Best books and resources for the Psychiatry shelf and rotation 2024
We know that getting a consensus on the best books and resources for any given rotation can be difficult. Asking friends, searching SDN, and consulting seniors can provide a confusing mixed bag of advice.
Turns out, we've done the work for you. Compiled below are comprehensive recommendations on the best books and resources. Click here to find out how we ranked each resource as well as a description of the tiers used. Happy studying!
Highest Yield — The best psychiatry book for medical school
First Aid for the Psychiatry Clerkship — Ganti, Kaufman & Blitzstein
A stand-alone text for the Psychiatry shelf examination, First Aid Psychiatry does an excellent job of covering psychiatric pathology in a systematic way, looking at diagnostic criteria, etiology, epidemiology, course and prognosis, and treatment for each disease. Theres a helpful section on pharmacology as well which is well tested on the exam. The book itself is rather thin and can be read quickly. What's even better is that this book was updated in 2016 to take into account the recent DSM V implementation.
Lange Q&A Psychiatry — Blitzstein
Lange's Q&A text complements First Aid for the Psychiatry Clerkship and provides more than 800 questions that emulate the quality and rigor of shelf questions. Vignettes are a similar length to what you can expect on the shelf and the explanations do a great job of helping you differentiate diagnoses. Questions are a similar difficulty as shelf exam questions. The triad of Lange Q&A, First Aid, and UWorld is considered to be more than adequate to honor your shelf and rotation.
First Aid for the USMLE STEP 1, Psychiatry chapter — Le, Bhushan, Sochat, Chavda
The psychiatry chapter in your used and abused First Aid is incredibly high yield for the shelf as well and quickly details the differences between different diagnoses. Especially helpful is the table on Psychoactive drug intoxications/withdrawals.
Emma Ramahi's UTHSCSA High Yield Psychiatry Guide
Another one of Dr. Ramahi's awesome, high yield PDFs. Crush this PDF the night before your shelf.
Next Steps
Psychiatry PreTest Self-Assessment and Review — Klamen & Pan
500 more questions that you can crush in the standard PreTest format. The questions stems in PreTest Psychiatry are much shorter than Lange's and are more directed to immediately test your knowledge on a certain topic than they are to emulate shelf questions. If you already own Lange's, use this book to cherry pick addition questions in topics you feel weak in.
If you have time
Case Files Psychiatry — Toy & Klamen
Consistent with the other books in the Case Files series, Case Files Psychiatry features 544 pages of psychiatric vignettes and scenarios with further explanations and questions. This one is thorough and easy to read and if you have already used Case Files texts in the past and do well with the way it presents information, don't hesitate using this text.