Book excerpt: This concise, yet comprehensive guide distills the most critical and current information on diagnosis and treatment so that residents and other beginning clinicians will have the tools they need to quickly assess and competently treat patients with psychiatric illnesses. Replete with diagnostic evaluation checklists, DSM-IV-TR criteria, and drug dosage tables, the Resident's Guide to Clinical Psychiatry is a practical and convenient one-stop resource that will make the resident's job significantly easier. Each of the 16 chapters has been structured logically and with the utmost care to guide residents through the psychiatric landscape. For example, the chapter on pharmacotherapy is organized by class of drug, with sections on mechanism of action, indications and efficacy, and tips for medication selection. This is followed by detailed information on specific drugs -- their clinical use, risks, side effects, management, and potential interactions. This depth of coverage is matched by breadth of subject, with chapters on central topics such as mood disorders and dementia, in addition to special chapters on consultation-liaison psychiatry, emergency psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, and electroconvulsive therapy and device-based treatments. Whether employed as a text or an on-the-fly reference, this authoritative volume supplies everything the resident requires to provide a uniformly high level of psychiatric clinical care.