Reviews for American handbook of psychiatry

The average rating for American handbook of psychiatry based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-05-08 00:00:00 Jack Storey Second chapter is much improved over the first edition's. First chapter is better too, but is still too long-winded. Overall, this is a very good book for its intended audience of medical students or non-psychiatrist physicians.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-05-18 00:00:00 Stephen Sodaro Although my version is very dated (1962), if you have any interest at all in abnormal psych or mental illness, this book is like a goldmine. It shows that psychiatrists thought about various mental disorders at that time. Granted, no one thought it was biological, and various psychological theories are offered up. The case vignettes are brilliant. Furthermore, this book is not PC at all, thank God! For instance, the book employs the "happy Negro" stereotype regarding Blacks and mental illness. The book states that in terms of mood disorders, Blacks seldom get depressed. Well of course happy Negroes don't get bummed out. On the other hand, the one mood syndrome that they are susceptible to was mania, which is precisely the sort of mental illness that one would expect the happy Negro to develop if and when he did go nuts. And lo and behold, this illness could possibly be described as being "too happy." Yep, it's actually possible to be too happy, and manics are the classic example of this. Not only are manics too happy, but they are actually so excessively happy that they are be nuts! The Chinese say, "moderation in all things." Too much of anything, even a good thing, might not be a good idea. I mean for Chrissake you can drink too much water, so much that you die! Obviously this whole vignette about Blacks and mental illness could not possibly be printed anywhere nowadays in book form, and it would be banned from most print and the vast majority of the Internet. The only places it might be found would be on the blogs of bloggers who simply do not care what sort of names they get called. I say that because anyone writing this today would be called racist so many times that it might become the person's nickname. Nevertheless, who says the "racist" text above about Blacks and mental illness is false? The writer is fair-minded, non-racist and simply observational. He's describing what he and other clinicians have seen regarding mental illness and Blacks for decades. Either their eyes and ears were lying to them or they were onto something. Which will it be? Furthermore, truth is a defense against racism and any other of the bigoted isms. No true factual statement can possibly be racist because facts don't have good and bad qualities per se. They're too busy sitting there being facts. To call a fact racist is to imply that that particular fact has a mind of its own, and a depraved and immoral one at that. So SJW's really want to die on that hill?