This volume is the third in a series of succinct, analytical reviews of advances in the psychiatric care of medically ill patients. Like the previous volumes, "Medical-Psychiatric Practice, Volume 3" is designed to continually update the busy clinician on research and practical developments in medical psychiatry.

Under the guidance of an eminent editorial advisory board, this volume addresses several specific clinical problems that require an integrated medical-psychiatric approach to their diagnosis and treatment. It includes an in-depth discussion of psychopharmacokinetics as well as an update on psychopharmacology in medically ill patients.

This volume is the second in a series of succinct, analytical reviews of advances in the psychiatric care of medically ill patients. "Medical-Psychiatric Practice, Volume 2" is designed to help psychiatrists who specialize in the care of medical patients integrate psychotherapeutic, psychopharmacological, and behavioral approaches to therapy, while dealing with complex systems of medical care, mental health care, and health care financing.

Under the guidance of an eminent editorial advisory board, the second volume includes critical reviews of the latest advances for medically ill patients in psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, neuropsychiatry, medical-legal issues, and special topics such as psychiatric aspects of anesthesia and cardiac diseases.

Seeing Depression Through a Cultural Lens, the collaborative work of a clinical neuroscientist and a scholar of comparative culture, examines the effects of cultural identity on the epidemiology, phenomenology, and narratives of depression, the bipolar spectrum, and suicide. Culture is associated with emotional communication style, 'idioms of distress, ' the conception of depression and of bipolar disorders, and how people with mood disorders might be stigmatized. It is linked to structural factors--environmental, social, and economic circumstances--that create or mitigate the risk of depression, sometimes precipitate episodes of illness, and facilitate or impede treatment. Culture shapes depressed people's willingness to disclose or acknowledge their condition and to seek care, their relationships with clinicians, and their acceptance or rejection of specific treatments. Cultural context is essential to understanding suicide. It underlies people's motives for suicide, factors that promote or prevent suicide, the social acceptability of death by suicide, and availability of lethal means of self-harm. Cultural identity is always intersectional, comprising elements related to race and ethnicity; gender; age, generation, and life stage; education; social class; occupation; migrant or minority status; region of residence; and religious belief and practice. This book explores the implications of each of these dimensions using salient concepts from the social sciences, memorable narratives from literature, film, and the clinic, and quantitative findings from epidemiology and psychometrics. It offers readers a framework for culturally aware assessment and management of depression, bipolarity, and suicidal risk in diverse individuals and populations.