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Annual progress in child psychiatry and child development
386
Book Reviews
question the value of their own endeavours. should buy it.
Those engaged
in research
on family or marital
Royal
treatments
PETER HILL Free Hospital London
Annual Progress in Child Psychiatry and Child Development. Edited by STELLACHESS, ALEXANDERTHOMAS and MARGARET HERTZIG. Brunner/Mazel, New York, 1988. $45, pp. 643. THIS is a publication which has become familiar since it has appeared every year over the last 20 years. To celebrate its twentieth anniversary an index for the entire collection is included in this issue. Another change in the 1987 book is the appearance of a third editor. Together, the three editors monitor a hundred journals a year and pick out a wide range of articles on child development and child psychiatry for reproduction in their series. There is an emphasis on methodology, and physical associations of psychiatric conditions are well represented, so the book should be of some interest to readers of this journal. There are chapters dealing with precocious puberty, minor neurological abnormalities, perinatal traumas, right-hemisphere deficits, Turner’s Syndrome, anorexia nervosa, bone-marrow transplants and physical injuries. The article by Rudolf Schaffer on the future of child psychology and on obsessive compulsive disorder by Judith Raparport, both reprinted from the ACPP journal, are in my view the best in the book. Although of some interest, none of the others come across as really outstanding. This is a worthy publication which picks out some of the better articles, almost entirely in the American literature, and ought to be available on the library shelf to all those professionally concerned with children. 1 don’t think it worth the $45 for individuals to buy it. IAN BERG Leeds General Infirmary
AIDS: Psychiatric El6.95, pp. 92.
and Psychosocial
Perspectives.
Edited by LESLIE PAINE. Croom
Helm,
London,
1988.
IF DOUBTSare sometimes expressed about the real value of academic conferences, they must extend to doubts about the value of books representing the proceedings of or ‘based on’ such gatherings. That such doubts are sometimes justified is amply illustrated by this particular publication. At first sight an important and worthwhile range of topics are covered by the eight chapters making up this book. They include ‘Psychiatric Sequelae of HIV’, ‘Epidemiology, Control of Infection, Medical Treatments’, and ‘Counselling in Relation to HIV’, plus appendices on guidance issued by government departments and AIDS/HIV support groups. However five of the eight chapters report ‘deliberations of meetings’ or ‘discussions of working groups’ concerned with the topics in question. None of these chapters provide the reader with more than a superficial ‘check list’ of relevant issues and it is difficult to imagine who would find these useful. Any worker in the relevant fields would be aware of these, and other pertinent issues, and the lay reader couldn’t help but be frustrated by the mere mention of important matters with no discussion or background to the issues being provided. Of the three remaining chapters two deserve special mention. Dr James W. Dilley provides an exemplary article on ‘Psychiatric Sequelae of HIV’. This chapter is extremely well written; it is thorough yet concise and provides an invaluable short reference to an aspect of HIV infection (from the anxieties of the ‘worried well’ to the late manifestations of AIDS dementia) which has received scant attention in Britain. ‘Epidemiology, Control of Infection, Medical Treatments’ by Professor A. M. Geddes on the other hand is a rambling piece which is incompletely referenced, sometimes vague and sometimes incorrect: for example Kaposi’s sarcoma is cited as an inevitable consequence of developing AIDS (pp. 17, 18). This article also provides, half way through, an absurd definition of AIDS: ‘I. A disease that is indicative of cellular immunodeficiency 2. No known cause of cellular immunodeficiency’ (p. 17), but perhaps worst of all slips into discriminatory language which is absolutely unacceptable in a publication of this kind rone of the tragic groups, of course, are the haemophiliacs, who became infected with this virus through no activity on their part’ (p. 15)]. The lists of guidance from government departments and AIDS/HIV support groups provided in the appendices are laudable in principle, but this is not the sort of publication one imagines being used as a reference text for such things. They also demonstrate a further problem with the book in that both appendices, as well as other minor matters throughout the book, are quite out of date. The conference from which this book springs took place in February 1987, so on publication it is already 18 months old.
