| Summary: | "This brief, book is a practical, clinical-skills-focused guide, accessible to medical students, trainees, and any healthcare professional entering clinical environments. It provides the core knowledge and skills needed to interview and assess patients well. It provides additional, key information about mental illness, allowing the reader to deliver essential, initial psychiatric care to patients with mental health needs. The book focuses on clinical skills, noting that this is an area often overlooked in an era of technology-driven health-care. It provides specific guidance, practical tips and clinical stories/vignettes in each chapter to illustrate points made. It helps the reader to conduct a competent, empathic interview in any clinical scenario but especially in the context of mental illness. Reflecting the authors' background in medicine as well as psychiatry, the book discusses mental health not only in the context of psychiatry, but also in the context of medical settings such as the Emergency Department, Medical, Surgical and GP placements. Each chapter includes clinical examples, case vignettes and practical tips from clinicians to aid the reader to improve their skills, understand the subject and apply what they have studied. Mnemonics and chapter objectives aid learning. The book opens with a 'Letter to the Reader' that explains the context and content of the text, and suggests how best to use the material. Chapters include topics such as 'Setting the Scene, 'What to ask and how to ask it', 'Proposing a Diagnosis' and 'Emergencies'. The book ends with a chapter on Professionalism: Boundaries, Burnout and Self-care"--
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