This edition features two new chapters (Chapter 21, Approaches to the Psychopharmacologic Treatment of Children and Youth, and Chapter 28, тАЬUnderstanding and Assessing Pain and Pain Syndromes), and all of the chapters from the second edition have been updated, expanded, or reordered. Chapter 21 has been added because the Food and Drug Administration has added patent extension incentives to encourage the development of more information about the use of some agents in children and because more and more children are being treated with these medications, reflecting a trend that is not yet adequately supported by an understanding of the impact that some of these agents may have on their development. The chapter on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Chapter 22) has been enlarged to reflect not only the greater likelihood of treatment for this condition but also the growing number of adults who are seeking treatment for behaviors that they attribute to unrecognized and untreated residual ADHD from childhood. The chapters have been reordered to improve the flow in this edition, although the logic behind the new ordering may be questioned by some. For example, the chapter covering tic disorders (Chapter 7) is located after the chapter on obsessive-compulsive disorders (Chapter 6) because of the high incidence of overlapping comorbidity, even though some might have preferred to see the chapter on tic disorders aggregated with Chapters 21 and 22. The chapter on drug interactions (Chapter 29) has been totally revamped and expanded to reflect the fact that so many psychotherapeutic agents have a narrow therapeutic index or range. Inhibition of their metabolism can readily lead to toxicity, and induction can easily compromise efficacy. No chapter has been devoted exclusively to the elderly. Instead, appropriate material has been included where it is relevant. In this century, the aged are the modal patients for many clinicians. While special issues of dosing, receptor sensitivity, metabolism, and side effects are present, the inclusion of a separate chapter would have required more space than is appropriate for this format.

Another addition in this edition is Appendix VII. In it, Osser and Patterson provide a bibliography of treatment algorithms and guidelines that contains not only basic references and a conceptual framework but also websites that can be consulted for updated iterations (an example of how online materials can act as supplements to traditional texts). The fact that these algorithms are presented is not an endorsement of them. Rather, the purpose for their presence is to give readers of this manual a perspective on treatment alternatives that some clinicians or groups have found useful.