Personality Disorders: New Symptom-Focused Drug Therapy

Originally published in 1997, using 50 pharmacological case studies, this title illustrates how chronic and difficult psychiatric disorders ranging from paranoid to obsessive-compulsive personality disorder can be responsive to treatment. Readers are first taught to translate DSM-IV diagnostic criteria to identifiable and treatable symptom correlates which are then targeted for treatment using rationally chosen medications or combinations of medication along with psychotherapy. Since medications rapidly control dysfunctional symptoms, psychotherapy becomes much more effective, enabling psychotherapists and patients to focus on underlying psychosocial issues and conflicts.

Personality Disorders can help you acquire an understanding of general diagnostic and treatment concepts, the ability to identify target symptoms, and the knowledge to select medications to address each symptom identified. As a result, psychotherapy will become less time-consuming and costly and therapeutic results will be felt more quickly--desirable goals in this managed care environment.

This guidebook prepares you for effective treatment of personality disorders by exploring:

• symptom correlates of all personality disorders
• medication groups with dosage guidelines
• clinically relevant explanations for choice of symptoms and medications
• clinical profiles of new antidepressants and antipsychotics
• intelligent use of modern rational polypharmacy

Clinicians seeking to modernize and refine their approaches to treating personality disorders will learn effective drug therapy treatments that produce rapid results. Personality Disorders helps psychiatrists, primary care physicians, psychologists, psychiatric residents, counselors, social workers, and nurses who manage personality disorders to understand that patients’ dysfunctional thoughts, perceptions, and behaviors are symptoms mediated by the brain. Medical students and clinical psychology students learn to approach personality disorders in the same clinically precise manner they would use when learning to treat nonpsychiatric illness.

Personality Disorders is an important resource for dispelling the myth that personality disorders are permanent and un-responsive to treatment as it walks readers through successful intervention strategies step by step and disorder by disorder.