This volume examines attempts to identify genetic risk factors and environmental components contributing to the development of psychiatric disorders. It explores the symptoms, courses, outcomes, treatment responses and aetiologies of a range of psychiatric illnesses to improve disease classification schemes.

Designed for clinicians from a variety of backgrounds, this handbook provides useful information regarding long-term treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. It is intended not only for psychiatrists and neurologists, but also for primary care physicians and non-physician mental health professionals. The book examines maintenance treatment for a comprehensive list of mental illnesses including biopolar disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and dementia. It provides the clinician with the information needed to select and manage the effective long-range treatment of their patients.

Psychopharmacology has certainly had the greatest impact on psy chiatric theory and practice since the psychoanalytic discoveries by Freud. Beginning more than 20 years ago, psychopharmacology has become a vigorous interdisciplinary science, and over the last 10 to 15 years has witnessed a tremendous growth both from a scientific and practical point of view. Lithium occupies a unique and central position in modern psycho pharmacology for several reasons. The introduction of the lithium ion in 1949 as a psychoactive drug preceded the advent of reserpine or chlorprom azine and placed it as the...