Mental Illness

Mental wellness issues are at an all-time high, and most quick-fixes fail to provide a long-term solution. While billions of dollars are spent annually on feel-better products, most exclusively target the brain and come with a slew of damaging side effects. Mental Fitness outlines the groundbreaking research on the gut-brain-heart axis to improve mood, thinking, and energy through nutrition, mindset, and movements.

In Infectious Madness, Washington presents the new germ theory, which posits not only that many instances of Alzheimer's, OCD, and schizophrenia are caused by viruses, prions, and bacteria but also that with antibiotics, vaccinations, and other strategies, these cases can be easily prevented or treated.

In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world's most influential psychiatrists, warns that mislabeling everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for individuals and society: Stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families and the nation.

Do you find yourself lying awake at night, ruminating about the events of the day? Do you toss and turn, worrying about what you have to do in the morning or what you did earlier in the day? If so, you are not alone. In fact, insomnia is the most common sleep disorder faced by the general population today.

In They Can't Find Anything Wrong!, Dr. David Clarke shares a life-changing approach to Stress Illness that is based on detailed interviews with and successful treatment of over 7000 patients. Tens of millions of people with Stress Illness are usually unaware of the nature or degree of the stress responsible for their symptoms. Unfortunately, few physicians are formally trained to detect and manage this problem.

There’s a cottage on a cliff. Gabe and Pippa’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives. Night after night Gabe comes to their rescue, literally talking them off the ledge. Until he doesn’t. When Pippa discovers Gabe knew the victim, the questions spiral...Did the victim jump? Was she pushed?

If you’re the family member of an addict, you may feel confused, guilty, and scared of doing the wrong thing. And when you don’t know how to help, you may find yourself in a codependent role. Addict in the House offers a pragmatic, step-by-step guide to dealing with a loved one’s addiction, from accepting the reality of the disease to surviving what may be repeated cycles of recovery and relapse. You’ll learn how to encourage your addicted loved one to get help without forcing it and finally find the strength to let go of codependence.

In the tradition of The Glass Castle, Educated, and Heartland, Neal Wooten traces five decades of his dirt-poor, Alabama mountain family as the years and secrets coalesce.

Milly's mother is a serial killer. Though Milly loves her mother, the only way to make her stop is to turn her in to the police. Milly is given a fresh start: a new identity, a home with an affluent foster family, and a spot at an exclusive private school. But Milly has secrets, and life at her new home becomes complicated. As her mother's trial looms, with Milly as the star witness, Milly starts to wonder how much of her is nature, how much of her is nurture, and whether she is doomed to turn out like her mother after all.

Public awareness of mental illness has been transformed in recent years, but our understanding of how to define it has yet to catch up. Too often, psychiatric disorders are confused with the inherent stresses and challenges of human experience. A narrative has taken hold that a mental health crisis has been building among young people.

In this trailblazing book, Dr. Mark Rego, who has practiced psychiatry and taught at Yale for thirty years, explores why mental illness and stress are skyrocketing alongside technology ostensibly created to improve our world. Using decades of experience and pioneering scientific research, Dr. Rego presents his innovative hypothesis of Frontal Fatigue, the background condition from which many of us now suffer. Frontal Fatigue exists when the unique pressures of modern life overwhelm the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brains that can make us susceptible to mental illness.

Following her father's death, Jane North-Robinson and her mom move from sunny California to the dreary, dilapidated old house in Maine where her mother grew up. All they want is a fresh start, but behind North Manor's doors lurks a history that leaves them feeling more alone...and more tormented.

In this poignant memoir that is both laugh-out-loud funny and sniffle inducing, Clint Edwards explores his lifelong struggle with mental illness in the shadow of his father's battle with the opioid epidemic and his mother's undiagnosed mental illness. From being diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, to finding love, marriage, and having children, Clint explores what it means to find a healthy and balanced life with mental illness as your copilot.

Suicide has reached epidemic proportions in America, claiming over 45,000 lives each year—more than car accidents or homicides. For every person who dies there are about 10 unsuccessful attempts. Yet suicides are preventable, if we can grasp the complex factors behind it and look out for suicide’s signs in our families, communities, and colleagues. In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed journalist James Barrat delivers these insights with a deep dive into America’s suicide crisis.

Scheier’s mother Judith was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—a violent and abusive liar whose hold on reality was shaky at best. On an uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room to tell her two important things.

You might not have heard of misophonia, but if you are often infuriated by the sound of chewing, breathing, snoring, a clock ticking, or any other specific trigger, you may have experienced it. In fact, it’s thought that one in five of us have it. Sounds Like Misophonia addresses what the condition is, how it manifests, and provides a guide to managing it. By clinical psychologist Dr Jane Gregory, this is the first practical self-help book to make sense of the condition, and help you design your own treatment plan tailored to your unique experience.

Mark and Giulia's life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at 18, married at 24, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was 27, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe.

Vince Granata remembers standing in front of his suburban home in Connecticut the day his mother and father returned from the hospital with his three new siblings in tow. He had just finished scrawling their names in orange chalk on the driveway: Christopher, Timothy, and Elizabeth. Twenty-three years later, Vince was a thousand miles away when he received the news that would change his life - his younger brother, Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia, had killed their mother in their childhood home.

Are we all a little crazy? Roughly fifteen percent of the population will have a psychotic experience, in which they lose contact with reality. Yet we often struggle to understand and talk about psychosis. Interactions between people build on the stories they tell each other-stories about the past, about who they are or what they want. In psychosis we can no longer rely on these stories, this shared language. So how should we communicate with someone experiencing reality in a radically different way than we are?

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.