Mental Health Science

Alosa's mission is finally complete. Not only has she recovered all three pieces of the map to a legendary hidden treasure, but the pirates who originally took her captive are now prisoners on her ship. Still unfairly attractive and unexpectedly loyal, first mate Riden is a constant distraction, but now he's under her orders. And she takes great comfort in knowing that the villainous Vordan will soon be facing her father's justice. When Vordan exposes a secret her father has kept for years, Alosa and her crew find themselves in a deadly race with the feared Pirate King.

"Ninety-five days, and then I'll be safe. I wonder whether the procedure will hurt. I want to get it over with. It's hard to be patient. It's hard not to be afraid while I'm still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn't touched me yet. Still, I worry. They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness. The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don't."

Explore the depths of human psychology and learn to defend yourself against manipulations with "Dark Psychology and Gaslighting Manipulation" - the powerful bundle that combines two essential guides to understanding the human mind, winning influence, and navigating toxic relationships in the realm of persuasion.

How do you make a change in your life when the tools you used to rely on start letting you down? Whether we’re struggling with a problem, a bad habit, or life in general, we often think we need to “tough it out” or “try harder.” But when we do that, our brains double down on the patterns that got us stuck in the first place. Fortunately, the science of sensation provides the key.

In The Pain We Carry, you'll find powerful tools to help you understand and begin healing from repeated trauma. You'll discover ways to feel safer in your body, build self-compassion and resilience, and reclaim your health and wellness by reconnecting with your sense of self and your ancestral wisdom. You'll learn how trauma is connected to grief, how it can affect both the mind and the body, and how it can persist from one generation to the next.

As the first medical director and attending psychiatrist at the World Trade Center Mental Health Program, Dr. Sue Varma worked directly with civilian and first-responder survivors in the aftermath of 9/11. There, she met people at every point of the stress and trauma continuum. She saw devastation and stagnancy as much as she saw amazing resilience and growth. She asked herself: how do some people survive, even thrive, despite profound challenges? And how can we optimize the things we have control over, while buffering ourselves from stress?

By looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn what we can do to be more like them - and find out, in some cases, why it's good that we aren't. Barking up the Wrong Tree draws on startling statistics and surprising anecdotes to help you understand what works and what doesn't, so you can stop guessing at success and start living the life you want.

We live in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and shopping to binge eating and opioid abuse. Sugar can be as habit-forming as cocaine, researchers tell us, and social media apps are hooking our kids. But what can we do to resist temptations that insidiously and deliberately rewire our brains? Nothing, David Courtwright says, unless we understand the history and character of the global enterprises that create and cater to our bad habits.

Mothers today are tired, overworked, and overwhelmed. Moms desperately want to feel like they are succeeding, but the impractical standards placed on them leave them feeling burnt out and frustrated. Releasing the Mother Load is an experiential guidebook that provides moms the practical support they need, free from judgment, fear, and shame.

Leor Zmigrod reveals the deep connection between political beliefs and the biology of the brain. Drawing on her own pioneering research, she uncovers the complex interplay between biology and environment that predisposes some individuals to rigid ways of thinking, and explains how ideologies take hold of our brains, fundamentally changing the way we think, act and interact with others.

Where does learning begin and how is it sustained and stored in the brain? For musicians, these questions are at the very core of their creative lives. Cognitive and neuroscience have flung wide the doors of our understanding, but bridging the gap between research data and music-making requires a unique immersion in both worlds. Lynn Helding presents a symphony of discoveries that illuminate how musicians can optimize their mental well-being and cognitive abilities.

From the Sunday Times top ten best-selling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame. "It's about the terror, isn't it?" "The terror of what?" I said. "The terror of being found out." For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world, meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made jokes on social media that came out badly or made mistakes at work.

Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency—or free will—is an illusion. In Free Agents, leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose.

Masochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers.

A Jungian analyst, Dr. Bolen introduces our inner patterns in the guise of eight archetypal gods. From the authoritarian, power-seeking gods (Zeus, Poseidon) to the gods of creativity (Apollo, Hephaestus) to the sensual Dionysus, Dr. Bolen shows men how to identify their ruling gods, how to decide which to cultivate and which to overcome, and how to tap the power of these enduring archetypes in order to enrich and strengthen their lives. In Gods in Everyman, Dr. Bolen presents us with a compassionate and lucid male psychology that will help all men and women.

What can death teach us about life? Conducting many thousands of post-mortems has given Dr Richard Shepherd the opportunity to examine death at every stage of life. Each autopsy is its own unique investigation, providing evidence of how, through life, the risks to us ebb and flow. From old to young, from murder to misadventure and from illness to accidental death, each body has taught him something: about human development, about mortality, about its owner's life story, about justice and even about himself.

Are you above average? Is your child an A student? Is your employee an introvert or an extrovert? Every day we are measured against the yardstick of averages, judged according to how close we come to it or how far we deviate from it. The assumption that metrics comparing us to an average—like GPAs, personality test results, and performance review ratings—reveal something meaningful about our potential is so ingrained in our consciousness that we don't even question it. That assumption, says Harvard's Todd Rose, is spectacularly—and scientifically—wrong.

In The Suggestible Brain, world-renowned expert on the science of suggestion Amir Raz, PhD, brings together cognitive aspects of psychology, sociology, and anthropology with issues in our contemporary culture and media alongside a series of case studies of patients with disorders ranging from Tourette’s syndrome to false pregnancies, lactose intolerance, and asthma to show exactly how suggestions can cut deep into our brains, shake our fundamental knowledge, and override our core human values.

Delving into evolution, anthropology, sociology, biology, veterinary science, and zoology, they break down the walls between disciplines, redefining the boundaries of medicine. Zoobiquity explores how animal and human commonality can be used to diagnose, treat, and heal patients of all species. Both authoritative and accessible, offering cutting-edge research through captivating narratives, this provocative book encourages us to see our essential connection to all living beings

In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology - more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity - has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain’s pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis.