Psychiatry: PreTestTM Self-Assessment and Review, twelfth edition, has been designed to provide medical students and international medical graduates with a comprehensive and convenient instrument for self-assessment and review. The 500 questions provided have been written to parallel the topics, format, and degree of difficulty of the questions contained in the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 2. Each question in the book is accompanied by an answer, a paragraph explanation, and a specific page reference to a standard textbook or other major resource. These books have been carefully selected for their educational excellence and ready availability in most libraries. A bibliography listing all the sources used in the book follows the last chapter. Diagnostic nomenclature is that of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR).
One effective way to use this book is to allow yourself one minute to answer each question in a given chapter and to mark your answer beside the question. By following this suggestion, you will be training yourself for the time limits commonly imposed by examinations. For multiple-choice questions, the one best response to each question should be selected. For matching sets, a group of questions will be preceded by a list of lettered options. For each question in the matching set, select one lettered option that is most closely associated with the question. Since there are few absolutes in clinical practice, remember to simply choose the best possible answer. There are no “trick” questions intended. Rather, each question has been designed to address a significant topic. Some important topics are deliberately duplicated in other sections of the book when this is deemed helpful. All questions apply to the treatment of adults unless otherwise indicated.
