Quick Guide To Psychiatric Emergencies

This volume provides an “on-the-go” guide to the most common behavioral emergencies a physician may encounter. Each chapter represents a disease state or symptom cluster and concisely summarizes the disease state, provides background, symptoms and signs, differential diagnoses, and immediate and long-term treatment options. All chapters conclude with a diagnosis or treatment algorithm or another easy-to-use visual tool. Chapters named after a specific disease state or symptom cluster, arranged alphabetically for use in the field. The text begins with chapters covering patient evaluation: getting a good history, suicide risk assessment, physical exam, and when and how to use studies. Written by experts in psychiatry and emergency medicine, this text is the first to consider both medical perspectives in a concise guide. Quick Guide to Psychiatric Emergencies is an excellent resource for psychiatrists, emergency medicine physicians, residents, nurses, and other medical professionals that handle behavioral emergencies on a regular basis.

This is a quick reference book for the management of psychiatric medical emergencies. The book is aimed at practicing psychiatrists, residents, students, social workers, nurses and any other mental health professsional in the accident and emergency department.

This user-friendly resource presents a patient-centered approach to managing the growing incidence of major psychiatric emergencies in the outpatient setting. Abundant illustrations, tables, and algorithms guide you through the wide range of disorders discussed, and a color-coded outline format facilitates rapid access to essential information necessary for making a proper diagnosis for optimal management outcomes. Organizes information by patient presentation to help you distinguish among conditions that present with similar symptoms. Discusses medical conditions presenting with psychiatric symptoms, where appropriate. Highlights critical information in "Hazard Signs" boxes for quick, at-a-glance review. Uses acronyms and memory aids to enhance recall of information in moments of crisis. Features a chapter discussing the psychiatric effects of bioterrorism. Offers an Improved Suicide Risk Scale with criteria on impulsivity, plan, and lethal level of attempt. Provides valuable tips on interviewing and interacting with patients in various situations, as techniques will vary from depressed suicidal patients to manic and potentially assaultive individuals. Includes appendixes that discuss common psychiatric medications used and important lab values in the ER.

This handbook is a practical, quick-reference guide to the evaluation and management of acute psychiatric symptoms seen in emergency departments and inpatient psychiatric and medical-surgical units. The book presents a step-by-step approach to each symptom, beginning with a list of questions necessary for initial assessment and proceeding to psychopharmacologic interventions, DSM-IV-TR criteria, differential diagnosis, and disposition guidelines. Additional chapters address safety concerns, the mental status examination, use of restraints and seclusion, child and elder abuse, and special needs of children, adolescents, geriatric patients, mentally retarded individuals, and patients with HIV. A chapter on legal and forensic issues is also included.

Working in an emergency department as a psychiatrist or mental health clinician requires an ability to gain a patient's rapport, establish a differential diagnosis, assess risk and make disposition decisions in a fast-paced and potentially chaotic setting. Patients may be medically ill, agitated, intoxicated, or suicidal, and resources for treatment may be difficult to access. A Case-Based Approach to Emergency Psychiatry provides the emergency department clinician with vivid and complex cases, discussed by psychiatrists who work daily in the emergency setting, that illustrate basic principles of assessment, diagnosis and treatment. These challenging and complex cases are based on the years of experience of the authors combined with current evidence-based practices and discussion. Risk assessment, psychosis, mood disorder, substance abuse, ethics, forensic issues, and personality disorders are discussed, along with child and adolescent, geriatric, and developmental disabilities. Special attention is also paid to alternatives to inpatient care, short-term crisis intervention, and the interface between medical and psychiatric illnesses. The case-based format allows the authors to link aspects of the clinical presentation to discussion and literature review in a memorable and compelling format.

Written and edited by leading emergency psychiatrists, this is the first comprehensive text devoted to emergency psychiatry. The book blends the authors' clinical experience with evidence-based information, expert opinions, and American Psychiatric Association guidelines for emergency psychiatry. Case studies are used throughout to reinforce key clinical points. This text brings together relevant principles from many psychiatric subspecialties—community, consultation/liaison, psychotherapy, substance abuse, psychopharmacology, disaster, child, geriatric, administrative, forensic—as well as from emergency medicine, psychology, law, medical ethics, and public health policy. The emerging field of disaster psychiatry is also addressed. A companion Website offers instant access to the fully searchable text. (www.glickemergencypsychiatry.com)

Crises are not a feature of depressive illness; but this illness needs to be considered in the diagnoses of three acute emergencies: the agitated patient, the withdrawn patient and the suicidal patient. A. The agitated patient. Restless, anguished, phrenetic and impor tunate behaviour. Differential diagnoses include hypomania, acute anxiety and grief, hysteria, drug intoxication, thyrotoxicosis, cerebrovascular accident or cerebral tumour. Agitated depression carries a relatively high risk of suicide. Management usually requires admission and use of adequate doses of antidepressant and neuroleptic drugs, and often ECT. B. The withdrawn patient who avoids social contacts and obligations and is often slowed up in mind and body. Differential diagnoses in clude schizophrenia, CVA or tumour, hysteria and semi-coma includ ing drug intoxication. Withdrawn and retarded patients with depres sive illness are at risk of failing to eat or care for themselves. C. The suicidal patient. May present as unexpected, inexplicable coma; a badly cut patient may be confused by the doctor with acci dent or assault. The immediate emergency is medical or surgical: treatment is for coma, bleeding or asphyxia, and requires immediate admission to casualty. The first presentation of depression is always a minor emergency as it may be the only attempt the patient makes to see a doctor. Diagnosis must be positive, based on the recognition of depres sive features, not negative, based on the exclusion of other dis eases. The cardinal symptoms of depressive illness: 1. Disturbed sleep pattern. 2. Change in appetite for food.