Mental Health Biography

Taking us from secure hospital wards to high-security prisons to courtrooms, Dangerous Minds offers compelling and deeply compassionate accounts of 10 people whose lives have been shaped by violence. From the impact of traumatic events in childhood to the evolutionary and cultural influences on the emergence of the social mind, this book is an insider's account of the origins of violence that asks its readers to re-evaluate all that they think they know about the people society deems most dangerous.

When Susannah Breslin is a toddler, her parents enroll her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley, where she becomes one of 128 children who are research subjects in an unprecedented 30-year psychological experiment that predicts who she and her cohort will grow up to be. Decades later, trapped in an abusive marriage to a man with a violent history and battling breast cancer, she starts to wonder how growing up under a microscope shaped the person she became and her life choices. Is she the narrator of the story of her life, or is something else?

What propels some individuals to reach extraordinary creative heights in the earliest years of life while others discover their passions decades later? Are prodigies imbued with innate talent? Do late bloomers reveal their talents because their skills require life experience and contemplation? Through engaging storytelling and intriguing historical and cutting-edge scientific research, best-selling author and acclaimed journalist Claudia Kalb explores these questions to uncover what makes a prodigy and what drives a late bloomer.

Sam Delaney was Jack the Lad. He was confident, loud and funny; an absolute legend, to be honest. Or at least that was what he pretended to be. But when he reached his thirties, work, relationships and fatherhood started to take their toll. Like so many blokes who seemed to be totally fine, he often felt like a complete failure whose life was out of control; anxiety and depression had secretly plagued him for years. Turning to drink and drugs only made things worse.

We all know girls develop differently to boys during puberty but, shockingly, pro coaches fail to adapt training to their bodies. Girls develop eating disorders, RED-S and amenorrhea; they're also likely to be emotionally and physically abused; and in their careers with sponsors like Nike, they're underpaid and misrepresented. Lauren Fleshman—one of the fastest American women runners—explores scientific and social research while telling her own story in a bold, energetic voice.

Longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize: In this piercing memoir, Roméo Dallaire, retired general and former senator, the author of the bestsellers Shake Hands with the Devil and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children, and one of the world's leading humanitarians, delves deep into his life since the Rwandan genocide. At the heart of Waiting for First Light is a no-holds-barred self-portrait of a top political and military figure whose nights are invaded by despair, but who at first light faces the day with the renewed desire to make a difference in the world.

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.

Plagued by depression her entire life, it wasn’t until her early 50s that writer and book critic Bethanne Patrick, advocating for her own care, received a medical diagnosis that would set her on the path to wellness and stability. Recognizing the intergenerational effects of trauma and mental health struggles, Patrick unearths the stories of her past in order to forge a better future for herself and her two daughters, dismantling the stigmas surrounding mental health challenges that can plague families into silence and resignation.

Delve into the minds of real people whose actions may shock and stun you, but whose stories have the power to challenge your assumptions and the stigma that surrounds mental illness. I Don't Talk to Dead Bodies shines a powerful, emotional, and surprisingly moving spotlight on the fascinating life of a forensic psychiatrist and the people she works with. It goes beyond the sensationalist headlines to show you just what happens in a world where mental illness occasionally makes good people do bad things.

As a child, Scott longed to be heard. As hard as he tried, Scott couldn't enunciate that first word, that first letter, even that first sound. Fast-forward years later, Scott is a stutter-free adult. He has forged ahead through years of discouragement, disasters, and victories to be become a successful Los Angeles-based actor, writer, director, and producer. He now writes and speaks the words that moves hearts, arouses emotions, and helps others find their voice.

In 2002, at age 28, David MacLean woke up in a foreign land with his memory wiped clean. No money. No passport. No identity. Taken to a mental hospital by the police, MacLean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. Soon he could remember song lyrics and scenes from television shows but not his family, his friends, or the woman he loved. All of these symptoms, it turned out, were the result of the commonly prescribed malarial medication he was taking. Upon hisreturn to the States, he struggled to piece together the fragments of his former life in a harrowing, absurd, and unforgettable journey back to himself.

The title, “The Endless Tunnel,” teases you to come on in and see if you, like primary author Cindy Koch, can make it through the many challenges along life’s pathin the eerie darkness toward the little light far off in the distance. The sub-title “A Poetic Journey Through the Tortured Mind of a Woman Battling a Lifetime of Mental Illness and, in Later Years, Incurable Cancer,” delves into herstruggles with a bipolar diagnoses and schizophrenia, and also with rectal cancer. Abandoned by her natural mother when she was just an infant and suffering subsequent beatings at the hands ...

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.

Menopause hit Darcey Steinke hard. First came hot flashes. Then insomnia. Then depression. As she struggled to understand what was happening to her, she slammed up against a culture of silence and sexism. Some books promoted hormone replacement therapy. Others encouraged accepting the coming crone. Beyond that, there was little that offered a path to understanding menopause in a complex, spiritual, and intellectually engaged way.

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.

Logo que nascemos - e às vezes antes -, nossa mãe determina “como somos”. Assim, as lembranças se organizam em nossa consciência, por meio das palavras que ouvimos desde a mais tenra infância. Toda família tem a boazinha, o estudioso, a ovelha negra, o avoado.... Mas até que ponto esses rótulos de fato refletem quem somos?

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.

"Why aren't you angry?" people often asked Martin Moran after he told his story of how he came to forgive the man who sexually abused him as a boy. At first the question pissed him off. Then it began to haunt him. Why didn't he have more anger? Why had he never sought redress for the crime committed against him? Was his fury hidden, buried? Was he not man enough? Here he was, an adult in midlife, with an established acting career, a husband. A life. And yet the question of rage began to obsess him.

Finders Keepers is the remarkable true tale of an ordinary man faced with an extraordinary dilemma - what do you do when you find $1.2 million in unmarked bills? - and the fascinating reactions - from complicity to concern to betrayal - of the friends, family, and neighbors to whom he turns. From Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down.

The opioid epidemic has hit people in communities large and small and across all socioeconomic classes. What should each of us know about it, and do about it? Unstitched moves listeners from feelings of helplessness and blame into empathy, ultimately helping friends, family, and community members separate the disease of addiction from the person underneath.