Several antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) now have pharmaceutical usage for treating bipolar disorder. There is growing evidence that AEDs have mood-stabilizing effects. This book is the first comprehensive, clinically oriented, reference on the use of AEDs to treat a variety of psychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, eating disorders, personality disorders, and neuropsychiatric disorders.

What causes psychiatric disorders to appear? Are they primarily the result of people s environments, or of their genes? Increasingly, we are told that research has confirmed the importance of genetic influences on psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
This timely, challenging book provides a much-needed critical appraisal of the evidence cited in support of genetic theories of psychiatric disorders, which hold that these disorders are caused by an inherited genetic predisposition in combination with environmental agents or events.

This book exposes the traditional view that psychiatric drugs correct chemical imbalances as a dangerous fraud. It traces the emergence of this view and the way it supported the vested interests of the psychiatric profession, the pharmaceutical industry and the modern state. Instead it is proposed that psychiatric drugs 'work' by creating abnormal brain states, which are often unpleasant and impair normal intellectual and emotional functions along with other harmful consequences.

Mood and Anxiety Disorders During Pregnancy and Postpartum earns its important place in the literature by detailing our current understanding of the course, diagnosis, and treatment of psychiatric illness during pregnancy and postpartum, including breast-feedingв€”a top priority today because we now know that active maternal psychiatric illness during pregnancy and postpartum can exert long-term negative effects on child development and cause significant morbidity for the mother.