The Lumber Room: Mental Illness in the House of Medicine (second edition published in 2016) is a lively, literate examination of handbooks written to help doctors distinguish mental illness from physical illness. Evidence from the history of illness and of medicine is presented, including a glance at the evolution of the psychiatrists' bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and references to epilepsy, lycanthropy, syphilis, cancer, the Capgras delusion, mal...

Can You Learn to Be Happy?YES . . . according to the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular and life-changing course. One out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear Tal Ben-Shahar’s insightful and inspiring lectures on that ever-elusive state: HAPPINESS.HOW?Grounded in the revolutionary “positive psychology” movement, Ben-Shahar ingeniously combines scientific studies, scholarly research, self-help advice, and spiritual enlightenme...

Its landscaped ground, chosen by Frederick Law Olmsted and dotted with Tudor mansions, could belong to a New England prep school. There are no fences, no guards, no locked gates. But McLean Hospital is a mental institution-one of the most famous, most elite, and once most luxurious in America. McLean "alumni" include Olmsted himself, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor and Ray Charles, as well as (more secretly) other notables from among the rich and famous. In its "golden age," McLe...

“Thought-provoking…[Allen] writes without sanctimony and never simplifies the people in his book or the moral issues his story inevitably raises." —Wall Street JournalFew diseases are more gruesome than typhus. Transmitted by body lice, it afflicts the dispossessed—refugees, soldiers, and ghettoized peoples—causing hallucinations, terrible headaches, boiling fever, and often death. The disease plagued the German army on the Eastern Front and left the Reich...

Using rare interviews with former inmates and workers, institutional documentation, and governmental archives, Claudia Malacrida illuminates the dark history of the treatment of “mentally defective” children and adults in twentieth-century Alberta. Focusing on the Michener Centre in Red Deer, one of the last such facilities operating in Canada, A Special Hell is a sobering account of the connection between institutionalization and eugenics.Malacrida explains how isolating ...

The explosive story of the discovery and development of psychiatric medications, as well as the science and the people behind their invention, told by a riveting writer and psychologist who shares her own experience with the highs and lows of psychiatric drugs.Although one in five Americans now takes at least one psychotropic drug, the fact remains that nearly seventy years after doctors first began prescribing them, not even their creators understand exactly how o...

Xanax Withdrawal provides a road map for stopping Xanax. Xanax dependency is a common problem, and there is little practical information available on how to safely and comfortably stop taking it. A patient can unknowingly become dependent on Xanax, with dependency sometimes happening after as little as a week or two of regular use. Dr. Shipko addresses issues related to stopping Xanax; why to stop, when to stop, how to taper the drug and what to expect during withdrawal. A practicing psych...

By some estimates, there are as many as twelve million psychopaths in the United States alone. Cold-blooded, remorseless, and strangely charismatic, they commit at least half of all serious and violent crimes. Supposedly, most serial killers are psychopaths, as, surprisngly, are large numbers of corporate executives. They seem to be an inescapable, and fascinating, threat in our midst.But is psychopathy a brain disorder, as many scientists now claim? Or is it just a reflection of m...

From the comfort and safety of your chair, join the author as she dared to live her dreams travelling through the extremes of bipolarity. Witness the strategies she used to survive the consequences of putting one foot in front of the other while on a path she believes ordained by the Man Upstairs.

This book fills the gap in the market for an introductory text on mental health nurses that explores the psychological interventions used with mental health patient groups.

When I was young, if our cars started running rough, my dad would go to the auto parts store and buy a tune up kit. A short time later, with a little time and effort on his part, our cars were running smooth again. That's where I got the idea for this title and book.Most people don't really understand exactly how they come to feel bad, and often have some erroneous notions about how that actually happens. Because of that, they miss many opportunities to feel better, and don't reali...

A Companion to the Classification of Mental Disorders provides essential reading as a background and supplement to both the recently produced DSM-5 and the forthcoming ICD-11. It focuses on the processes of classification and diagnosis, and the uses for these classifications. The book emphasises the dangers of regarding any current psychiatric classification as true or complete, in view of the present partial state of knowledge about the causes and mechanisms of most mental and be...