Mental Health Science

Empathy is in short supply. We struggle to understand people who aren’t like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even 30 years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States was suffering from an “empathy deficit.” Since then, things seem to have only gotten worse. In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait - something we’re born with or not - but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort.

All of us are familiar with the fairy tales of youth where the young hero and heroine fall in love, defeat their enemies, marry, and live happily ever after. The fairy tales gathered here are about what happens next, when the Prince goes bald and the Princess has a midlife crisis. They portray middle-aged men and women facing the special issues dealing with crisis, aging and mortality, and the desire for renewal.

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.

Most people, including many policy makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers, have encouraged us to be more empathetic - to feel the pain and pleasure of others. Yale researcher and author Paul Bloom argues that this is a mistake. Far from leading us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it and draw upon a more distanced compassion.

Depuis l'apparition d'homo sapiens et la révolution cognitive il y a 50 000 ans, les capacités de notre espèce à comprendre et modifier son environnement paraissent sans limites. Un seul mystère reste inviolé : celui de la nature humaine et de sa civilisation. Ce que nous sommes vraiment, pourquoi notre espèce fait ce qu'elle fait, défie toute explication rationnelle.

Contrary to popular belief, our predecessors had all sorts of obscene hobbies long before Christian Grey hit the scene. In this enlightening romp, learn about the first instances of homosexuality on record from the ancient world and the diverse history of nonbinary gender; encounter a thousand years’ worth of hilarious and horrifying contraceptive methods; consider the positive and negative effects of the widespread availability of pornography in the digital age; and more.

Considered by many to be Hannah Arendt's greatest work, published as she neared the end of her life, The Life of the Mind investigates thought itself, as it exists in contemplative life. In a shift from her previous writings, most of which focus on the world outside the mind, this work was planned as three volumes that would explore the activities of the mind considered by Arendt to be fundamental. What emerged is a rich, challenging analysis of human mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging.

In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In Feeling & Knowing, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large.

In the current period of social and political unrest, conversations about identity are becoming more frequent and more difficult. On subjects like critical race theory, gender equity in the workplace, and LGBTQ-inclusive classrooms, many of us are understandably fearful of saying the wrong thing. Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow, founders of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at NYU School of Law, are here to show potential allies that these conversations don’t have to be so overwhelming.

What does it really mean to be a man? What are some of the landmarks along the road to mature masculinity? And what of the feminine components of a man's personality? Women have developed, over the centuries, considerable expertise in the technique of adapting to men, and for good reason, but that is not the same as truly understanding them. The transition from male childhood to real manhood is a complicated struggle, and explored in this book. As timely today as when it was first published, He provides a fascinating look into male identity and how female dynamics influence men.

Less than three months after retiring from a 30-year law enforcement career, Kim Colegrove's husband chose suicide. Since that day, Colegrove has been helping first responders across the country practice techniques to cope with the stress and trauma that their work brings. And this book continues that mission by offering first responders and their families hope by introducing meditation and mindfulness as viable and practical tools to help reduce stress, regulate emotion, and improve overall health and well-being.

Combining cutting-edge research with broad anecdotal evidence from her work as a clinical psychologist to illustrate just how invaluable spirituality is to a child's mental and physical health, Miller translates these findings into practical advice for parents, giving them concrete ways to develop and encourage their children's - as well as their own - well-being. In this provocative, conversation-starting book, Dr. Miller presents us with a pioneering new way to think about parenting our modern youth.

At some point over the course of the average American woman's life, she will find herself alone, whether she is divorced, widowed, single, or in a loveless, isolating relationship. And when that time comes, it is likely that she will be at a loss as to how to handle it. As a society, we have an unspoken but omnipresent belief that a woman alone is an outcast, inherently flawed in some way. In this invigorating, supportive audiobook, psychotherapist Florence Falk aims to take the fear, doubt, confusion, and helplessness out of being a woman alone.

Christians who struggle with a conflict between their sexual and religious identities have few therapeutic options available to them. An alternative to these methods is Sexual Identity Therapy (SIT) -an approach that aims to provide individuals with a safe therapeutic space to explore the tension between their sexuality and their faith. Working within the SIT framework, clients are able to resolve their inner conflict to their personal satisfaction and to freely choose a coherent identity that enables them to move forward in life.

It's been 21 days since the hundred landed on Earth. They're the only humans to set foot on the planet in centuries...or so they thought. Book two in The 100 series, now a popular show on the CW network. Facing an unknown enemy, Wells attempts to keep the group together. Clarke strikes out for Mount Weather, in search of other colonists, while Bellamy is determined to rescue his sister, no matter the cost. And back on the ship, Glass faces an unthinkable choice between the love of her life and life itself.

This original and lucid account of the complexities of love and its essential role in human well-being draws on the latest scientific research. Three eminent psychiatrists tackle the difficult task of reconciling what artists and thinkers have known for thousands of years about the human heart with what has only recently been learned about the primitive functions of the human brain.

Mental illness is the great isolator - and the great unifier. Almost half of us will suffer from it at some point in our lives; it affects everybody in one way or another. Yet today, Australia’s mental health system is under stress and not fit for purpose, and the pandemic is only making things worse. What is to be done? In this brilliant mix of portraiture and analysis, Sarah Krasnostein tells the stories of three women and their treatment by the state while at their most unwell.

Extras, the final book in the Uglies series, is set a couple of years after the "mind-rain", a few earth-shattering months in which the whole world woke up. The cure has spread from city to city, and the pretty regime that kept humanity in a state of bubbleheadedness has ended. Boundless human creativity, new technologies, and old dangers have been unleashed upon the world.

Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic and wise people they have always wanted to be. In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age.

Most of what we know about how ideas spread comes from best-selling authors who give us a compelling picture of a world, in which "influencers" are king, "sticky" ideas "go viral", and good behavior is "nudged" forward. The problem is that the world they describe is a world where information spreads, but beliefs and behaviors stay the same. When it comes to lasting change in what we think or the way we live, the dynamics are different: beliefs and behaviors are not transmitted from person to person in the simple way that a virus is.