This handbook is intended as a practical reference book for clinicians. Thus one measure of its success is how useful it is in a busy clinical setting and whether there is any added benefit over the British National Formulary or its international equivalents.

The book starts by providing a brief overview of psychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence. This section is the weakest because although it provides the ‘basic facts’ there is not sufficient detail for prescribing clinicians. I did, however, find myself using this section as a basis for handouts for medical students.

The main body of this text is devoted to medications likely to be used in child and adolescent psychiatric practice. Taking the section on antidepressants as an example, it starts with a brief overview of the different classes of available anti-depressants and general comments on the use of antidepressants in children and young people. For individual classes of drugs indications, pharmacology, dosing, pharmacokinetics, onset and duration of action, adverse effects, withdrawal, precautions, toxicity, use in pregnancy, nursing implications, patient instructions and drug interaction are all covered. There are also helpful (and reproducible) patient information leaflets. The information provided is concise and up to date, although in this fast-developing field there is a danger that such texts can become out of date relatively quickly.

I found myself regularly referring to the handbook in clinics. The accessible writing style made it easy to share the information with young people and their parents/carers. The only limitation is that the book's American authorship means that it tends to refer to licensing under the US Food and Drug Administration and reflects American practice, which does differ in some respects from contemporary practice in the UK.