This book is intended to help mental health professionals to develop generic clinical skills in psychiatric interviewing and assessment. We have attempted to write a book that we would have found helpful at the beginning of our careers in clinical psychiatry, both in learning to do the job properly and in passing postgraduate examinations. The content is relevant to a range of mental health disciplines, including nursing, social work and psychology. We did consider writing the book from a multi-disciplinary point of view. However, from the outset we wanted to write a text that was readable and authentic. We have therefore addressed the book primarily to psychiatrists, as working as a psychiatrist is what we know best. We hope that this will not undermine the book's relevance to practitioners of other professions. Similarly, we have tended to use male pronouns generically, and there is a certain maleness in many of the vignettes. We hope that these accommodations to readability, and to our gender, do not give an impression of sexism.

This book is not about treatment, pharmacological or psychological. It is not about specialist assessments, such as the assessment of children and adults with learning disabilities, forensic assessment, neuropsychiatric evaluation or psychotherapeutic assessment. It is about those fundamental generic skills that all psychiatrists need, and that form the foundation in developing more specialist skills.

The book assumes the level of knowledge of psychiatry necessary to qualify as a doctor or as a mental health nurse in the United Kingdom.