Book reviews

The Origins and Course of Common Mental Disorders by David Goldberg and Ian Goodyer (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, Hove & New York, 2005 ). 230 pp. £50.00 (hardback).

I offered to review this book because it is over 10 years since I worked within the psychiatric services of the NHS and I wanted to be comprehensively updated on the latest ideas and research. I was also attracted to the idea of ‘Common Mental Disorders’ because, although I did not know what these would turn out to be, I felt that they should by definition be the kind of mental disorders that I meet with every day in my psychotherapy practice.

This book met my requirements. It had been preceded, 12 years ago, by another book called Common Mental Disorders written by David Goldberg and Peter Huxley. In the intervening years there had been so much research and development that a new book was warranted. On this occasion David Goldberg, now Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, joined forces with Ian Goodyer, Foundation Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. Together they gathered up the research developments about the origins and course of Common Mental Disorders (CMDs) from three fields – genetic, biological and psychosocial – and sifted, sorted, and presented them to the reader in a condensed but usually accessible form.

The front page says ‘This highly readable account of the origins of emotional and behavioural disorders will be of interest to behavioural science students and all mental health professionals including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses and counsellors’. I would add that it will be of particular interest to those working in the community, in primary care and an invaluable starting point to anyone doing research on CMD. Additionally I think it will be a useful to people fighting to retain services as it pulls together a huge amount of recent ‘evidenced-based’ research. I also think that a reader