Mental Illness

Gracie Hollaman finally decides to follow the voices in her head. She leaves behind her family for the small African-American town of Rockrun to join Mama Toot and Mattie. Together, the three will learn to shed their pasts to begin life anew.

Mike Welles had everything under control. He was a good student, an outfielder on the baseball team, a good son, a loyal friend. But that was before. There's a voice in his head. A friend, trying to help him regain control. More than that: The voice can guide him to become better and stronger than he was before, to rid his life of everything holding him back. To figure out who he is again. If only Mike will listen.

An uncensored look inside the mind of depression, anxiety, and bi-polar for individuals, families, and friends.

In this collection of linked essays that chronicle her spiritual recovery, Lily explores what it means to embrace "a faith of surprisingly Jesus-y shape". Lily navigates her own unique path toward a trusting relationship with God as she addresses topics as diverse as coming out as Christian to your non-Christian friends, the intersection of faith and motherhood, and what it means to confront your history of mental illness and trauma.

Margaret "Cuckoo" Clarke recently had a brief stay in a mental institution following an emotional breakdown, but she's turning over a new leaf with her "Operation Happiness". She's determined to beat down the bad vibes of the Haters, the Terror Teachers, and all of the trials and tribulations of high school by writing and drawing in her diary. And when life gets really tough, she works through her own moments of uncertainty through imaginary conversations with her favorite literary characters.

When Olivia awakes in a hospital bed following a near-fatal car accident, she can't remember how she got there. She figures it's because she was in a coma for a week, but as time goes on, she realizes she's lost more than just the last week of her life - she's lost all memory of events that happened years ago. Gone is any recollection of starting or graduating high school, the prom, or her steady boyfriend, Matt. Trying to figure out who she is feels impossible when everyone keeps telling her who she was.

When a child faces a physical health crisis, friends and family rally around to provide support. But when a child is diagnosed with mental illness, their families often find themselves struggling alone. Having raised a mentally ill daughter, author Andrea Berryman Childreth has first-hand experience with the shame and stigma these families face, hiding behind a mask of normalcy while feeling completely helpless and out of control at home. On the Edge provides a realistic and practical guide to parenting a child with mental illness.

This is the moving yet deeply disturbing story of a middle-aged mother and a teenaged daughter torn apart by the sudden onset of the mother’s insanity. It details the severe paranoia and absurd delusions that began to control my mother’s behavior. It follows her transformation from loving parent to violent psychotic and my transformation from obedient daughter to terrified runaway. And it depicts the overwhelming revelatory moment when I finally learned she had died - six years before.

It was the spring of 1989. I was 16 years old, a junior in high school and an honors student. I had what every teenager wants: a stable family, a nice home in the suburbs, a great group of friends, big plans for my future, and no reason to believe that any of that would ever change. Then came my mother's psychosis.

She’s Not Herself is a journey to make sense of the effects of multigenerational traumas. Shapiro is ultimately able to forgive (without forgetting) those who left her to fend for herself - and to provide listeners with the wisdom of a seasoned psychotherapist who has examined human vulnerability in its many disguises and has moved through it all with dignity and hope. The result is a memoir of love, loss, loyalty, and healing

Most especially in these times, our thoughts, culture, language, our entire universe is invirulated with gossip. Gossip is the poison ivy of any social construct, and it often become the social cancer. Today, most people unwittingly accept whatever they are told without any understanding of how to differentiate truth from fiction. This book, which is divided into 60 segments, aids listeners in understanding what gossip is, its ties to racism, and then, how racism and general misperception are, in actuality, a form of learned mental illness.

The last place Lisa Eley expects to be is a despondent patient in a psychiatric hospital on suicide watch fighting for her life. As an African American single parent from northwest Baltimore, Lisa knows knock-down, drawn-out hardships and resilient comebacks very well. She rises above every land mine life sets, detonating each with her quiet will and unyielding determination to defeat every adversity in her path. Faith and fate lead her to a new job with a leading agency, a pivotal success leap she thinks. What happens next will have this mild-mannered, upstanding citizen and worshiping Christian plot murder.

When she meets Connor, their attraction is magnetic and their steamy role-plays sizzle. She’s certain he feels their undeniable chemistry. They share a passion for movies, but he never takes her to see one. She can't figure out why he doesn’t message for days or why he won’t commit. Behind her party-girl persona, she can’t stop overanalyzing what must be wrong with her-or stop picking her skin. Her reckless lifestyle and an unexpected friendship with a drug dealer quickly transform her life from upbeat rom-com to twisted docudrama.

Gripping, unforgettable and deeply affecting, The Skeleton Cupboard recounts the patient stories that most influenced Professor Tanya Byron, covering years of training that forced her to confront the harsh realities of the lives of her patients and the demons of her own family's history. Among others, we meet Ray, a violent sociopath desperate to be treated with tenderness and compassion; Mollie, a talented teenager intent on starving herself.

Discover the life-changing insights of navigating a marriage with mental illness in Embracing the Unknown. This book offers a powerful and honest account of how to cope and strengthen your relationship when mental illness is in the mix. Through the raw and real stories, listeners will be empowered to embrace their journey and gain insight into the unknown.

Childhood trauma, mental illness, addiction, and incarceration are far too common in the US today. Recovery from even one of these issues is challenging, yet many people live with the stark reality of more than one of these circumstances every day. Our systems of care offer some help, but sometimes even the best programs don't yield lasting results. What does a person do when medication, therapy, drug treatment, and support groups are ultimately ineffective for them?

I was executive director for a nonprofit for those with mental illness, I gave speeches from Washington DC to Berkeley. People told me to write a book, so I did. It was about 20 pages. Basically, it was on of my speeches. I decided I didn't know enough to write a book and to take a year to do some research. That research extended over four years. I self-published it five months before the advent of Kindle. I updated it, added about 80 pages and published a second edition in January of 2019.

Both exhilarating and wrenching, Hilary T. Smith's debut novel captures the messy glory of being alive, as seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd discovers love, loss, chaos, and murder woven into a summer of music, madness, piercing heartbreak, and intoxicating joy.

CBT is a treatment modality that is used to help individuals change their maladaptive thinking patterns. The premise of this technique is that when a person changes his maladaptive thinking patterns that it leads to changes in emotion and behavior as well. This process requires a significant amount of self-awareness because participants not only work to adjust their mindsets but they have to make extensive changes in their behavioral patterns, as well.

The book bridges the dangerous divide between faith communities and those living with the stigma of mental health challenges. Faith leaders seeking greater understanding for those with troubled minds as well as those impacted by brain illnesses (including loved ones) will benefit from listening to Roberts narrate his personal and pastoral journey through bipolar disorder.