Children with Disabilities. A Medical Primer

There is a critical approach to relevant literature, but research is not described or discussed in detail. The best chapters from a therapeutic point of view are excellent in giving specific and detailed examples of therapists' actions in particular contexts. Outstanding in this respect are the management overview and the chapter on family therapy and parental counselling by Lask and Magagna's account of individual psychodynamic psychotherapy. Some of the other chapters would have benefited from the use of such detailed examples. The title of the book identifies its scope more clearly than does the prologue as it is definitely not a book about eating disorders in young children. Although the initial overview lists seven disorders considered relevant including food avoidance emotional disorder, pervasive refusal and bulimia, in practice this volume contains remarkably little about disorders other than anorexia nervosa. It would have been advantageous to show if similarities and distinctions between these different subgroups could have been considered in a systematic way throughout. There is an interesting contrasting of some of the disorders in the chapter on schooling. Bulimia in particular gets very little mentioned except under epidemiology. Overall this book is strongly recommended to practitioners working in this field.