New View of Self: How Genes and Neurotransmitters Shape Your Mind, Your Personality, and Your Mental Health

Rating:
Summary: authoritative and compassionate overview of mental illness
Review: This is a book for anyone who has ever been depressed and wondered about taking medication, for anyone who has ever worried about his own mental health or had concerns about friends and family. Dr. Siever gives us a comprehensive introduction to all the major psychiatric diseases and disorders, illustrated with numerous case studies--of the narcissistic or histrionic personality, of dpression, of obsessive compulsive disorder. His stories are illuminating and compassionate. The field of psychiatry is undergoing a "biological revolution." To discover the causes of mental illness, we can now look beyond inadequate parenting, sibling rivalry and the oedipus complex to the less well-trodden realm of neurotransmitters and receptors, of genetics and biology. In technical areas Siever offers helpful analogies and, for the uninitiated, is an authoritative and patient guide