Geriatric Psychopharmacology

Reviews the book, Clinical manual of geriatric psychopharmacology by Sandra A. Jacobson, Ronald W. Pies, and Ira R. Katz (see record 2007-03011-000). The astute prescriber or reader can quickly see that geriatric psychopharmacology is a complex subspecialty that requires a great deal of specialized training and experience. This book attempts to help all involved in the multidisciplinary team recognize this complexity and provide them with access to solid information about geriatric psychopharmacology treatment. The book is organized into 10 chapters. The early portion of the book covers basic professional issues and techniques related to prescribing for aging people. Major drug categories (antipsychotics, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, anxiolytics, and sedative-hypnotics) are also discussed. The final four chapters deal with aging and substance-related disorders, movement disorders, dementia and cognitive disorder treatments, and analgesics. The length of this book is quite understandable because treating the aging population means dealing with the complex issues of normal aging, high comorbidity of medical diseases, duplicate medications and drug interactions, dosing differences related to organ-efficiency changes, and compliance and regimen adherence capacity changes. If you are specializing in geriatric psychopharmacology and you have some good graduate coursework background in psychopharmacology as well as geropsychology, you will find this one of the finest texts extant on the subspecialty. The book will be less useful for those who do not have training in psychopharmacology. It is simply too advanced and too extensive, and it uses concepts and processes requiring considerable foundation and knowledge. As an introductory text, it would likely be overwhelming and much less useful. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)