Psychology Mental Illness

Since its first publication in 1983, Surviving Schizophrenia has become the standard reference book on the disease that has helped thousands of patients, their families, and mental health professionals alike. In clear language, this much-praised and important book describes the nature, causes, symptoms, treatment, and course of schizophrenia, and explores living with it from both the patient’s and the family’s point of view.

Attention Deficit Disorder, the most common learning and behavioral problem among children, also affects millions of adult Americans, more of which are being diagnosed with this potentially disabling condition every day.

Are you curious about the shadowy parts of the human psyche? Join Dr. Daniel Mierlak, a psychiatrist for 25 years, on a journey to the stranger corners of human experience. Here you'll meet: Tony, chauffeur to the fabulously rich, who overcomes crippling anxiety only to find himself descend into a homicidal rage following a botched cosmetic procedure. Amanda, hospitalized for mania, who sees a change to her medicine as an assassination attempt, and then stalks her doctor for a year after discharge.

From the moment war broke out across Europe in 1914, the world entered a new, unparalleled era of modern warfare. Soldiers faced relentless machine gun shelling, incredible artillery power, flame throwers, and gas attacks. Within the first four months of the war, the British Army recorded the nervous collapse of ten percent of its officers; the loss of such manpower to mental illness left the army unable to fill its ranks. Soldiers Don't Go Mad tells for the first time the story of the soldiers and doctors who struggled with the effects of industrial warfare on the human psyche.

Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.

We've all experienced brain fog - misplaced keys, forgotten facts, a general feeling that you're just feeling off today. And many of us will experience that "fog" manifesting as something more permanent - either in ourselves or our loved ones. No matter what your current brain health state may be, You Can Fix Your Brain will enable and empower you to take concrete steps that will make an immediate difference in your brain’s vitality, clarity, and energy. Your memory will improve, fogginess will disappear, you’ll be less tired all the time, and much more.

Contemporary life provides us with infinite opportunities, along with endless temptations. We can eat whatever we want, whenever we want. We can buy goods and services for rapid delivery. But living in this 24/7 hyper-reality poses serious risks to our physical and mental states, our connections to others, and even to the world at large. Brain Wash builds from a simple premise: Our brains are being gravely manipulated, resulting in behaviors that leave us more lonely, anxious, depressed, distrustful, illness-prone, and overweight than ever before.

Pete Earley had no idea. He'd been a journalist for over 30 years, and the author of several award-winning, even best-selling, nonfiction books about crime and punishment and society. Yet he'd always been on the outside looking in. He had no idea what it was like to be on the inside looking out until his son, Mike, was declared mentally ill, and Earley was thrown headlong into the maze of contradictions, disparities, and catch-22s that is America's mental health system.

In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world's most influential psychiatrists, warns that mislabeling everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for individuals and society: Stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families and the nation.

Nearly half of US citizens over the age of 85 are suffering from some kind of dementia and require care. Loving Someone Who Has Dementia is a new kind of caregiving book. It's not about the usual techniques, but about how to manage on-going stress and grief. The book is for caregivers, family members, friends, and neighbors, as well as educators and professionals - anyone touched by the epidemic of dementia. Dr. Boss helps caregivers find hope in "ambiguous loss" - having a loved one both here and not here, physically present but psychologically absent.

Do you find yourself lying awake at night, ruminating about the events of the day? Do you toss and turn, worrying about what you have to do in the morning or what you did earlier in the day? If so, you are not alone. In fact, insomnia is the most common sleep disorder faced by the general population today.

Most people diagnosed with bipolar disorder are sent home with the name of a doctor and multiple prescriptions. However, few people with bipolar disorder are able to find long-term stability with medications alone. Bipolar disorder researcher and expert Julie A. Fast, who was diagnosed with the illness at age thirty-one, and specialist John Preston, PsyD, offer the pioneering Take Charge program used around the world to help listeners promote stability, reduce mood swings, increase work ability, decrease health care costs, and improve relationships.

Susan Doherty's groundbreaking book brings us a population of lost souls, ill-served by society, feared, shunted from locked wards to rooming houses to the streets to jail and back again. For the past ten years, some of the people who cycle in and out of the severely ill wards of the Douglas Institute in Montreal have found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the ward, and then follows her friends out into the world as they struggle to get through their days. With their full cooperation, she brings us their stories, which challenge the ways we think about people with mental illness.

First published in 2006, this updated edition describes new findings on the origins of DDD, the brain science supporting the diagnosis, and cutting-edge treatment approaches. DDD is examined from medical and psychiatric perspectives, but as the authors reveal, it also emerges in literary, philosophical, and spiritual investigations. Feeling Unreal thoroughly explores these different aspects in a fascinating and essential resource that is accessible to medical professionals and general listeners alike.

America has been the world leader in generating new mental health treatments and modern theories of the human psyche. We export our psychopharmaceuticals packaged with the certainty that our biomedical knowledge will relieve the suffering and stigma of mental illness. We categorize disorders, thereby defining mental illness and health, and then parade these seemingly scientific certainties in front of the world.

For over 20 years, Jim Curtis has battled a mysterious chronic illness. He grew accustomed to living in pain, denial, and despair. But when traditional medical therapies didn't help, he sought answers elsewhere. He traveled the world and met a group of extraordinary people he calls the Stimulati - and what he learned from them ultimately changed his life.

What if you could activate or improve your body’s natural healing thanks to a few simple physical exercises? Just imagine those exercises reducing your body’s inflammation, anxiety, or chronic illness. How could it be possible? The Vagus Nerve partially controls our heart and other internal organs as well, insulin signaling, emotions like orgasms and other physical functions. Knowing exactly and stimulating in the right way this important nerve can bring lots of benefits on various areas.

In the United States alone, one in five adults experiences chronic pain. For too long, when a doctor couldn’t find the source of frequent pain, the patient was dismissively told “it’s all in your head.” Today, we know that our somatic responses to trauma, anxiety, and depression create real suffering, and that physical pain can lead to trauma, anxiety, and depression. Dr. Daniel Amen calls this “the doom loop”—the dance between physical and emotional pain. These doom loops interfere with our ability to live our lives. But we can shift the doom loop into a healing loop.

Psychiatry has come a long way since the days of chaining "lunatics" in cold cells and parading them as freakish marvels before a gaping public. But, as Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, the former president of the American Psychiatric Association, reveals in his extraordinary and eye-opening audiobook, the path to legitimacy for "the black sheep of medicine" has been anything but smooth.

Leading medical innovator Kenneth Bock, MD, has helped change the lives of more than 1,000 children, and in this important book he offers help to children everywhere. This is the book that finally puts hope within reach. Doctors have generally overlooked the connections among the 4-A disorders, despite their concurrent rise and the presence of many medical clues.