Bouras & Holt are both widely known and respected researchers and clinicians in the field of intellectual disabilities with many years experience in publication of academic as well as service-related work. They have maintained a strong international perspective and the list of participating authors is a veritable Who's Who in the field.
The book is divided into four parts, each encompassing the key aspects of psychiatric practice from assessment and diagnosis to specific disorders to treatment and interventions and finally policy and services. I particularly enjoyed reading, for example, the exhaustive and informative chapter on clinical services for challenging behaviour, which I found enormously instructive. The book is well written and includes summary points at the end of each chapter which help to drive home important messages.
However, there are a few issues that should also be mentioned. First, the references are already out of date; the most recently cited are from 2005. In addition, there are a number of stylistic differences in references between chapters. Second, it would have been desirable to include a considered view of what might be the impact of current UK Government legislation (Valuing People, 2001), on the lives of people with intellectual disabilities several years on. Third, the chapter on interdisciplinary assessment of mental disorders might have been better placed as the last in Part 1, rather than in the middle of that section as it is at present.
Overall, though, this book, revised and updated from the first edition of 1999, is a useful and reliable resource for professionals and psychiatric trainees. In my view it forms a stimulating and worthy companion to Seminars in the Psychiatry of Learning Disabilities (2nd edn edited by W. Fraser & M. Kerr) published by Gaskell in 2003.
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