Mental Health Biography

Tyson pulls no punches in his most candid, comprehensive and entertaining book yet, which chronicles for the first time in full his inspirational story - the rise, the fall, and the rise again, which saw him come back from the brink of suicide to reclaim his heavyweight crown.

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.

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.

What started as a wonderful love story for Mélissa and Scott ended 16 years later with Scott’s dramatic death, leaving Mélissa and her two young children to endure the unimaginable. In her desperation, Mélissa prayed for guidance, and God responded by sending her an army of angels to make her transition from wife to widow more bearable. Since her husband’s passing, Mélissa has felt a strong calling to use her voice to address the stigmas around suicide and mental health.

In his early 20s, Mindy Greiling's son, Jim, was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder after experiencing delusions that demanded he kill his mother. At the time, and for more than a decade after, Greiling was a Minnesota state legislator who struggled, along with her husband, to navigate and improve the state's inadequate mental health system. Fix What You Can is an illuminating and frank account of caring for a person with a mental illness, told by a parent and advocate.

Beginning in the 1950s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson convinced hundreds of people to shed their clothes and copulate—in the name of science. For more than 40 years, the pair served as the nation's top experts on love, sex, and intimacy. In this eye-opening work, critically acclaimed biographer Thomas Maier presents an unprecedented look at the research team of Masters and Johnson, their pioneering studies of intimacy, and their lasting impact on the love lives of men and women. Masters of Sex offers a titillating portrait of the team's real-life story.

The opioid epidemic has hit people in communities large and small and across all socioeconomic classes. What should each of us know about it, and do about it? Unstitched moves listeners from feelings of helplessness and blame into empathy, ultimately helping friends, family, and community members separate the disease of addiction from the person underneath.

In this provocative book, award-winning journalist Patricia Pearson argues that our culture is in denial of women's innate capacity for aggression. We don't believe that women batter their husbands or abuse the majority of children in North America. We ignore the 200 percent increase in crime by women in a period when most crime statistics are dropping. Pearson weaves the stories of women such as Karla Homolka and Mary Beth Tinning (who smothered eight of her children) with the results of criminologists and psychiatrists to expose the myth of female innocence.

Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial speciality. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people’s messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures?

From enduring an abusive childhood to fighting as a Special Forces Green Beret in the war in Afghanistan, Sean Rogers has come away from his hardships with the tools necessary to not only survive but thrive. He knows firsthand what it means to face your trauma and use it as a source for incredible strength.

How Can I Help? portrays a week in the life of Dr. David Goldbloom as he treats patients, communicates with families, and trains staff at CAMH, the largest psychiatric facility in Canada. This highly listenable and touching behind-the-scenes account of his daily encounters with a wide range of psychiatric concerns - from his own patients and their families to Emergency Department arrivals - puts a human face on an often misunderstood area of medical expertise.

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life. What they both assume will be a casual vacation tryst turns into a passionate, transatlantic love affair, as they rendezvous in London, Marrakech, Milan, the Aeolian Islands, and San Francisco.

Until sophomore year of high school, 15-year-old Allison Britz lived a comfortable life in an idyllic town. She was a dedicated student with tons of extracurricular activities, friends, and loving parents at home. But after awakening from a vivid nightmare in which she was diagnosed with brain cancer, she was convinced the dream had been a warning. Allison believed that she must do something to stop the cancer in her dream from becoming a reality.

In this painfully moving memoir, take a firsthand look at anorexia through the eyes of a young girl. Even in kindergarten, Rachel Richards knows something isn't right. By leading us through her distorted thoughts, she shines a light on the experience and mystery of mental illness. As she grows up, unable to comprehend or communicate her inner trauma, Rachel lashes out, hurting herself, running away from home, and fighting her family. Restricting food gives her the control she craves. But after being hospitalized and force-fed, Rachel only retreats further into herself.

After fourteen years apart, forty veterans of brutal close-quarters combat, lost souls to a man, were brought back together when one of them, the author, received the Medal of Honor. Their impromptu reunion in June 2019 helped heal them all—and saved more than a few of them too. This is their story.

The quiet power of kindness can change the way we view one another, our communities, and even ourselves. Lady Gaga embodies this mission, and through her work, brings more kindness into our world every single day. Meet young changemakers who found their inner strength, who prevailed in the face of bullies, who started their own social movements, who decided to break through the mental health stigma and share how they felt, who created safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth, and who have embraced kindness by helping others without the expectation of anything in return.

In the early hours of March 2015, the police receive a call from a nurse at a provincial Danish hospital. She suspects her colleague is deliberately killing patients and fears that it has just happened again. Soon, several witnesses reveal that they too suspect the same nurse of poisoning patients; some have been harboring their suspicion for years… so why has no one done anything about it before? And now that those patients’ bodies have long been cremated, where is the evidence?

At twenty-eight, fresh from Stanford’s MBA program and steeped in the move-fast-and-break-things ethos of Silicon Valley, Andy Dunn was on top of the world. He was building a new kind of startup—a digitally native, direct-to-consumer brand—out of his Manhattan apartment. Bonobos was a new-school approach to selling an old-school product: men’s pants. Against all odds, business was booming.

A pioneering neuroscientist shares his story of growing up in one of Miami's toughest neighborhoods and how it led him to his groundbreaking work in drug addiction. As a youth, Carl Hart didn't realize the value of school; he studied just enough to stay on the basketball team. At the same time, he was immersed in street life. Today he is a cutting-edge neuroscientist - Columbia University's first tenured African American professor in the sciences.