Stephen M. Stahl - Stahls Essential Psychopharmacology

With this fully revised Fourth Edition, Dr. Stahl returns to the essential roots of what it means to become a neurobiologically empowered psychopharmacologist, expertly guided in the selection and combination of treatments for individual patients in practice.

Embracing the unifying themes of symptom endophenotypes, dimensions of psychopathology that cut across syndromes, and symptoms and circuits, every aspect of the text has been updated to the frontiers of current knowledge, with the clarity of explanation and illustration that only Dr. Stahl can bring.

Integrating much of the basic neuroscience into the clinical chapters, and with major additions in the areas of psychosis, antipsychotics, antidepressants, impulsivity, compulsivity, and addiction, this is the single most readily readable source of information on disease and drug mechanisms.

This remains the essential text for all students and professionals in mental health seeking to understand and utilize current therapeutics, and to anticipate the future for novel medications.

For this fourth edition of Stahls Essential Psychopharmacology you will notice there is a new look and feel. With a new layout, displayed over two columns, and an increased page size we have eliminated redundancies across chapters, have added significant new material, and yet have decreased the overall size of the book.

Highlights of what has been added or changed since the 3rd edition include:

• Integrating much of the basic neurosciences into the clinical chapters, thus reducing the number of introductory chapters solely covering basic neurosciences.
• Major revision of the psychosis chapter, including much more detailed coverage of the neurocircuitry of schizophrenia, the role of glutamate, genomics, and neuroimaging.
• One of the most extensively revised chapters is on antipsychotics, which now has:
  • new discussion and illustrations on how the current atypical antipsychotics act upon serotonin, dopamine, and glutamate circuitry
  • new discussion of the roles of neurotransmitter receptors in the mechanisms of actions of some but not all atypical antipsychotics
    • 5HT7 receptors
    • 5HT2C receptors
    • 1-adrenergic receptors
  • completely revamped visuals for displaying the relative binding properties of 17 individual antipsychotics agents, based upon log binding data made qualitative and visual with novel graphics
  • reorganization of the known atypical antipsychotics as
    • the pines (peens)
    • the dones
    • two pips
    • and a rip
  • inclusion of several new antipsychotics
    • iloperidone (Fanapt)
    • asenapine (Saphris)
    • lurasidone (Latuda)
  • extensive coverage of switching from one antipsychotic to another
  • new ideas about using high dosing and polypharmacy for treatment resistance and violence
  • new antipsychotics in the pipeline
    • brexpiprazole
    • cariprazine
    • selective glycine reuptake inhibitors (SGRIs, e.g., bitopertin [RG1678], Org25935, SSR103800)

• The mood chapter has expanded coverage of stress, neurocircuitry, and genetics.
• The antidepressant and mood stabilizer chapters have:
  • new discussion and illustrations on circadian rhythms
  • discussion of the roles of neurotransmitter receptors in the mechanisms of actions of some antidepressants
    • melatonin receptors
    • 5HT1A receptors
    • 5HT2C receptors
    • 5HT3 receptors
    • 5HT7 receptors
    • NMDA glutamate receptors
  • inclusion of several new antidepressants
    • agomelatine (Valdoxan)
    • vilazodone (Viibryd)
    • vortioxetine (LuAA21004)