I've been waiting a long time for a book like"How Can I Help? A Week in My Life as a Psychiatrist." Written by psychiatrists David Goldbloom and Pier Bryden, this book is the most thorough account I have seen of the thinking process, or what should be the thinking process, of contemporary psychiatrists. And it can change the entire way you go about asking for, and receiving, help from a mental health professional.

Patients in hospital are often receiving drug therapy and having the proper dose of medications that are optimally effective with minimal side effects determined. They are not allowed to smoke and then they are discharged and resume smoking at the same level as before hospitalization. As Dr O'Reilly pointed out, "the resumption of smoking can interfere with the effectiveness of their antipsychotic medication dose."