Mental Health Biography

July 22, 2011, was the darkest day in Norway's history since Nazi Germany's invasion. It was 189 minutes of terror - from the moment the bomb exploded outside a government building until Anders Behring Breivik was apprehended by the police at Utoya Island. Breivik murdered 77 people, most of them teenagers and young adults, and wounded hundreds more. Breivik is a "lone wolf killer", often overlooked until they commit their crime. Breivik is also unique as he is the only lone wolf killer in recent history to still be alive and in captivity.

At age 20, Gabrielle Pelicci returned from her modeling career in NYC to her hometown of Scranton, PA, where her mother suddenly passed away. At her mother's funeral, Gabrielle had a spiritual experience that left her reeling and set her on a heroine's journey to learn about both the scientific and mystical explanations of human consciousness.

This is a true story of growing up, breaking down, and coming to grips with a psychological disorder. When Samantha Schutz first left home for college, she was excited by the possibilities - freedom from parents, freedom from a boyfriend who was reckless with her affections, freedom from the person she was supposed to be. At first, she revelled in the independence...but as pressures increased, she began to suffer anxiety attacks that would leave her mentally shaken and physically incapacitated.

Maggie Newcomb had not just one, but three serious mental breakdowns, and in Chocolate Pudding in Heaven, she takes you along on her candid journey from chaos and madness to stability and joy. Diagnosed with bipolar I disorder in her teens, Maggie cleverly reveals the mystery of the human brain as she recounts her last manic episode that began in amazing bliss, and then destroyed the life she had worked so hard to create. After being hospitalized and medicated, she is thrown back into reality, left to pick up the pieces of her broken life.

Warning: This audiobook describes several crime scenes that are graphic in nature and may be very disturbing to some people. Do not proceed if under the age of 18 or are disturbed by scenes of death and violence. One after another, young women disappeared without a trace in the night. One by one, their brutalized bodies turned up, the macabre crime scenes suggesting they shared the same cruel fate. Abducted, bound, and raped, all fell prey to an unknown killer; all became the victims of a deadly deception.

A Journey Through a Psychotic Breakdown shatters taboos about coping with mental illness. Written in first-person, this story by Douglas Gonçalves tells the moving account of the executive when he faced a psychotic episode that made him a spectator of his own fate and changed his life forever. The author’s account provokes reflections on the current causes that trigger this disease and demystifies the issue. According to medical statistics, one in four people will have mental health problems throughout their lives, which will greatly affect their personal, professional, and social existence.

On Feb. 12, 2008, at E. O. Green Junior High in Oxnard, CA, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot and killed his classmate, Larry King, who had recently begun to call himself "Leticia" and wear makeup and jewelry to school. Profoundly shaken by the news and unsettled by media coverage that sidestepped the issues of gender identity and of race integral to the case, psychologist Ken Corbett traveled to LA to attend the trial.

From John Wayne Gacy to Jeffrey Dahmer, many of America's most famous murderers have entered into the collective cultural consciousness. They have become pop culture figures, famous for their crimes and the violent nature of their acts. People feel compelled to understand more about these dark and twisted crimes, even when they disgust. For audiences everywhere, the very idea that these people can exist and operate in day-to-day life becomes an issue of abject terror and interest.

In early 2019, Rick Morton, author of acclaimed, best-selling memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt, was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder - which, as he says, is just a fancy way of saying that one of the people who should have loved him the most during childhood didn't. So, over the course of 12 months, he went on a journey to rediscover love. To get better. Not cured, not fixed. Just, better. This is a book about his journey to betterness, his year of living vulnerably.

In Behind the Facade: A Mental Health Memoir, Lauren pulls back the curtain, giving a glimpse into the memories that she buried deep inside, never to see the light of day. By sharing the stories that are helping her heal, Lauren hopes to do her part in breaking the stigma around mental health and to inspire others to feel less alone in their journey.

Paris Fury is Tyson's rock, the wife he thanks for all his success. Both from Traveller families, she married him at 19 and is hands-on mother to their six children, as well as at his side through every fight. Always glamorous, strong, grounded and her own woman. When Tyson's struggles with depression, OCD and alcohol have threatened to overwhelm them, she has held them together and helped to see Tyson through to the greatest boxing victories. With all her warmth, humour and honesty, she tells her story.

Belle Gibson convinced the world she had healed herself from terminal brain cancer with a healthy diet. She built a global business based upon her claims. There was just one problem: she'd never had cancer. In 2015, journalists uncovered the truth: this hero of the wellness world, with over 200,000 followers, international book deals and a best-selling smartphone app, was a fraud.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is known around the world as the “Father of Psychoanalysis,” and for good reason. If anything, Freud’s first patient was himself. A sufferer of psychosomatic symptoms, Freud diagnosed himself as having a repressed antagonism against his father. From there, Freud began to build on his now famous concepts of the unconscious, infantile sexuality and repression. And of course, there’s his famous theory on the structure of the mind, which has made Id and Ego a commonly used part of the English lexicon.

There is nothing more normal than feeling fear, and there is nothing wrong with fear. Too often, we let it drive us away from our greatness instead of viewing it as an indicator that what we are doing is important. Fear can make us run away from challenges instead of meeting them head on. Fear can stop us from pursuing our dreams. But here's the thing: Fear and progress can co-exist. We can be scared and be great anyway!

In The Long Journey Home, their mother, Margaret Robison, finally gets to tell her side of the story, which is more nuanced and poignant than one would ever imagine. Beginning with her childhood in southern Georgia, with its façade of 1950s propriety masking all sorts of recognizable demons (alcoholism, sexual repression, misogyny, suicide, and disease) up until her mental breakdown and, in recent years, her recovery from her massive stroke, The Long Journey Home is Robison's attempt to make sense of a complicated, often tortured, and complex American life.

A collection of the journals, fiction, and letters of the late Esther Grace Earl, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 16. Essays by family and friends will help to tell Esther’s story along with an introduction by award-winning author John Green who dedicated his #1 bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars to her.

This timely and media-driven approach to the Parkland shooting, as reported by teens in the journalism and broadcasting programs and in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas newspaper, is an inside look at that tragic day and the events that followed that only they could tell. It showcases how the teens have become media savvy and the skills they have learned and honed. Students will also share specific insight into what it has been like being approached by the press and how that has informed the way they interview their own subjects.

From battling a devastating childhood illness to unearthing untold trauma, this healing memoir is one of resilience and transformation.

On July 10, 1981, David Mellor was just a baseball-crazed kid, a star high school pitcher preparing to go to college and dreaming of one day taking the mound in Fenway Park for his beloved Boston Red Sox. His dream was derailed as he crossed the parking lot of a McDonald’s, where a car sent him flying through the air and into a wall. In the wake of the accident, even as he reached the major leagues as a groundskeeper, David was tortured by the aftermath of his injuries. One Base at a Time recounts in vivid detail his subsequent 29-year struggle with PTSD.

In Playing Hurt, a leading figure in the sports world - the quintessential "man's man" who seems to have it all - confesses his constant battle with depression. John Saunders welcomes listeners into the heart of his desperate struggle through insights into the root causes of depression and explanations of modern medical and homeopathic treatments.