Psychology Mental Illness

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.

Childhood adversity that is severe enough to be harmful throughout life is one of the biggest public health issues of our time, yet health care systems struggle to even acknowledge the problem. In Damaged, Dr. Robert Maunder and Dr. Jonathan Hunter call for a radical change, arguing that the medical system needs to be not only more compassionate but more effective at recognizing that trauma impacts everybody's health, from patient to practitioner.

What if you could activate or improve your body’s natural healing thanks to a few simple physical exercises? Just imagine those exercises reducing your body’s inflammation, anxiety, or chronic illness. How could it be possible? The Vagus Nerve partially controls our heart and other internal organs as well, insulin signaling, emotions like orgasms and other physical functions. Knowing exactly and stimulating in the right way this important nerve can bring lots of benefits on various areas.

If you feel like your life is spinning out of control, you're definitely not alone! While anxiety is a natural reaction to stress, for some of us, it can become all-consuming - and ultimately debilitating. Thankfully, there is plenty you can do to combat anxiety with the help of this approachable guide. Inside, find out how adopting proven techniques like pinpointing triggers, improving health and eating habits, and learning to let go can help you effectively and deliberately manage your worries - and take back control of your life.

One of the country's leading researchers updates his revolutionary approach to solving - and preventing - children's sleep problems. Here Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a distinguished pediatrician and father of four, offers his groundbreaking program to ensure the best sleep for your child. In Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, he explains with authority and reassurance his step-by-step regime for instituting beneficial habits within the framework of your child's natural sleep cycles.

When her husband, Alan, is injured in a speedboat accident, Cathy Crimmins reluctantly assumes the role of caregiver and learns to cope with the person he has become. No longer the man who loved obscure Japanese cinema and wry humor, Crimmins’ husband has emerged from the accident a childlike and unpredictable replica of his former self with a short attention span and a penchant for inane cartoons. Where Is the Mango Princess? is a breathtaking account that explores the very nature of personality - and the complexities of the heart.

While on a research trip in Peru, science journalist Alice Robb became hooked on lucid dreaming - the uncanny phenomenon in which a sleeping person can realize that they're dreaming and even control the dreamed experience. Finding these forays both puzzling and exhilarating, Robb dug deeper into the science of dreams at an extremely opportune moment: just as researchers began to understand why dreams exist. They aren't just random events; they have clear purposes. They help us learn and even overcome psychic trauma.

Around 250,000 people have had their genomes sequenced, and scientists expect that number to rise to one billion by 2025. Professor Steven J. Heine argues that the first thing we will do on receiving our DNA test results is to misinterpret them completely. Despite breathless (often lightly researched) media coverage about newly discovered "cancer" or "divorce" or "IQ" genes, the prospect of a DNA test forecasting how your life is going to turn out is vanishingly small.

Twenty-seven-year-old Sarah Thebarge had it all - a loving boyfriend, an Ivy League degree, and a successful career - when her life was derailed by an unthinkable diagnosis: aggressive breast cancer. After surviving the grueling treatments - though just barely - Sarah moved to Portland, Oregon, to start over. There, a chance encounter with an exhausted African mother and her daughters transformed her life again.

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.

The SMART (Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment) program addresses three key processes that can be derailed by developmental trauma—somatic regulation, trauma processing, and attachment-building—and uses movement and sensation to target the neurological structures that support emotional and behavioral regulation.

In Second Firsts, Rasmussen walks you through her Life Reentry process to help you break grief's spiral of pain, so you can stop simply surviving and begin to live again. She shows you that loss can actually be a powerful catalyst to creating a life that is in alignment with your true passions and values. The resilience, strength, and determination that have gotten you through this difficult time are the same characteristics that will help you craft your wonderful new life.

Jeni Decker is five-foot nothing and one hundred and [redacted] pounds - a self-described roly-poly, forty-something, Reubenesque bon-bon of a gal, often called cute but never sexy. She has two sons with autism on opposite ends of the spectrum (Jake and Jaxson), a husband who prefers hunting to household chores, an Australian Shepherd named Sugar, and an albino frog named Humbert Humbert. This is her story - a brash, personal, and sometimes shocking memoir.

Pauline first became ill when she was 15. What seemed to be a urinary infection became joint pain, then life-threatening appendicitis. After a routine operation, Pauline lost all the strength in her legs. Shortly afterwards, convulsions started. But Pauline's tests are normal: her symptoms seem to have no physical cause whatsoever. This may be an extreme case, but Pauline is not alone. As many as a third of people visiting their GPs have symptoms that are medically unexplained.

“Pat, we need to kill the dog.” When a sudden mental illness struck his wife, Patrick Dylan found himself living with an eerie stranger. Scared and unprepared, he began a desperate battle to protect her from a mysterious disease, shelter their children from her bizarre behavior, and recover the woman he loved. Within weeks, she had been admitted to the emergency room, the hospital, and the local crisis facility, but none of the experts could provide an answer. As her illness eluded diagnosis, the family’s struggle was only beginning.

The cultural and medical history of dementia and Alzheimer's disease by a leading psychiatrist and bioethicist who urges us to turn our focus from cure to care.

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras answers the question of why young people’s mental health is deteriorating as we become a more technologically advanced society. While enthralled with shiny devices and immersed in social media, our young people are struggling with record rates of depression, loneliness, anxiety, overdoses and suicide. Our immersion in toxic social media has created polarizing extremes of emotion and addictive dependency, while also acting as a toxic "digital social contagion”, spreading a variety of psychiatric disorders.

Break the cycle of anxious thinking and rumination that are at the root of insomnia. In this much-needed guide, a trained mindfulness expert teams up with a behavioral sleep specialist to present evidence-based meditations in an innovative four-week protocol clinically demonstrated to address the emotional stresses and anxieties that lie at the root of sleep issues. Following this guide, listeners will learn to unwind their mind, relax their body, feel less tense, and finally get the sleep they need.

Poor sleep is one of the most common health problems and can leave you feeling exhausted, stressed and run-down. While prescribed medications and over-the-counter remedies rarely offer lasting benefits, cognitive behavioural therapy can help enormously and is the treatment of choice for insomnia.

Alfredo Zotti, a professional musician and bipolar survivor with a university degree in social anthropology and three years study of psychology, provides an introduction to music theory with specific case studies of applications for Alzheimer's, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and other issues.