Mental Health Biography

What propels some individuals to reach extraordinary creative heights in the earliest years of life while others discover their passions decades later? Are prodigies imbued with innate talent? Do late bloomers reveal their talents because their skills require life experience and contemplation? Through engaging storytelling and intriguing historical and cutting-edge scientific research, best-selling author and acclaimed journalist Claudia Kalb explores these questions to uncover what makes a prodigy and what drives a late bloomer.

Menschliche Abgründe. Deutschlands bekanntester Profiler berichtet fesselnd über die oft ebenso schwierige wie verblüffende Aufklärung authentischer Kriminalfälle und lässt uns tief in seine Suche nach den Tätern eintauchen. Wahre Geschichten, die unter die Haut gehen: Die tatsächliche Bedeutung eines vermeintlich unwichtigen Fundstücks demaskiert den Täter. Die bizarren Phantasien eines Sexualmörders. Nahezu 20 Jahre lang bleibt ein Mord ungeklärt, bis kriminalistisches Gespür einen Serienmörder entlarvt. Eine wahrhaft komplizierte Fallgeschichte.

On August 26, 2015, Emmy Award-winning 24-year-old reporter Alison Parker was murdered on live television, along with her colleague, photojournalist Adam Ward. Their interviewee was also shot but survived. In the wake of his daughter's murder, Andy Parker became a national advocate for commonsense gun safety legislation. The night of the murder, with his emotions still raw, he went on Fox News and vowed to do "whatever it takes" to end gun violence in America.

On July 10, 1981, David Mellor was just a baseball-crazed kid, a star high school pitcher preparing to go to college and dreaming of one day taking the mound in Fenway Park for his beloved Boston Red Sox. His dream was derailed as he crossed the parking lot of a McDonald’s, where a car sent him flying through the air and into a wall. In the wake of the accident, even as he reached the major leagues as a groundskeeper, David was tortured by the aftermath of his injuries. One Base at a Time recounts in vivid detail his subsequent 29-year struggle with PTSD.

In this touching and witty book, award-winning presenter and comic Robin Ince uses the life of the stand-up as a way of exploring some of the biggest questions we all face. Where does anxiety come from? How do we overcome imposter syndrome? What is the key to creativity? How can we deal with grief? Informed by personal insights from Robin as well as interviews with some of the world's top comedians, neuroscientists and psychologists, this is a hilarious and often moving primer to the mind.

Marine Sgt. John Peck survived an IED during the War on Terror that left him with a traumatic brain injury, amnesia, and cost him his marriage. He survived another three years later, one that left him with three and a half limbs missing. He’s one of only two living people to survive the flesh-eating fungus he contracted in recovery at Walter Reed, one that left him as a quadruple amputee. And that’s only the beginning of his story. What followed was a recovery nothing short of miraculous.

What do doctors actually think about when you list your problems in the consulting room? Are they really listening to you? Is the connection all in your head? Every day for 10 years - even while his hospital became the set for a reality television series - clinical neuropsychologist A. K. Benjamin confronted these questions, and this book is his attempt to tell the truth about what happens in these rooms in hospitals the world over.

As a child, Scott longed to be heard. As hard as he tried, Scott couldn't enunciate that first word, that first letter, even that first sound. Fast-forward years later, Scott is a stutter-free adult. He has forged ahead through years of discouragement, disasters, and victories to be become a successful Los Angeles-based actor, writer, director, and producer. He now writes and speaks the words that moves hearts, arouses emotions, and helps others find their voice.

Whether you're becoming a mum for the first time or you have children who are growing up faster than you could have ever imagined, motherhood can feel like the most joyful and yet the most daunting of times. But you're not alone. From the moment I knew my first baby was a girl I started to plan, hope and dream. I couldn't wait to experience that special bond, but I wondered how I'd feel about being a working mum, how I'd hold on to the person I am.

Riddled into this experimental open letter is the story of a man who made the "hero's journey" to another world and back again. The prize he won there, the ultimate boon, is knowing what he wants. This audiobook has the potential to help people along in their thinking, to contest somewhat the negative stigma associated with schizophrenia, to foster pro-activity in the face of mental illness, and to aid in recovery.

