Mental Illness

The cultural and medical history of dementia and Alzheimer's disease by a leading psychiatrist and bioethicist who urges us to turn our focus from cure to care.

In Beyond Madness—part memoir, part history, and part empathetic guide—Dr. Pruchno draws on her decades as a mental health professional, her own family's experiences with mental illness, and extensive interviews with people with serious mental illness to discuss how individuals live with these illnesses, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and major depression.

Childhood adversity that is severe enough to be harmful throughout life is one of the biggest public health issues of our time, yet health care systems struggle to even acknowledge the problem. In Damaged, Dr. Robert Maunder and Dr. Jonathan Hunter call for a radical change, arguing that the medical system needs to be not only more compassionate but more effective at recognizing that trauma impacts everybody's health, from patient to practitioner.

Nearly one in every five Americans deals with mental illness in a given year, and the rates are climbing. Among physicians, the rate is even higher as the time spent in medical training significantly increases the risk of poor mental health. None of us is fully immune from the ravages of mental health problems. This book is about the fallibility of us all, including the doctors who are supposed to care for us. It is about the fine line of illness and normal emotion and about how to change the norms of medical practice in light of human weakness.

El autor de este libro pasó de trabajar en el mundo editorial, dar clases de interpretación actoral y estar bien considerado, a ser bipolar, con vida de bipolar, con pensión de bipolar. Y ser mirado y tratado como bipolar; en algunos casos con desconfianza, en otros con paternalismo y casi siempre con recelo.

Dr. Michele A. Reiss specializes in helping clients cope with life-threatening illnesses and helping their families through the grieving process. A highly respected therapist, she counseled Randy and Jai Pausch as Randy was dying of pancreatic cancer. Now Dr. Reiss provides comfort and counsel for listeners who are coping with the challenges of serious illness or grief.

Negative self-talk can feel like an ever-present roommate who insists on giving you unsolicited opinions about every aspect of yourself—including your worth, appearance, personality, and life choices. Have you ever wondered where this annoying inner critic comes from? And more importantly, can you make it go away? Unfortunately, no matter what you do, negative thoughts will happen. It's simply how our brains are wired. But you can change the way you respond to these thoughts.

Author Katie Maylea makes her debut in this raw, honest memoir about surviving life when living seems no longer an option. Katie revisits her past and looks beyond, to her future as a person living with mental illness, sharing with the listener a message of hope driven by sheer audacity. Through personal writings spanning years, In Bloom Not Broken invites us into the mind of a troubled young woman navigating through the hostile, barren landscape of depression entirely by feel, driven by her insatiable will to survive no matter the obstacles in her way.

Erin Reardon gets her first kiss from Jim Morrison and loses her virginity to David Bowie. When she flunks out of college, Bruce Springsteen comforts her, and Elvis Costello breaks her heart in Europe. So what happens when she finally meets a rock star in the flesh?

America has made mental illness a crime. Jails in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago each house more people with mental illnesses than any hospital. In this revelatory book, journalist Alisa Roth goes deep inside the criminal justice system to tell how and why it has become a warehouse where inmates are denied proper treatment, abused, and punished in ways that make them sicker. Through intimate stories of people in the system and those trying to fix it, Roth reveals the hidden forces behind this crisis and suggests how a fairer and more humane approach might look.

For Christians, particularly those in vocational ministry, the stigma surrounding mental illness and mental health often creates an atmosphere of secrecy where the enemy's lies reign. Julie Busler understands the pain of mental illness and has learned that trials not only humanize us but increase our capacity to be used by God. In Joyful Sorrow, she invites us into her own journey where a mental breakdown took her from being a missionary to a suicidal patient. With vulnerability and grace, Julie demonstrates that even in the sorrow of mental illness, joy can coexist.

Unmasking the Mask: The Spiritual Battle Behind Mental Illness brings together the secular and biblical perspective on mental illness. Paul talks about the spiritual struggle, which involves two kingdoms. You will find that Unmasking the Mask will expose the enemy behind mental illness. You will discover holistic ways that may reverse or help you manage mental health.

For more than 20 years, The Baby Book author William Sears' advice has been trusted by millions across the country, and around the world. Now, he and The Anti-Alzheimer's Prescription author Vincent M. Fortanasce have put together the essential guide to a clearer, calmer, and happier brain. Laced with relatable personal stories from family members and patients, The Healthy Brain Book weds Fortanasce's deep neurological and psychiatric expertise with Sears' sympathetic bedside manner and listener-friendly writing.

In this fascinating new exploration of mental illness, Professor Brendan Kelly examines ‘madness’ in history and how we have responded to it over the centuries. We travel from the psychiatric institutions of modern India to scientific studies of the brain in Victorian England. We discover the beginnings of formal asylum care and witness the experimental therapies of the cavernous psychiatric hospitals of the 19th and early 20th centuries in Ireland, England, Belgium, Italy, Germany and the United States.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), research shows that mental illnesses are common in the United States, affecting tens of millions of people each year. Estimates suggest that only half of people with mental illnesses receive treatment. And this refers only to the United States. There are mentally ill people suffering similarly the world over.

Everyone's familiar with the consequences of lost sleep: you're groggy and irritable, your focus is off, you don't perform at your best, and you're likely to dump sugary foods and caffeine into your system for an energy boost. But the effects of poor sleep go way beyond these concerns. Indeed, they can be life-threatening.

A marriage with an imperfect love story goes tragically wrong one summer in a small college town in Virginia, and the husband is left picking up the pieces of pain and regret. How did it end in suicide instead of divorce? What he discovers six months later is both heartbreaking and astonishing.

Virginia Hendricks, a beautiful country girl from Millry, Alabama, was swept off her feet at the age of 19 by a handsome and charming preacher’s kid. As they build a life around the military, Virginia is forced to test her unconditional love for Franklin as his genetic inheritance of bipolar disorder seeks to destroy their family. By God’s grace, they fight to persevere through tragedy, illness, despair, and heartbreak during a long battle with the ups and downs of manic love.

An uncensored look inside the mind of depression, anxiety, and bi-polar for individuals, families, and friends.

This is the moving yet deeply disturbing story of a middle-aged mother and a teenaged daughter torn apart by the sudden onset of the mother’s insanity. It details the severe paranoia and absurd delusions that began to control my mother’s behavior. It follows her transformation from loving parent to violent psychotic and my transformation from obedient daughter to terrified runaway. And it depicts the overwhelming revelatory moment when I finally learned she had died - six years before.