Elderly Development
Book reviews Psychological Medicine,41(2011).
doi:10.1017/S003329171100184X Ageing and Older Adult Mental Health : Issues and Implications for Practice. Edited by P. Ryan and B. J.
Coughlan (Pp. 296 ; £21.99 ; ISBN 978-0-415-58290-2 pb). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 2011.
The best method of learning about a new field is to review it for the use of others. In this sense Ryan and Coughlan have done a sterling job : Most (nine) of the fifteen chapters of this multi-author collection appear to be written by one or more graduate students (mainly reading DClinPsych in Limerick) with some support from a senior colleague, most notably one of the editors. The trainers are to be congratulated for their initiative, which no doubt has profited their students in more than one way.
As a reader one is aware of the tendency of the chapters to start from first principles which somewhat limits the distance that can be travelled. There is fre- quent quoting from standard textbooks, occasional howlers, such as ‘ the MMSE offers a brief assessment of mood ’ and ‘ Phonetic [sic] engineering … involves taking cells from a person’s body, altering them genetically so as to ameliorate ageing mechanisms, and then re-planting those cells to the person of origin. ’ There is lots of well-meaning p.c. stuff :
‘ Taking a person-centred holistic approach to assess- ment is a positive proactive step and preferable to the more traditional reactive one. ’ Some sentiments are encouraging : ‘ The myths [sic] shared by many older people, professionals and policy makers are that age- ing and mortality are synonymous, ’ others alarming :
‘ Electroconvulsive therapy should be used extremely cautiously because of the risk of cardiac compli- cations ; delirium and the fact that the individual is actually receiving so many volts [sic] of electricity into his/her body. ’ Other insights are so long in the tooth that they must come from one of the super- visors : ‘ [ John Stuart] Mill failed to foresee the poten- tial consequences of pursuing happiness of the greater number of people … this ethical principle was to become a warrant for the inhumanity of Leninist- Marxism [sic], Maoism, Naziism [sic] and Fascism ’ – Poor John Stuart ! I remember cramming from similar encyclopaedic booklets produced by trainees for trainees. They are helpful as long as the reader re- members that they are not authoritative and that sometimes reading the sources is necessary to clear up any puzzlement arising from the lecture. The selection of themes, which range from ‘ Treatment of mentalhealth issues : Reality versus best practice ’ to ‘ The paradox of ageing : Why do older people look so happy ? ’ are presumably aimed at participants on a DClinPsych course, other ‘ mental health workers ’ may prefer to seek their information elsewhere. K.P.EBMEIER ,M.D. (Email : [email protected]) Psychological Medicine,41(2011).
doi:10.1017/S0033291711001838 Behavioral and Psychopharmacologic Pain Management.
Edited by M. Ebert and R. Kerns. (Pp. 506 ; $99 ; ISBN 978-0521884341.) Cambridge University Press :
Cambridge, UK. 2011.
Hitherto many textbooks, mainly intended for psy- chiatrists, focused either on psychological or psycho- pharmacological treatments for chronic pain. This left a gap for a pragmatic resource providing a more global approach to the multi-disciplinary specialists involved in the care of patients in a comprehensive pain clinic, i.e. a bio-psychosocial perspective on chronic pain management. The reader immediately feels that the editors have the essential qualities for this publication : they emanate from a specialized pain and psychiatric background, and are actively involved in the reform of pain and psychiatry fellowship train- ing programs in the USA. They convened an impress- ive group of specialists (spanning from psychologists and nurses to anesthetists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and physical medicine specialists) who expertly out- line the best uses of behavioral, psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacological approaches for chronic pain relief. This comprehensive overview, which fully em- braces the complexity of the interactions between pain and psychiatric co-morbidity, is quite novel.
The book is organized in five sections. The short first section presents the bio-psychosocial perspective on chronic pain, explaining the current knowledge on the interactions between pain perception and psychological state or socio-cultural factors, and pro- viding convincing evidence to support the use of psychological approaches in this context. The second section details pain assessment strategies and tools.
Overall, the complexities of measuring a subjective perception are clearly discussed, along the necessity to assess eventual psychiatric co-morbidity and po- tential emotional consequences of pain. Interesting clinical vignettes illustrate the intricacies between Psychological Medicine(2011),41, 2459–2461.fCambridge University Press 2011
