Psychiatric Certification Review Guide for the Generalist and Clinical Specialist in Adult, Child, and Adolescent Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing

Rating:
Summary: Not too many other choices available
Review: This is one of the few books available as a study guide for the psychiatric NP boards. The ANCC guide won't be out until 2003, sad to say. The book's main selling point is the number of practice questions... but some of this material is quite dated. Even considering that the book is from 1998, and there have been sweeping changes in psychiatry since then - some of this stuff is ancient. The psychodynamic / Freudian explanation of bipolar disorder?!?!? Tricyclics used as first line antidepressants, rather than the equally-efficacious-but-less-lethal SSRIs?
The book does support a number of "alternative" and often questionable therapies - such as holding therapy for attachment disorder - but this is probably par for the course in psych books. The text could use a little more emphasis on empirically validated methods.
Having said that, the book has a good chapter on ethical / legal issues, and the practice questions are useful. And you don't have too many other choices.
Do note that some of the practice question keys have incorrect answers in them- the answer selected as 'correct' is in direct contradiction to the text. (Example: the MAOI interaction question in the mood disorder section.) Try to think of it as a method of testing your own security in the validity of your knowledge!
For psychopharmacology review, this book is useless (to be fair, this is partly due to its age). Use Stahl's psychopharmacology text instead.