Mental Health Biography

An honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson’s account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out" unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point.

At age fourteen, Laura Delano saw her first psychiatrist who immediately diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and started her on a mood stabilizer and antidepressant. At school, Delano was elected the class president and earned straight-As and a national squash ranking; at home, she unleashed all the rage and despair she felt, lashing out at her family and locking herself in her bedroom, obsessing over death. Delano’s initial diagnosis marked the beginning of a life-altering saga

Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she’s a little quirky. But while she’s made some strange mistakes over the years, it’s not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (whom she thinks is her husband) that she realizes something is amiss. With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical.

Over the past two decades, we have started talking more about common mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. But complex conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and psychosis have been left behind, as have many of the people who live with these conditions or who care for them. Part memoir, part deep-dive investigation, The One Thing We've Never Spoken About is filled with rage at how our nation's public discourse, emergency services and healthcare systems continue to fail so many people.

On a highway in Houston, Texas, Sarah LaBrie’s mother was found screaming at passing cars, terrified she would be murdered by invisible assailants. The diagnosis of schizophrenia that followed compelled Sarah to rethink her childhood, marked at turns by violence and all-consuming closeness. Digging into the events that led to her mother’s break, Sarah traces her family history of mental illness, from the dysphoria that plagued her great-grandmother, a granddaughter of slaves, to her own experience with depression as a scholarship student at Brown.

Anthony Stevens argues that Jung's visionary powers and profound spirituality have helped many to find an alternative set of values to the arid materialism prevailing Western society.

Dealing with some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, forensic neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Richard Lettieri gives a behind-the-scenes look at criminal psychology through case studies from his over 30 years of experience as a court-appointed and privately retained psychologist.

The most inspirational story in Indian cricket is that of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Generations will remember Dhoni for hitting the spectacular winning six for India in the finals of the 50-over World Cup in 2011 against Sri Lanka, but it is the hope he has given to many aspiring cricketers across this nation that is his true legacy. Born in the lap of poverty and having battled against unimaginable adversities, Dhoni's rise from being just another small-town boy to captain of Team India is a case study in B-schools.

Five Trips chronicles Emmy Award-winning journalist Kendis Gibson’s personal journey through five psychedelic experiences, exploring the access issues faced by the BIPOC community in using psychedelics for mental health conditions, set against the backdrop of his challenges as a Black journalist at ABC network and the racial treatment that fueled his public meltdowns.

Moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, Lori Schiller's memoir is a classic testimony to the ravages of mental illness and the power of perseverance and courage. At 17, Lori Schiller was the perfect child - the only daughter of an affluent, close-knit family. Six years later she made her first suicide attempt, then wandered the streets of New York City dressed in ragged clothes, tormenting voices crying out in her mind. Lori Schiller had entered the horrifying world of full-blown schizophrenia.

This confessional self-help guide explores the complex emotional truth of what it’s like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. Activist author Marissa LaRocca’s revelatory tale includes her struggle with her secrets, including sexuality, and how she emerged as an outspoken advocate for gay rights and women’s health issues.

In six enthralling stories drawn from his own clinical experience, Irvin D. Yalom once again proves himself an intrepid explorer of the human psyche as he guides his patients - and himself - toward transformation. With eloquent detail and sharp-eyed observation, Yalom introduces us to a memorable cast of characters.

Dr. Temple Grandin gets to the real issues of autism, the ones parents, teachers, and individuals on the spectrum face every day. Temple offers helpful dos and don'ts, practical strategies, and try-it-now tips, all based on her insider perspective and a great deal of research.

On June 25, 1973, a seven-year-old girl went missing from the Montana campground where her family was vacationing. Somebody had slit open the back of their tent and snatched her from under their noses. None of them saw or heard anything. Susie Jaeger had vanished into thin air, plucked by a shadow. As days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months, Special Agent Pete Dunbar attended a workshop at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virgina, led by two agents who had hatched a radical new idea: What if criminals left a psychological trail that would lead us to them?

Sam Delaney was Jack the Lad. He was confident, loud and funny; an absolute legend, to be honest. Or at least that was what he pretended to be. But when he reached his thirties, work, relationships and fatherhood started to take their toll. Like so many blokes who seemed to be totally fine, he often felt like a complete failure whose life was out of control; anxiety and depression had secretly plagued him for years. Turning to drink and drugs only made things worse.

When neuroscientist Susan Barry was 50 years old, she took an unforgettable trip to Manhattan. As she emerged from the dim light of the subway into the sunshine, she saw a view of the city that she had witnessed many times in the past but now saw in an astonishingly new way. Skyscrapers on street corners appeared to loom out toward her like the bows of giant ships. Tree branches projected upward and outward, enclosing and commanding palpable volumes of space.

At thirty-seven, Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo was content to be single. She was fulfilled by her work on the neuroscience of romantic love—how finding and growing with a partner literally reshapes our brains. That was, until she met the foremost neuroscientist of loneliness. A whirlwind romance led to marriage, to sharing an office at the University of Chicago. After seven years of being inseparable at work and home, she lost her beloved husband following a devastating battle with cancer.

In 1907 Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung began what promised to be both a momentous collaboration and the deepest friendship of each man's life. Six years later they were bitter antagonists, locked in a savage struggle that was as much personal and emotional as it was theoretical and professional. In between them stood a young woman named Sabina Spielrein, who had been both patient and lover to Jung and colleague and confidante to Freud before going on to become an innovative psychoanalyst herself.

Early motherhood is supposed to be joyous, but for Aaisha Alvi those early days were ruined by terrifying thoughts about her baby and family. Her experience was the antithesis of everything she had ever been told about motherhood, far beyond the trials of breastfeeding or putting her baby to sleep. Aaisha did recover and began to enjoy motherhood. She was thrilled when she fell pregnant again. Sadly, that pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, and the psychosis returned. This time, however, she was blindsided by the unimaginable: voices urged her to stab her daughter and to harm innocent people.

I was you. I was once afraid, anxious, confused and lost. I was crippled with panic attacks, trapped by agoraphobia, and riddled with constant anxiety. I almost lost everything important in my life as my world became smaller and smaller. This is the story of my journey through anxiety, panic disorder, and agoraphobia. The good, the bad, and the ugly of panic attacks, anxiety symptoms, irrational and obsessive thoughts, and being afraid to leave my house or be left alone.