Surviving Mental Illness or Instructions for Geriatric Patients

Surviving Mental Illness

Author: Agnes B Hatfield

In this era of revolutionary progress in the areas of science and medicine, it comes as no surprise that knowledge of the biology of mental illness and psychopharmacologic treatments has increased greatly within the past few decades. During this same time frame, however, the experiential side of mental illness has been almost completely neglected by researchers and educators. Fortunately, the trend is being reversed. Leading authorities are becoming increasingly aware that the personal experiences of people with severe and persistent mental illness can reveal the most authentic--and perhaps most helpful--information on behaviors that have long puzzled professionals in the field. This has contributed to a renewed and growing interest in learning more about the ways people experience mental illness and the process of recovery.
Leading the way in redressing the imbalance, this book examines the subjective experiences of patients with multiple diagnoses, including schizophrenia, bipolar illness, major endogenous depression, and other disorders with psychotic features and long-term disabling consequences. Numerous personal accounts are drawn from research reports, newsletters, journals, spoken reports, and observed behavior to shed light on the inner worlds of people afflicted with severe and persistent mental illness.
The volume covers a wide range of topics, starting with disturbances in the sense of self, in emotions, relationships, and behaviors, and in the ways reality is experienced by the mentally ill. In the process, some common patterns of lifetime experience are revealed even among patients with great differences in levels of functional capability and in their emotionaland rational assessment of their experience.
The final section of the book is directed toward understanding the process of acceptance, growth toward recovery, and the development of an acceptable identity and new purpose in life.
Material is presented within the conceptual framework of coping and adaptation and self theory; in addition, considerable attention is given to the patient's perception of which types of personal and professional relationships have been helpful or not helpful. As a result, the book yields important lessons--from the patients themselves--on how service providers, caregivers, and the community at large can be most helpful to those afflicted with major mental illness.
Professionals who wish to increase their capacity for empathy, develop more effective rehabilitation strategies, and advance research linking brain anomalies and patient experience will find this book illuminating. Because it illustrates in moving and powerful ways how people truly experience psychiatric disability in a society that demeans their condition and in a helping environment that only dimly understands their agony, the book will be extremely useful for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, educators, and graduate students in psychopathology and clinical skills training.

See also: Living Well with Back Pain or Yoga Sanctuary

Instructions for Geriatric Patients

Author: William A Sodeman Jr

The resource American Family Physician called "a valuable and convenient source of educational guides"
is back in an updated New Edition. All the most common diseases, conditions, and problems encountered
in outpatient geriatric care are covered by 185 information sheets. Each sheet features an overview of the problem, important points of treatment, directions on when to contact a physician, and space for customized instructions. Plus, a bonus CD-ROM offers the instruction sheets in a handy electronic format!
• Improves compliance, calms concerns, and strengthens the doctor-patient relationship.
• Examines clinical conditions such as depression, heart failure, stroke, pneumonia, anemia as well as issues such as incontinence, falls, nutrition and diets, driving, end-of-life care, living wills, and much more.
• Addresses issues specific to caregivers and anticipates difficulties they encounter.
• Features perforated pages for ease of photocopying as well as customizable PDF versions of all 185 sheets on the bonus CD-ROM.
• Allows readers to add their own instructions with additional space provided on each printed topic sheet.
• Makes information easy to grasp with a large type size and a consistent, patient-friendly format.
• More than new 35 instructions that discusses SARS, PSA testing, macular degeneration, infections in diabetics, immunizations, and much more.
• Careful scrutiny and revision of all information sheets to ensure adherence to existing standards of care.

David O. Staats

This book is a manual of information and instructions for patients and their caregivers about common illness and conditions faced by older persons. The purpose is to provide physicians information sheets they can give to their patients to supplement or reinforce discussions in the doctor's office. The audience is physicians treating older patients, the older patients themselves, and their caregivers. The large type here is just right for older persons to read. This edition comes with a CD-ROM to use in reproducing and modifying information to fit each practitioner's office. The instructions for patients provided here are superficial and often do not help practitioners or caregivers assess the most salient aspects of a given illness or condition. Some of the therapeutics discussed are out of date and no longer used. Therefore, this work is of little utility.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer: David O. Staats, MD (University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center)
Description: This book provides a set of patient and caregiver information sheets for conditions and treatment affecting older persons. This is an updated version of the second edition, published in 1999, and contains revisions in a number of areas and adds 35 new topics, such as PSA screening and SARS.
Purpose: The purpose is to provide office-based medical practitioners easily reproduced sheets of patient information to give to patients. This is a worthy objective; the authors cover a wide range of conditions.
Audience: Although this book is intended for office-based practitioners, it is ultimately the patients and their caregivers for whom the information is intended.
Features: There are a wide variety of conditions addressed in this book. Medicolegal issues are also presented, as are various diagnostic tests. A really nice feature of this edition is the enclosure of a CD-ROM which can be used to reproduce the pages of the book. Practitioners can modify the text to add their own particular information:this adds to the versatility of the publication. There is a final section of anatomical charts and diagrams which are very clear and easy to understand.
Assessment: The breadth of this book is admirable; the depth is not. The information presented here is, in many cases, too simple to be of the value intended. For some of these topics, e.g. dementia, the Internet has web sites that go into elaborate detail on the condition and its care that a single sheet of paper (back and front) cannot hope to equal. If this book stimulates office physicians to develop patient education materials based on this book, it will have accomplished a lot.

Rating

2 Stars from Doody

Table of Contents:

1	Confusion	1
2	Cerebrovascular Diseases	21
3	Tremors	35
4	Sleep Disturbances	41
5	Falls and Instability	51
6	Vision	57
7	Hearing	69
8	Incontinence	77
9	Gastrointestinal Problems	91
10	Cardiovascular Problems	133
11	Pulmonary Diseases	163
12	Nutrition	177
13	Hematologic Problems	235
14	Endocrine Disease	243
15	Genitourinary Problems	251
16	Temperature Regulation	261
17	Rheumatic and Orthopedic Problems	267
18	Skin Diseases	287
19	Surgery	299
20	Infections	305
21	Paget's Disease of Bone	313
22	Legal Issues	317
23	Charts and Diagrams	321