Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Today's psychiatry is having a profound impact on patients and their families. By recognizing and attacking the biological and neurological causes of certain mental illnesses, modern psychiatric care enables many of those afflicted to lead richer lives.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Heston, who writes for general readers, is a psychiatrist who aims to introduce the broad public to what he sees as the ^D["quiet revolution^D]" of psychiatry becoming a true medical specialty. This ^D["new psychiatry^D]" focuses on ^D["study of the brain as a biologic tissue.^D]" Heston's second aim is to provide information for patients and their families, at the level of ^D["if ECT is recommended by your doctor. . . ,^D]" ^D["if someone close to you is abusing drugs. . . ,^D]" etc. Each major disorder is prefaced with a case vignette: ^D["George had become unusually quiet and retiring for a 17-year old. . . .^D]" The utility of the very brief biological information presented for each disorder is questionable. Readers who are patients and family members will have already been told this information by their physicians. Most standard undergraduate abnormal psychology textbooks cover that data and much more, including additional variables such as personality, history of development, and environment, all of which Heston explicitly eschews: ^D["All emotion is produced by internal physiologic processes that are largely (though not completely) independent of external events.^D]" The book's title misleads, in that the volume is not at all about minds but about brains.