Psychiatry for the Paediatrician
- Author:
Hale F. Shirley,
M.D., Associate Professor of Paediatrics and Psychiatry and Executive Director of the Child Psychiatry Unit, Stanford University School of Medicine. N.Y. Commonwealth Fund.
Oxford University Press. 25s.
This is an eminently competent and satisfactory book which should prove very useful to students, paediatricians and practitioners desirous of becoming familiar with the principles of child psychiatry. Approach to the subject is psycho-biological and the child is seen as a developing organism reacting to factors in its own make-up and in the family and social environment. The author pays due respect to Kanner whose influence is obvious in the attitudes adopted and the presentation of the subject matter.
In a preliminary section on basic concepts in child guidance, analytic concepts are simply, though not necessarily inaccurately presented, but in actual discussion of the emotional life attention is directed to manifest behaviour rather than to psychopathology. Discussion, too, is at the level of every-day life and includes such terms as ” selfrespect ” and ” sense of achievement although a glossary of psychiatric terms is offered for the assistance of paediatricians.
! The second chapter on development and habit training will be found particularly useful, discussing as it does, the primary development of the child and the emotional needs that must be supplied by the environment. The common disturbances of habit training are related to interference with development or failure in the environment, and appropriate measures discussed.
Subsequent chapters deal with physical, intellectual, emotional and environmental factors in the development of the child and the syndromes of child psychiatry are appropriately discussed in this context, with happily selected illustrative cases. One would mention for particular comment the sections on emotional factors in physical disturbance and emotional problems of the organically sick. In both, the advantages of the psycho-biological approach are apparent.
The non-psychiatric reader will find the subject of intelligence testing adequately dealt with and usefully related to the educational level to be anticipated and potential social capacity. While the chapter on treatment does not aim to go beyond environmental modification and direct assistance to parent and child on the basis of understanding, supported by the prestige of a sympathetic physician, nevertheless the summary of the nine principles of treatment is one that could be studied with advantage by the most expert child psychiatrist. Well set-out and with an adequate index and wide bibliography, this book is a valuable addition to the literature of child psychiatry. K.C.
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