Panic Buys - Understanding Anxiety and Panic Attacks

Title: Understanding Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Author: Dr Kwame McKenzie
Publisher: Family Doctor Books in association with the British Medical Association
Click here for the publisher's website
Click here for the book on Amazon.co.uk

The back of this book proudly trumpets that over 4 million books have been sold in the Family Doctor series which makes sense if they follow a similar pattern to this one.

I bought this book a while ago and it's very good if you deal with your anxiety condition and life's problems in a similar way to myself which is to bone up on a subject, read around it and use the appropriate tactics gleamed from what you've read.

The book's format has the various chapters broken up into sections making it easy to stop and start without feeling like you particularly need to race to the end of the chapters which is useful as you don't want to rush through reading anything to better inform you about your condition.

As the book covers a range of subjects within the broader field of anxiety, the book is also useful in that to get to information you may find useful you don't have to read the whole book. The break up of the chapters helps the reader to jump about as needed to and the information is never presented in massively long lumps of text. That said, if like me you are keen on reading around the subject then knowing about other kinds of anxiety disorders can be interesting reading. If that's not your bag and you want it for additional help rather than for interesting reading, the book itself normally retails for about £3-£5 so it's usefulness is not negated by the cost

The book's author Dr Kwame McKenzie is a lecturer in psychiatry at University College London and the book obviously benefits from his expertise. The issue of course with some books written by clinicians and aimed at the lay person is that the way information is presented in certain parts can come across as a bit patronising but the book doesn't bamboozle the reader with overly technical terms and any longer terms are explained.

As well as explaining the conditions and drugs used, the book also covers the different kinds of treatments and provides a chapter on self help techniques that could be useful.

Don't be mistaken, this book is a basic overview of everything rather than an in depth study. It will give you bare bones help and good signposting towards other treatments and ideas that may be useful. I liken it to an appointment with your GP; decent and to the point but short and a bit overly clinical and sterile in parts.

If you're wanting something to hold your hand a bit or help you through a hard time or provide you with effective techniques for dealing with attacks, this is not the book for you. If your problem is a new thing and you want something to read before delving deeper or you want to give something to others to help them understand a bit better than this book will certainly do the job.

With such a low price it's certainly a handy book to have around but it's a bit like taking an aspirin for a broken arm. It'll help short term but it certainly won't cure anything.