Book Reviews
question the value of their own endeavours. should buy it.
Those engaged
in research
on family or marital
Royal
treatments
PETER HILL Free Hospital London
Annual Progress in Child Psychiatry and Child Development. Edited by STELLACHESS, ALEXANDERTHOMAS and MARGARET HERTZIG. Brunner/Mazel, New York, 1988. $45, pp. 643. THIS is a publication which has become familiar since it has appeared every year over the last 20 years. To celebrate its twentieth anniversary an index for the entire collection is included in this issue. Another change in the 1987 book is the appearance of a third editor. Together, the three editors monitor a hundred journals a year and pick out a wide range of articles on child development and child psychiatry for reproduction in their series. There is an emphasis on methodology, and physical associations of psychiatric conditions are well represented, so the book should be of some interest to readers of this journal. There are chapters dealing with precocious puberty, minor neurological abnormalities, perinatal traumas, right-hemisphere deficits, Turner’s Syndrome, anorexia nervosa, bone-marrow transplants and physical injuries. The article by Rudolf Schaffer on the future of child psychology and on obsessive compulsive disorder by Judith Raparport, both reprinted from the ACPP journal, are in my view the best in the book. Although of some interest, none of the others come across as really outstanding. This is a worthy publication which picks out some of the better articles, almost entirely in the American literature, and ought to be available on the library shelf to all those professionally concerned with children. 1 don’t think it worth the $45 for individuals to buy it. IAN BERG Leeds General Infirmary
AIDS: Psychiatric El6.95, pp. 92.
and Psychosocial
Perspectives.
Edited by LESLIE PAINE. Croom
Helm,
London,
1988.
IF DOUBTSare sometimes expressed about the real value of academic conferences, they must extend to doubts about the value of books representing the proceedings of or ‘based on’ such gatherings. That such doubts are sometimes justified is amply illustrated by this particular publication. At first sight an important and worthwhile range of topics are covered by the eight chapters making up this book. They include ‘Psychiatric Sequelae of HIV’, ‘Epidemiology, Control of Infection, Medical Treatments’, and ‘Counselling in Relation to HIV’, plus appendices on guidance issued by government departments and AIDS/HIV support groups. However five of the eight chapters report ‘deliberations of meetings’ or ‘discussions of working groups’ concerned with the topics in question. None of these chapters provide the reader with more than a superficial ‘check list’ of relevant issues and it is difficult to imagine who would find these useful. Any worker in the relevant fields would be aware of these, and other pertinent issues, and the lay reader couldn’t help but be frustrated by the mere mention of important matters with no discussion or background to the issues being provided. Of the three remaining chapters two deserve special mention. Dr James W. Dilley provides an exemplary article on ‘Psychiatric Sequelae of HIV’. This chapter is extremely well written; it is thorough yet concise and provides an invaluable short reference to an aspect of HIV infection (from the anxieties of the ‘worried well’ to the late manifestations of AIDS dementia) which has received scant attention in Britain. ‘Epidemiology, Control of Infection, Medical Treatments’ by Professor A. M. Geddes on the other hand is a rambling piece which is incompletely referenced, sometimes vague and sometimes incorrect: for example Kaposi’s sarcoma is cited as an inevitable consequence of developing AIDS (pp. 17, 18). This article also provides, half way through, an absurd definition of AIDS: ‘I. A disease that is indicative of cellular immunodeficiency 2. No known cause of cellular immunodeficiency’ (p. 17), but perhaps worst of all slips into discriminatory language which is absolutely unacceptable in a publication of this kind rone of the tragic groups, of course, are the haemophiliacs, who became infected with this virus through no activity on their part’ (p. 15)]. The lists of guidance from government departments and AIDS/HIV support groups provided in the appendices are laudable in principle, but this is not the sort of publication one imagines being used as a reference text for such things. They also demonstrate a further problem with the book in that both appendices, as well as other minor matters throughout the book, are quite out of date. The conference from which this book springs took place in February 1987, so on publication it is already 18 months old.