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The author is a social worker who writes with experience, authority, and compassion about what really happened when thousands of mental patients were discharged from state hospitals--and what to do about it. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
**WINNER OF THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2014** A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Sometimes your child - the most familiar person of all - is radically different from you. The saying goes that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But what happens when it does? Drawing on interviews with over three hundred families, covering subjects including deafness, dwarfs, Down's Syndrome, Autism, Schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, children born of rape, children convicted of crime and transgender people, Andrew Solomon documents ordinary people making courageous choices. Difference is potentially isolating, but Far from the Tree celebrates repeated triumphs of human love and compassion to show that the shared experience of difference is what unites us. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Non-fiction and eleven other national awards. Winner of the Green Carnation Prize.
THE MOST UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION ON: SOCIAL ANXIETY DISORDER, GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER, OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER, AND POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER.
This book brings together leading international authorities - physicians, historians, social scientists, and others - who explore the many complex interpretive and ideological dimensions of historical writing about psychiatry. The book includes chapters on the history of the asylum, Freud, anti-psychiatry in the United States and abroad, feminist interpretations of psychiatry's past, and historical accounts of Nazism and psychotherapy, as well as discussions of many individual historical figures and movements. It represents the first attempt to study comprehensively the multiple mythologies that have grown up around the history of madness and the origin, functions, and validity of these myths in our psychological century.
In Souls Are Made of Endurance, Stewart Govig gives a personal account of his family's struggle with their son's mental illness. After his son was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Govig's family faced not only the difficulty of finding medical care and therapy but also the personal anguish and the questioning of faith and of God that often accompany such a crisis. The author's two foundations are the Bible and personal experience. His spiritual search returns meaning to his family's struggle and restores faith and hope. Govig provides guidance and support, and exposes the way society stigmatizes people with mental illness. This book is a powerful statement of hope that every pastor, counselor, and family dealing with mental illness needs to read.
Asylum Ways of Seeing uncovers a patient culture within twentieth-century American psychiatric hospitals that did not just imbibe ideas from the outside world, but generated ones of their own. In illuminating seemingly resigned patients in these settings, it makes a call to reconsider the philosophical possibilities within resignation.
Psychiatry that recognizes the essential role of community in creating a new story of mental health • Provides a critique of conventional psychiatry and a look at what mental health care could be • Includes stories used in the author’s healing practice that draw from traditional cultures around the world Conventional psychiatry is not working. The pharmaceutical industry promises it has cures for everything that ails us, yet a recent study on antidepressants showed there is no difference of success in prescribed pharmaceuticals from placebos when all FDA-reported trials are considered instead of just the trials published in journals. Up to 80 percent of patients with bipolar depression...
The First Episode of Psychosis is the ideal book for patients experiencing the frightening and confusing initial episode of psychosis, which often occurs during late adolescence or early adulthood, and which affects nearly 3% of all people over the course of their lifetime. The book covers a range of disorders, focusing on primary psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and schizophreniform disorder, clearly describing symptoms, early warning signs, and treatment--information that is essential for patients and families faced with the challenges posed by psychosis. The book also discusses psychiatric evaluation, healthy lifestyle choices, and the stigma often associated with mental illnesses. Worksheets allow readers to keep records of symptoms to facilitate communication with care providers, and an extensive glossary clarifies the dizzying array of terms used by medical professionals. Optimistic, practical, and recovery-oriented, The First Episode of Psychosis will help patients and their families to take an active, informed role in their care to ensure the best possible prognosis.
"We've all felt occasional pangs of shyness and self-consciousness, but if you are a teenager or young adult with social anxiety disorder, then you know that the dread of being scrutinized and criticized can reach disabling proportions. What You Must Think of Me is the first person account of Emily Ford's struggle with social anxiety disorder (or SAD). Now an adult, Ford candidly reveals how she struggled with - and eventually overcame - the obstacles of social anxiety disorder as a young person. With the help of medical adviser Michael Liebowitz and science writer Linda Wasmer Andrews, Ford couples her own story with the latest medical and scientific information about SAD. Here you will find easy-to-understand science about SAD, including its causes, symptoms, and diagnosis. You'll also learn about the various psychotherapies available for young people with SAD, with tips on how to seek - and make the most of - professional help, as well as such issues as how to manage psychiatric medications, how to handle difficult social situations, and how to talk to family and friends about mental illness."--BOOK JACKET.
Cruel Compassion is the capstone of Thomas Szasz's critique of psychiatric practices. Reexamining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-historical and political-economic perspective, Szasz demonstrates that the main problem that faces mental health policy makers today is adult dependency. Millions of Americans, diagnosed as mentally ill, are drugged and confined by doctors for noncriminal conduct, go legally unpunished for the crimes they commit, and are supported by the state—not because they are sick, but because they are unproductive and unwanted. Obsessed with the twin beliefs that misbehavior is a medical disorder and that the duty of the state is to protect adults from themselves...