Mental Health Biography

In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It is used regularly by Fortune 500 companies, universities, hospitals, churches, and the military. Its language of personality types - extraversion and introversion, sensing and intuiting, thinking and feeling, judging and perceiving - has inspired television shows, Online dating platforms, and Buzzfeed quizzes. Yet despite the test's widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $2 billion industry, have struggled to validate its results - no less account for its success.

At first glance, Josh Hanagarne seems an improbable librarian. He stands 6'7", competes in strongman contests, and was diagnosed in high school with Tourette's syndrome. But books are his first love - Josh's earliest memories involve fantastic adventures between the pages of Gulliver’s Travels and a passionate infatuation with Fern from Charlotte’s Web. Everything in Josh’s life - from his Mormon upbringing, to finally finding love, to learning to control his tics through lifting - circles back to a close connection with books.

Building from Bunny’s viral memes, Hello Higher Self is a self-care manifesto, calling on listeners to radically shift their perspectives from the Learned Hierarchal Beliefs (LHBs) we’ve all internalized to the self-acceptance we were born into, aka our Higher Selves. This book shines a light into eighteen areas of life where LHBs often lurk—from creativity, to work, to relationships, to race, to sexual pleasure. Bunny’s mix of meditative advice, written exercises, and personal examples make for a jaw-dropping listen.

Nile Wilson has always been one of life's winners; a charismatic young man with an Olympic bronze medal in the Horizontal Bar at just 21 years old. But after a serious neck injury, forcing him to retire early and miss taking part in the Tokyo Olympics, Nile's world fell apart. Swamped with depression, anxiety and addictive behaviours, his mental health went over a cliff. Over the past few years, Nile has had to face down his demons and accept his new reality, and this is the book he wish he'd been given before it all began.

The trial of 25-year-old Casey Anthony for the death of her daughter, Caylee, was the most sensational case in America since O.J. Simpson’s. After being acquitted in July 2011, Ms. Anthony instantly became one of the most infamous women in the world. Dr. Keith Ablow distills tens of thousands of pages of documents he has obtained, his behind-the-camera, one-on one interviews, and his decades of experience in the world of forensic psychiatry to make sense of this troubled young woman.

U.S. Representative Adam Smith was successful by all measures, with a long, distinguished career in Congress and a loving marriage with children. Yet seemingly out of nowhere, his body and mind broke down to the point where every day was a relentless struggle to just keep moving. It’s a struggle millions of Americans know all too well. Would he be able to meet his responsibilities as a husband and father? Could he still maintain his breakneck professional schedule and continue to do his job well? He soon realized he couldn’t will himself well—he needed help.

Early motherhood is supposed to be joyous, but for Aaisha Alvi those early days were ruined by terrifying thoughts about her baby and family. Her experience was the antithesis of everything she had ever been told about motherhood, far beyond the trials of breastfeeding or putting her baby to sleep. Aaisha did recover and began to enjoy motherhood. She was thrilled when she fell pregnant again. Sadly, that pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, and the psychosis returned. This time, however, she was blindsided by the unimaginable: voices urged her to stab her daughter and to harm innocent people.

When Alex Stone was five years old, his father bought him a magic kit - a gift that would spark a lifelong love. Years later, while living in New York City, he discovered a vibrant underground magic scene exploding with creativity and innovation and populated by a fascinating cast of characters: from his gruff mentor, who holds court in the back of a rundown pizza shop, to one of the world's greatest card cheats, who also happens to be blind. Captivated, he plunged headlong into this mysterious world.

Comedian Sofie Hagen shares how she removed fatphobic influences from her daily life and found self-acceptance in a world where judgment and discrimination are rife. From shame and sex to airplane seats, love and getting stuck in public toilets, Sofie provides practical tips for listeners, drawing wisdom from other Fat Liberation champions along the way. Part memoir, part social commentary, Happy Fat is a funny, angry and impassioned look at how taking up space in a culture that is desperate to reduce you can be radical, emboldening and life-changing.

A mid-century doctor's raw, unvarnished account of his own descent into madness, and his daughter's attempt to piece his life back together and make sense of her own. Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Dr. Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself.

The Close sisters are descended from very prominent and wealthy ancestors. When the Close sisters were very young, their parents joined a cult called the MRA, or Moral Rearmament. The family was suddenly uprooted to a cult school in Switzerland and, ultimately, to the Belgian Congo where their father became a surgeon in the war-ravaged republic, and ultimately the personal physician to President Mobutu.

Chloe Lukasiak believes that things happen for a reason. She knows that life would be easier without disappointments, bullying, and medical issues - but sometimes it takes challenges to inspire you to achieve big things. From her status as fan favourite on the US hit reality television show Dance Moms to her current life as a social media star with millions of fans, Chloe has found that self-acceptance and kindness are the key to getting over the rough spots in life and realising your passions.

Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she’s a little quirky. But while she’s made some strange mistakes over the years, it’s not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (whom she thinks is her husband) that she realizes something is amiss. With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical.

Why did Norman Mailer stab his second wife at a party? Who was Edith Wharton's secret transatlantic lover? What motivated Anais Nin to become a bigamist? Writers Between the Covers rips the sheets off these and other real-life love stories of the literati - some with fairy tale endings and others that resulted in break-ups, breakdowns, and brawls. Among the writers laid bare are Agatha Christie, who sparked the largest-ever manhunt in England as her marriage fell apart; Arthur Miller, whose jaw-dropping pairing with Marilyn Monroe proved that opposites attract, at least initially.

Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a 13-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.

In this audiobook is a unique, never-before-published look at the investigations undertaken to stop the depredations of America's most infamous serial killer, Ted Bundy. Presented here in an easy-to-follow chronology are the raw, unedited and most fascinating official case files as they appeared to the detectives from the Pacific Northwest to the Rocky Mountains to Florida.

After a decade of therapy and a stint in a psychiatric ward to treat suicidal depression, Arianna Rebolini was “better.” She’d published her first book, enjoyed an influential, rewarding publishing job, and celebrated both a marriage and the birth of her first child—but none of it was enough to keep the desire to die at bay. One night, grappling with overwhelming debt and a prolonged depression, she composed goodbye letters to her husband and son while they slept just feet away.

Lauren Windas is one of the estimated 250,000 people suffering with CFS in the UK. Whilst at university in 2012, she fell ill with a viral infection and was later diagnosed with CFS. Since then she has devoted herself to reclaiming her health and being able to live a full life, drawing on the knowledge of experts to help manage her often mysterious and hard-to-manage condition. In Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Lauren recounts the highs and lows of her own health journey and experiences,.

Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in human history has excelled in so many different areas as Da Vinci and he peels back the layers to explore the how and the why.