Mental Health Biography

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.

Ian Karmel has weighed eight pounds and he has weighed 420 pounds and right now he’s almost exactly in between the two, but this book is not a weight-loss book. It’s about being a fat person in a skinny world. It’s about gym class and football practice, about chicken wings and juice cleanses, about airplane seats and roller coasters, about fat jokes and Jabba the Hutt, about crying in the Big and Tall section and the joys of being a sneakerhead, about prediabetes and gout, and about realizing that you actually don’t want to eat yourself to death and hoping it’s not too late.

Building from Bunny’s viral memes, Hello Higher Self is a self-care manifesto, calling on listeners to radically shift their perspectives from the Learned Hierarchal Beliefs (LHBs) we’ve all internalized to the self-acceptance we were born into, aka our Higher Selves. This book shines a light into eighteen areas of life where LHBs often lurk—from creativity, to work, to relationships, to race, to sexual pleasure. Bunny’s mix of meditative advice, written exercises, and personal examples make for a jaw-dropping listen.

Canadians fell in love with Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s beautiful and high-spirited bride when he brought her to the world stage as the youngest First Lady in the history of the country. But the situation wasn’t as rosy as it seemed. Plagued by mood swings and unprepared for public life, Margaret became increasingly isolated at 24 Sussex, as her depression alternated with bouts of mania. As her behavior became more puzzling - even to Margaret herself - she did her best to mother her three young sons.

This is the first truly comprehensive book examining the life and career of the murderer who has become one of America's great supervillains. It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century.

Matilda Boseley's adult ADHD diagnosis was a massive, earth-shattering event. She was given a prescription but had no idea what ADHD meant for her identity, her relationships or her future. Twelve months of confusion later, journalist Matilda embarked on an epic voyage to figure out what's really happening in the stormy seas of the ADHD brain and write the guide she wished she'd had. The Year I Met My Brain is the ultimate travel companion for navigating and enjoying life as an ADHD adult

A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron's true account of his experience of crippling depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.

Millions of families are affected by eating disorders, which usually strike young women between the ages of fourteen and twenty. But current medical practice ties these families' hands when it comes to helping their children recover. Conventional medical wisdom dictates separating the patient from the family and insists that 'it's not about the food', even as a family watches a child waste away before their eyes.

The emotional trauma we suffer as children not only shapes our emotional lives as adults but also affects our physical health and overall well-being. Scientists now know on a biochemical level exactly how parents' chronic fights, divorce, death in the family, being bullied or hazed, and growing up with a hypercritical, alcoholic, or mentally ill parent can leave permanent, physical "fingerprints" on our brains.

Told with the same intimate style, brutal honesty, and uproarious wisdom that placed Wishful Drinking on the New York Times bestseller list for months, Shockaholic is the juicy account of Carrie Fisher’s life, focusing more on the Star Wars years and dishing about the various Hollywood relationships she’s formed since she was chosen to play Princess Leia at only 19 years old.

Kafka is one of 161 inspired-and inspiring-minds, among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, who describe how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks.

With uncommon humanity, candor, wit, and erudition, National Book Award winner Andrew Solomon takes the listener on a journey of incomparable range and resonance into the most pervasive of family secrets. The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policymakers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease.

A prize-winning journalist with a background in neuroscience, Helen Thomson spent years tracking down people who live with the world's most extraordinary neurological disorders - like a man who tried to break his back because his legs no longer felt like his own, and another who believed that he was dead for nine years. Not content to simply read about these cases on paper, Thomson reached out to 10 people with these afflictions, and they agreed to tell her their stories.

When Brooke Shields welcomed her newborn daughter, Rowan Francis Henchy, into the world, something unexpected followed: a crippling depression. Now, for the first time, Brooke talks about the trials, tribulations, and finally the triumphs that occurred before, during, and after the birth of her daughter.

When we meet Carrie Sun, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s wasting her life. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Carrie excelled in school, graduated early from MIT, and climbed the corporate ladder, all in pursuit of the American dream. But at twenty-nine, she’s left her analyst job, dropped out of an MBA program, and is trapped in an unhappy engagement. So when she gets the rare opportunity to work at one of the most prestigious hedge funds in the world, she knows she can’t say no. Fourteen interviews later, she’s in.

Bats can hear shapes, plants can eat light, and bees can dance maps. When his life took him to a painfully dark place, the poet behind The CryptoNaturalist, Jarod K. Anderson, found comfort and redemption in these facts and the shift in perspective that comes from paying a new kind of attention to nature. Something in the Woods Loves You tells the story of the darkest stretch of a young person’s life, and how deliberate and meditative encounters with plants and animals helped him see the light at every turn.

In her midforties, Gwendolyn Bounds attended a dinner party where someone asked a little girl: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It struck Bounds: In middle age, no one asks you that anymore. So she put the question to herself. The answer set her on an unexpected five-year path of transformation from an unathletic office executive glued to her screens to an age-group medalist and world championship competitor in obstacle course racing—a demanding military-style sport requiring speed, endurance, mobility, and strength.

Longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize: In this piercing memoir, Roméo Dallaire, retired general and former senator, the author of the bestsellers Shake Hands with the Devil and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children, and one of the world's leading humanitarians, delves deep into his life since the Rwandan genocide. At the heart of Waiting for First Light is a no-holds-barred self-portrait of a top political and military figure whose nights are invaded by despair, but who at first light faces the day with the renewed desire to make a difference in the world.

The heartbreaking true story of a young, troubled mother who needed help. The 16th fostering memoir by Cathy Glass. It is the first time Laura has been out since the birth of her baby when Cathy sees her in the school playground. A joyful occasion, but Cathy has the feeling something is wrong. By the time she discovers what it is, it is too late. This is the true story of Laura, whose life touches Cathy's in a way she could never have foreseen.

By the time he was twenty-two years old, goaltender Corey Hirsch had realized his childhood dream of playing in the NHL, won an Olympic medal and drunk from the Stanley Cup. While he excelled on the ice, out of the net Hirsch was plagued by persistent dark thoughts and ceaseless anxiety. On days when he could barely get out of bed, he was able to push aside the endless loop of dark thoughts running inside his brain long enough to win a game. But as soon as he got back home, the agonizing cycle started all over again.