Mental Illness

This collection of poetry, memoirs, and stories of short fiction presents to the listener such themes as depression, suicide, hopelessness, grief, loss, love, mental illness, and abuse both emotional and physical experienced by the writers or someone close to them. This collection serves to demonstrate that hiding behind shame or fear rather than sharing emotional pain as the authors in these works do is tantamount to putting on a mask; wearing a person suit.

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.

The goal of this book is twofold: to educate the family member or caregiver about their loved one's disease and to equip the listener with identified strategies to assist them in helping their loved one navigate through their mental illness diagnosis successfully and to live a high-functioning life. Meet Linda Denke, PhD, who dialogues and walks alongside her listeners as they navigate the mental health system.

Three years ago mortuary cosmetologist Phoebe Glassman lost her husband in a tragic accident. No longer the hopeful wife and mother she once was, Phoebe is disappearing into her grief and into the quietude of her job - restoring to the dead the illusion of life. Then the body of a woman named Pauline Steele arrives in the mortuary, and for Phoebe, everything changes. Pauline is unmistakably Phoebe’s mirror image and bears an alarmingly familiar tattoo. Even more startling is that among Pauline’s effects is a faded photograph of Phoebe.

Mental Illness, like all other illnesses, can be treated, and if not cured, then it certainly can be managed. This two-volume book will explore the causes, effects, treatments, and possible cures for two of the most well-known mental ailments, bipolar disorder and depression.

The author describes in detail all the insanity, disturbing behaviors, oppressive symptoms, and various feeling associated with the mental battles within her own mind. The author suffers from clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and borderline personality disorder. She struggles with suicidal thoughts and attempts, self-mutilating behaviors, mania, paranoia, anxiety, and psychosis with intense hallucinations of all five of her senses, and multiple delusions, including the belief that she is the "second-coming of Christ".

A real-life Talented Mr. Ripley, the unbelievable 30-year run of a shape-shifting con man. The story of Clark Rockefeller is a stranger-than-fiction twist on the classic American success story of the self-made man-because Clark Rockefeller was totally made up. The career con man who convincingly passed himself off as Rockefeller was born in a small village in Germany.

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

A once vibrant oak tree in her yard began dying, voicing cries of help through its dead leaves and moss-covered branches. Inside the house Barbara too was in crisis, the recipient of her husband's anger and rage. As time passes Barbara can no longer stay strong. While she deals with her own demons, the oak too weakens. Based on a true story, this woman takes us inside her emotionally charged existence, letting us feel the anguish of domestic abuse, divorce, attempted suicides, and incarceration in a mental institution.

Erin Reardon gets her first kiss from Jim Morrison and loses her virginity to David Bowie. When she flunks out of college, Bruce Springsteen comforts her, and Elvis Costello breaks her heart in Europe. So what happens when she finally meets a rock star in the flesh?

Follow the lives of several mentally ill patients in a psychiatric facility and what life holds for them in the outside world. Those who smile the most often times have experienced the most pain. Others separate themselves in the feeling of being misunderstood or in search for themselves. In both occasions, the difference between relapsing and feeling okay is being held by a thread. We want to shed the light on the stigma of mental disorders and raise awareness that anyone around us could be experiencing some form or another of these disorders.

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.

Broken Brain, Fortified Faith is the story of one family's journey through schizophrenia, navigating the uncharted waters of mental illness to find help for their daughter, Amber, and support for their family. This memoir is an honest look at the stress, anger, education, and finally, hope experienced through eyes of a mother. Along the way, she questions her trust in God as their family encounters setbacks, inadequate treatments, and additional family health crises.

In the 1950s, mental illness was in the closet, a condition rarely discussed beyond immediate family members. A young mother struggles with bipolar disorder, abusing alcohol and prescription drugs before seeking psychiatric help. Their solution: mind-altering shock and insulin treatments. Her husband, fighting to keep the love of his life, focuses on her recovery, working two jobs to cover the costs of a decade-long cycle of depression.

To those who live under the shadow of an illness that doesn't require crutches, bandages or splints. The world, lacking outward indications of infirmity, tells them to “Get over it, it's all in your head”, “Buck up”, “Quit making excuses”, “Just stop lying around and start being more positive”. Imagine the same advice given to those with diabetes, broken bones and failing organs. To those who strive to heal in such an atmosphere of misunderstanding and criticism, this audiobook is dedicated.

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.

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?

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common childhood conditions, and for a majority of affected individuals, symptoms and impairment associated with this disorder persist into adolescence and adulthood. Although rates of college entry and college completion among individuals with ADHD are lower than in peers without ADHD, ADHD is the most common disability reported among first-year college students.

Hope Amid Hopelessness is a true story about the loving, merciful, caring, all powerful, ever present, gracious, just, sovereign, personal Abba Father (God) working in the lives of Jim and Laura Hansen. As Jim cared for Laura while she struggled with major clinical depression that later led to borderline personality disorder, he realized quickly that he could not fight this battle alone. Turning to his Abba Father, he sought understanding, knowledge, and wisdom from the only source that could truly help. 

Mental Illness is real. Will the Church get real? This book is a collection of essays from various authors: men and women, pastors and congregants, counselors and nurses, parents and children. All have a unique view of how mental health conditions affect people, and how the church has responded to these circumstances. Whispers in the Pews tackles how the mentally ill have been, and still are, treated in the church at large by sharing stories. This is not fundamentally a teaching book, but a book of moments and lives, knitted together by the common theme of mental health.