An enlightening quick-reference handbook for health and social service professionals working with elderly patients, but some...
This medical handbook covers a wide variety of topics related to diagnosing and caring for elderly people with psychiatric issues.
Thanks to advances in modern medicine, people are living longer than ever. Geriatric patients, however, face a number of unique challenges—mood disorders, dementia, the inability to live independently and more—and their families, caregivers and even social service providers might not know all the warning signs. How does one identify neglect? Is an elderly person’s sudden forgetfulness depression or dementia? What kinds of psychotherapies are most helpful for older people? The goal of Sydney-based Ayse and David Burke’s (a psychologist and physician, respectively) debut work is to help health professionals assess these issues in their patients or clients—or, in the authors’ words, “to provide a guide to the assessment and management of the common mental health problems in older people through the integrated, multidisciplinary perspectives of medicine, nursing, psychology, social work, and occupational therapy.” The book’s preface and first section focus on the importance of working together as a multidisciplinary team, but the dense prose style is difficult to parse, rendering the sections challenging for readers who aren’t medical professionals. Fortunately, the four subsequent sections are broken down into smaller, easy-to-comprehend parts that include several charts and graphs that explain the various mental illnesses an elderly patient might experience and compare the different diagnostic tools available. A few of the references could be outdated; the “Neuroimaging Findings in Dementia” section, for example, begins with structural neuroimaging guidelines that date back to 2001. Overall, much of the text seems geared toward medical and social service professionals (particularly those in Australia, who can access the various organizations listed), not the geriatric patients themselves or their concerned families. Nonetheless, a handful of the book’s subsections—especially those on mental capacity and guardianship, independent living and caregiver stress—could prove helpful to a caregiver.
An enlightening quick-reference handbook for health and social service professionals working with elderly patients, but some sections might be too technical for the average reader.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492167013
Page Count: 410
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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