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Publisher: Thomson Gale, Detroit, 2008, $389.
ISBN: 978 1 4144 2987 8. Also available as an e-book (ISBN 978 1 4144 2990 8)
This book was originally published as the Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders . When I reviewed it for Reference Reviews (RR 2003/462) I started my review by saying that I was unsure of the difference between an encyclopedia of mental health and an encyclopedia of mental illness. The title change here indicates that I was right, because very little else has changed in it.
My 2003 review voiced my suspicion of put-together reference books of this sort. The editors were not psychiatrists but were, I presumed, employed by Thomson Gale to gather contributions from the usual crop of associate professors at American universities and process the results into a standard format. The results of this sort of exercise, I noted, are inevitably bland, superficial, and tend to skate over controversies. On the other hand the book was well produced and...