Acquisitions en psychiatrie biologique

Acquisitions en psychiatrie biologique

J. Mendlewicz, Paris: Masson, 160 pp., 1991

During the past four decades, research in biological psychiatry and neuroscience has made unprecedented progress. New research methods and technologies in areas such as molecular biology and brain imaging have contributed to an extraordinary explosion of knowledge in the pathophysiology and treatment of many mental disorders. The timing of this book is appropriate, since we are in what has been named “the decade of the brain.”

This collaborative volume, edited by J. Mendlewicz, brings together 15 chapters on selected topics in biological psychiatry. The chapters covered include: a historical review of psychiatric nosology; the chronobiology of affective and schizophrenic disorders; hemispheric laterality and psychopathology; sleep disturbances; a review of the clinical use of neuroendocrine markers in psychiatry; the neurobiology of anxiety disorders; molecular genetics of affective disorders and schizophrenia, respectively; the pathophysiology of schizophrenia; dopaminergic mechanisms in the action of antipsychotic drugs; a general overview on tardive dyskinesia; receptor mechanisms in depression and the mode of action of antidepressant medication; a review of benzodiazepine receptors and anxiety and a final chapter on the status of biological psychiatry in developing countries.

Some chapters, which could have been grouped around a common theme, such as the chapter on the neurobiology of anxiety disorders and the chapter on benzodiazepine receptors and anxiety, are 58 pages apart. This contributes to a lack of unity in the volume. However, this book is ideally suited to the reader who is unfamiliar with and wishes a “glimpse” at some of the many developments that have occurred in the field of biological psychiatry.