Clinical Manual of Palliative Care Psychiatry

In recent years, palliative care has emerged as the leading model of person-centered care focused on preserving quality of life and alleviating distress for people with serious and life-limiting medical illness. Alongside this development has come a growing recognition of the need for expertise in psychiatric diagnosis, psychopharmacology, and psychotherapy within the interdisciplinary team of specialists tasked with identifying and addressing the varied sources of pain in patients with advanced medical illness. Clinical Manual of Palliative Care Psychiatry was written to motivate and guide readers, whether mental health clinicians or palliative care providers, to deepen their understanding of the psychological dimensions of suffering for the benefit of terminally ill patients and the support of their families.

Great care has been exercised in the choice of topics and features:

• Chapter content emphasizes aspects of assessment and management that are unique to the palliative care setting, ensuring that mental health clinicians are equipped to address the challenges they are likely to face.
• Each chapter ends with a list of supplemental materials -- including key publications (e. g., "fast Facts" from the Center to Advance Palliative Care) and links to relevant modules from the Education in Palliative and End-of-Life Care curriculum (e. g., EPEC for Oncology) -- aimed at extending and enhancing reader knowledge of the topics covered.
• The authors provide thorough coverage of drug prescribing, including off-labeling medication use, which is common in palliative care.
• The manual focuses on the psychiatric conditions, clinicians are most likely to encounter in palliative care, and on specific ways these conditions can manifest in the context terminal illness.
• A wealth of tables and figures present clinically relevant information in a concise and easy-to-grasp manner.

Practical and brimming with essential information and useful techniques, Clinical Manual of Palliative Care Psychiatry empowers both mental health clinicians and palliative care practitioners to more skilfully respond to mental suffering in seriously ill and dying patients.

Foreword. Introduction. Part I: Background and Context. Palliative care 101. Psychiatry in palliative care. Part II: Core Clinical Applications. Depression. Anxiety. Delirium. Part III: Other Common Psychiatric Conditions. Dementia. Insomnia. Substance use disorders. Part IV: Interventions. Psychotherapy. Pain management and psychopharmacology. Part V: Pediatric Patients. Children and Adolescents. Index.

Nathan Fairman, M. D., M. P. H., is Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento, California. Jeremy M. Hirst, M. D., is Associate Director of Patient and Family Support Services at the Moores Cancer Center, University of California San Diego Health, in La Jolla, California. Scott A. Irwin, M. D., Ph. D., is Director of Patient and Family Support Services at the Moores Cancer Center, and Director of Palliative Care Psychiatry at Thornton Hospital, University of California San Diego Health, in La Jolla, California.