Schizophrenia is devastating psychiatric disorder that is often misunderstood. Demystifying Schizophrenia for the General Practitioner is an essential manual for clinicians illustrating how schizophrenia affects patients, their families and society using poignant real world examples to explain its onset, progression and prognosis. This book includes criteria for diagnosing schizophrenia based on the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM). Special emphasis is placed on differential diagnosis, co-morbidities, medications, and additional treatment options. The authors provide expert guidance on helping patients to cope with family and cultural issues for this highly complex disorder.

Manual of Clinical Psychopharmacology for Nurses offers a holistic approach to psychopharmacological prescribing from a nursing perspective and is the only text designed especially for Psychiatric Mental Health Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (P.M.H.-A.P.R.N.s). The Manual is grounded in the belief that given their nursing background and their personalized approach to the individual, P.M.H.-A.P.R.N.s are uniquely qualified to offer symptom-based treatment within the context of an individual's medical and psychological care. A comprehensive resource for advanced practice nurses, mental health practitioners, general practitioners, and consumers, this book possesses many useful features, including the following: A logical, easy-to-use format that guides the reader through the most common psychiatric conditions, presenting the diagnostic criteria and neurobiology of the relevant disorder, pharmacological choices and recommendations on monitoring, side effects to consider, and treatment of special populations, including those with medical illnesses. A special chapter devoted to culturally sensitive psychopharmacology that offers information on the role of culture in mental health, wellness, and illness and provides culturally sensitive assessment techniques and other treatment strategies PMH nurses can use to minimize stigma; address health care disparities; and improve patient adherence, satisfaction, and outcomes. A chapter that addresses complementary and alternative pharmacotherapies -- vital because a significant percentage of patients may be using herbal preparations, which present serious implications for the prescribing clinician. Appendices covering drug dosing equivalencies, pharmacogenetics, psychiatric rating scales, and other helpful resources. The core philosophy of the advanced practice nursing field is that health care should be individualized, focusing not only on patients' conditions but also on the effects those conditions have on patients' lives and the lives of their families. The Manual of Clinical Psychopharmacology for Nurses offers readers the most current information on psychopharmacological treatment in an accessible, easy-to-use format grounded in the principles and practices of holistic nursing.

Six decades after the serendipitous discovery of chlorpromazine as an antipsychotic and four decades after the launch of clozapine, the first atypical or second generation antipsychotic, psychopharmacology has arrived at an important crossroad. It is clear that pharmacological research and pharmaceutical development must now focus on complementary or even alternative mechanisms of action to address unmet medical needs, i.e. poorly treated domains of schizophrenia, improved acceptance by patients, better adherence to medication, safety in psychoses in demented patients, and avoiding cardiac and metabolic adverse effects. The first completely novel mechanisms evolving from our insights into the pathophysiology of psychotic disorders, especially the role of glutamatergic mechanisms in schizophrenia, are now under development, and further principles are on the horizon. This situation, in many respects similar to that when the initial second-generation antipsychotics became available, can be rewarding for all. Preclinical and clinical researchers now have the opportunity to confirm their hypotheses and the pharmaceutical industry may be able to develop really novel classes of therapeutics. When we were approached by the publishers of the Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology to prepare a new volume on antipsychotics, our intention was to capture both, the accumulated preclinical and clinical knowledge about current antipsychotics as well as prospects for new and potentially more specific antischizophrenia principles. These efforts should be based on the pathophysiology of the diseases and the affected neurotransmitter systems. Since preclinical research on antipsychotic compounds is only reliable when intimately linked through translational aspects to clinical results, we decided to include clinical science as well. It turned out that that this endeavor could not be covered by a single volume. We thank the editorial board and the publishers for supporting our decision to prepare two volumes: Current Antipsychotics and Novel Antischizophrenia Treatments. These topics cannot really be separated from one another and should be seen as a composite entity despite the somewhat arbitrary separation of contributions into two volumes. The continuing challenges of developing improved and safer antipsychotic medications remain of concern and are discussed in the first volume. The new opportunities for the field to develop and license adjunctive treatments for the negative symptoms and cognitive deficits that are treated inadequately by existing compounds have been incentivized recently and provide the focus for the second volume. We hope these collective contributions will facilitate the development of improved treatments for the full range of symptomatology seen in the group of schizophrenias and other major psychotic disorders. Gerhard Gross, Ludwigshafen, Germany Mark A. Geyer, La Jolla, CA This volume will try to put current therapy - achievements, shortcomings, remaining medical needs - and emerging new targets into the context of increasing knowledge regarding the genetic and neurodevelopmental contributions to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Some of the chapters will also deal with respective experimental and clinical methodology, biomarkers, and translational aspects of drug development. Non-schizophrenia indications will be covered to some extent, but not exhaustively.

This book realistically describes the experiences of people living with schizophrenia and their families, from the detection of the first symptoms until the development of treatments and strategies to cope with this unique human condition. Schizophrenia is a form of psychosis in which subjective aspects, such as hallucinatory and delusional phenomena, tend to distort the understanding of reality. Because psychotic states fluctuate in intensity over time, those affected literally live between reason and illusion. Between Reason and Illusion: Demystifying Schizophrenia is an invitation to understand what it means to develop schizophrenia and to live with it throughout one's life. And this is an invitation to all those who are in some way affected by this condition: those who live with it, family members, friends, health professionals, and everyone who want to have a non-stigmatized view of mental disorders and people who live with them. “Faced with psychosis, the person affected by the disease and the family are lost and go looking for alternative or spiritual help, which usually delays the beginning of treatment. Jorge, Cecília and Rodrigo had the courage to face a difficult theme and the happy idea of writing a book of an educational nature about schizophrenia. The book's originality lies in the fact that it was written taking into account the experience of the person with the disease and his or her family members in the face of this something new that has occurred in their lives”. - Dr. Itiro Shirakawa, Professor Emeritus of the Paulista Medical School of the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP/EPM), Brazil.