How Psychiatry Helps

This excellent book is written primarily for the public and should be especially helpful for patients and their families. The language is simple with a minimum of technical terminology. The major theme is an easily understandable description of the methods and principles underlying modern psychiatric therapies and the results which may be reasonably anticipated from their proper utilization. Although therapeutic optimism is expressed, a wholesome leavening of conservatism is apparent with recognition of the limitations of various types of treatments.

Only the first chapter deals with psychiatric philosophy and a delineation of the common types of psychiatric disturbances. Further discussions of etiologic and dynamic factors in symptom formation are occasionally used in case examples or woven into the description of various types of treatment, but an explanation of psychiatric therapeutic methods remains the primary objective. Practically all modern psychiatric therapies are discussed as fairly and extensively as a book of