An emotionally rich, moving and nuanced memoir from the Yorkshire and England wicketkeeper. As a young boy of eight, Jonny Bairstow was dealt a cruel blow. His father David 'Bluey' Bairstow, the combative and very popular wicketkeeper and captain of Yorkshire, took his own life at the age of 47. David left behind Jonny; Jonny's sister, Becky, and half brother, Andy; and his wife, Janet, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer at the time of his death.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, as one judge described her, as "a coldly calculated criminal recidivist and serial killer." She had experienced a lifetime of murder, mayhem, and mental illness. She killed two boyfriends, including one whose body was stuffed in a freezer. And she was convicted in one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's strangest cases: the Pizza Bomber case, in which a pizza deliveryman died when a bomb locked to his neck exploded after he robbed a bank in 2003 near Erie, Pennsylvania, Diehl-Armstrong's hometown.

The Underdogs tells the story of Karen Shirk, felled at age 24 by a neuromuscular disease and facing life as a ventilator-dependent, immobile patient, who was turned down by every service dog agency in the country because she was "too disabled". Her nurse encouraged her to tone down the suicidal thoughts, find a puppy, and raise her own service dog. Karen did this, and Ben, a German shepherd, dragged her back into life.

If your mind has a mind of its own, this is the audiobook that will teach you how to discipline it and stop it wandering off.... Can you really rewire an adult brain? In theory the answer is yes, but there's a problem: no one seems to know exactly how to do it. In Override, science journalist Caroline Williams sets off on a mission for the answer. Delving into the latest studies on brain plasticity, she tries to square her findings with brain plasticity - that the brain adapts physically as we learn something new.

On the surface, Ken Baker seemed a model man. He was a nationally ranked hockey goalie; a Hollywood correspondent for People; a guest-lister at celebrity parties; and girls came on to him. Inside, though, he didn't feel like the man he was supposed to be. Although attracted to women, Ken had little sex drive and thus even less of a sex life. To his anguish, he repeatedly found himself unable to perform sexually. And, regardless of strenuous workouts, his body struggled to build muscle, earning him the nickname "Pear" from his macho teammates.

From Sandy Hook, Connecticut, to Aurora, Colorado, to Tucson, Arizona, this nation has been racked from coast to coast with mass shootings perpetrated by criminals with sick minds. Authors Dr. Liebert and Dr. Birnes believe the increase in violence is an epidemic and dig deep into the causes of mental illness to determine what exactly is going on with these individuals and society as a whole, and what action can be taken to slow this frightening trend toward mass violence.

On Feb. 12, 2008, at E. O. Green Junior High in Oxnard, CA, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot and killed his classmate, Larry King, who had recently begun to call himself "Leticia" and wear makeup and jewelry to school. Profoundly shaken by the news and unsettled by media coverage that sidestepped the issues of gender identity and of race integral to the case, psychologist Ken Corbett traveled to LA to attend the trial.

Why did Norman Mailer stab his second wife at a party? Who was Edith Wharton's secret transatlantic lover? What motivated Anais Nin to become a bigamist? Writers Between the Covers rips the sheets off these and other real-life love stories of the literati - some with fairy tale endings and others that resulted in break-ups, breakdowns, and brawls. Among the writers laid bare are Agatha Christie, who sparked the largest-ever manhunt in England as her marriage fell apart; Arthur Miller, whose jaw-dropping pairing with Marilyn Monroe proved that opposites attract, at least initially.

In 2010, human rights reporter Mac McClelland left Haiti after covering the lingering devastation of the earthquake. Back home, McClelland finds herself imagining vivid scenes of violence. She can't sleep or stop crying. It becomes clear that she is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, triggered by her trip and seemingly exacerbated by her experiences in the other charged places she'd reported from, places from where she thought she'd escaped emotionally unscathed.

At first glance, Josh Hanagarne seems an improbable librarian. He stands 6'7", competes in strongman contests, and was diagnosed in high school with Tourette's syndrome. But books are his first love - Josh's earliest memories involve fantastic adventures between the pages of Gulliver’s Travels and a passionate infatuation with Fern from Charlotte’s Web. Everything in Josh’s life - from his Mormon upbringing, to finally finding love, to learning to control his tics through lifting - circles back to a close connection with books.