Using DSM-IV - by Anthony Labruzza & Jose M Mendez-Villarrubia (Paperback)

About the Book

This book, a veritable road map for DSM-IV explains the technical language and hierarchical classifications of DSM-IV while demonstrating how the system can be adapted to a clinical approach.

Book Synopsis

This book, a veritable road map for DSM-IV explains the technical language and hierarchical classifications of DSM-IV while demonstrating how the system can be adapted to a clinical approach.

Review Quotes

A real lodestar for mental health professionals that explains the whys, wheres, and whens of our latest diagnostic bible and its development. This book, less than half the size of the DSM-IV, is a gem of information and erudition that should be within reach of any colleague involved in patient evaluation.

Dr. LaBruzza goes beyond making DSM-IV user friendly. He brings a descriptive manual to life by placing it in the context of the broad scope of Western thought about the form and nature of mental illness.

LaBruzza and Méndez-Villarrubia have written a highly readable companion book to DSM-IV. The unique chapter dealing with mental illness in Hispanic cultures is particularly informative. This volume will be very useful for a wide range of mental health professionals.

This book will be welcomed by many with both gratitude and relief: an engaging, thoughtful, moral, and humanistically responsible guide to the DSM-IV. This erudite and thoroughly readable work should be used generously as an indispensable and required text for psychopathology courses in all training institutions for mental health professionals. The explicit focus on issues of diversity in culture, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation is not only laudable for its presence, but for its clarity of exposition.

About the Author

Anthony L. LaBruzza, M.D., a psychiatrist, is chief of medicine and medical director of the Community Services Division at the Greater Bridgeport Community Mental Health Center in Bridgeport, Connecticut. José M. Méndez-Villarrubia, M.A., is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology. He is currently on the clinical staff at the Greater Bridgeport Community Mental Health Center.