric psychiatry has been aptly included. Considering the book has been written for students of the AFMC, there is a chapter on Military Psychiatry, which suitably primes the undergraduates about the unique stresses in military settings. At the same time, the editors have thoughtfully also included another chapter on “Community Psychiatry”, which gives an overview of the existing mental health services, including the roles of health care professionals in mental health care at various levels in the civilian set-up.
In keeping with the literal meaning of a handbook, it has been kept comprehensive. The editors have done a good job in their attempt at keeping it concise yet informative, without making it bulky, both in technicality as well as volume of content. It would definitely help in honing the clinical case-taking skills as well as polishing the soft-skills of the undergraduates in their formative years as medical students. Such a book can also be incorporated in the curriculum of students in the medical colleges elsewhere, so as to help bridge the gap between demand of adequately trained medical practitioners and supply of the same.