Psychology reference books, including the DSM-5, are on a book cart. Please use our library's scanner to copy the pages you wish to use (so that these limited resources can be shared with and used by everyone).

You may be able to find more books about a particular disorder by searching catalogs in our library and other libraries:

         L-S Book Catalog

         Minuteman Library Network Catalog

         Boston Public Library Catalog

Finding Specific Aspects of the Disorder

To find relevant journal articles, you may want to narrow your search. For specific treatments, causes, or behaviors related to a disorder, try looking at the NIMH website. If you are still having difficulty identifying specific aspects of the disorder, then put the disorder name and a relevant keyword into a Google search. Example searches:

"anorexia nervosa" and treatment

depression and causes

"borderline personality disorder" and behavior

Once you have specific search terms (e.g., CBT, antidepressants, etc.), then go to a database and use these terms along with the disorder. For example:

"anorexia nervosa" and "nutritional counseling"

depression and genetics

"borderline personality disorder" and “distorted self-image"

Quotation Marks

Use quotations to find an exact phrase. For example:

"personality disorder"

               "attachment disorder"

               "post-traumatic stress disorder"

               "social anxiety phobia"

               "anorexia nervosa"

Truncation (Using an Asterisk * )

Truncation finds different forms of the same word, in a single search. In truncation, a symbol is added to the end of a word root. Often, the symbol for truncation is an asterisk * . The asterisk tells the database to search for all forms of that word.  

For example, typing censor* in a database finds these results:

censor

censors

censored

censoring

censorship

Why use truncation? If a word has various endings and those variants essentially refer to the same concept, then truncation can save time, as it offers more complete search results in a single search. (Some word roots do not work well with truncation, because the word roots diverge into different concepts–for example, minor* would find minor, minors, minority, minorities, etc. or wom* would find womb, wombat, women, woman, etc.)

NOTE: An asterisk does truncation in the Advanced Search field of most–though not all–databases. If using a truncation symbol such as an asterisk, you may need to use the word “and” between your keyword terms (to avoid an error message). Each database offers a "Help" section which may provide its own specific guidance about truncation.

Advanced Searching and Sorting Results

Most databases provide links or a drop-down menu to sort by relevance or date.

Most databases have a link called Advanced or Advanced Search. Using Advanced Search, you can:

• limit the date range

• limit the document type

• refine your keyword search