Mental Health Memoir

Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction - not just to sex, but to male attention - Loose Girl is also the story of a young girl who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning. It didn't matter who he was. It was their movement that mattered, their being together. And for a while, that was enough.

For decades, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a fundamental matter: How did the people he was writing about learn their outlandish skill, whether it was drawing a nude or baking a sourdough loaf? In The Real Work, Gopnik apprentices himself to an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and even a driving instructor (from the DMV), among others, trying his late-middle-age hand at things he assumed were beyond him.

The moving and inspiring story of a young Creole/Black woman born in 1936 in New Orleans. Stung by the ugly hatred of racism, young Iris Duplantier Rideau learned from her grandmother to pass for white, affording her better opportunities than her darker-skinned friends and family. Moving to California with her mother, Iris experienced horrors that no child should endure, leaving her a single teenage mother without a future at 17. What would have stopped most people, only made Iris more determined. She took a grueling job in a sweatshop to support herself and her baby. Needing more education...

A down-to-earth, darkly funny memoir about mental health, lesbian breakups, and guinea pigs. Fans of Jenny Lawson and Samantha Irby will love this! After waiting 32 years for her real life to begin, self-proclaimed 'fat, depressed lesbian' Jenna embarks on a year-long quest to completely change her life. Her life is small, her panic attacks are huge, and if she continues to eat her feelings, then she'll be dead before she really gets a chance to start living. In this equally hilarious and heartbreaking rollercoaster ride, Jenna tries to navigate her first big breakup while losing weight and...

As a passionate advocate for mental health, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau believes that in order to know and accept ourselves fully, we need to understand why we think and feel the way we do, and recognize the experiences, attitudes, and patterns that may be holding us back. And yet, all of us are capable of growth and positive change, if we're willing to stay open and curious throughout our lives.

Was Andy Warhol a hoarder? Did Einstein have autism? Was Frank Lloyd Wright a narcissist? In this surprising, inventive, and meticulously researched look at the evolution of mental health, acclaimed health and science journalist Claudia Kalb gives listeners a glimpse into the lives of high-profile historic figures through the lens of modern psychology, weaving groundbreaking research into biographical narratives that are deeply embedded in our culture.

On the cusp of forty, Angela Lam consults with a tarot reader for career advice and receives the following prediction: she will find a new job and, while there, she will meet a man who will heal her heart. Already married with children, Angela tells her husband who is unconcerned about what the cards reveal. But when the prediction threatens to manifest, will Angela’s family fall apart? This true story will inspire you to reexamine the definitions of midlife crisis and spiritual awakening as well as challenge the roles of fate and free will in your life. Longlisted for the 2022 Memoir ...

After 33 seasons managing in Major League Baseball, Tony La Russa thought he had seen it all - that is, until the 2011 Cardinals. Down ten and a half games with little more than a month to play, the Cardinals had long been ruled out as serious postseason contenders. Yet in the face of those steep odds, this team mounted one of the most dramatic and impressive comebacks in baseball history, making the playoffs on the night of the final game of the season and going on to win the World Series despite being down to their last strike - twice.

Barbara Arrowsmith-Young was born with severe learning disabilities that caused teachers to label her slow, stubborn - or worse. As a child, she read and wrote everything backward, struggled to process concepts in language, continually got lost, and was physically uncoordinated. She could make no sense of an analogue clock. But by relying on her formidable memory and iron will, she made her way to graduate school, where she chanced upon research that inspired her to invent cognitive exercises to “fix” her own brain.

The author of the best-selling phenomenon The Reason I Jump returns with a unique memoir about life as a young adult with severe autism. With an introduction by David Mitchell, who translated this book with his wife, KA Yoshida, this extraordinary new work explores education, identity, family, society, and personal growth, opening a window into the mind of its nonverbal author and providing remarkable insights into autism in general.

With a reporter’s eye and an insider’s perspective, Eric Garcia shows what it’s like to be autistic across America. Garcia began writing about autism because he was frustrated by the media’s coverage of it; the myths that the disorder is caused by vaccines, the narrow portrayals of autistic people as white men working in Silicon Valley. His own life as an autistic person didn’t look anything like that.

Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their declining town and tumultuous family lives—broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In the end, Monica left Clinton for college and fulfilled her dreams; Darci did not.

Mark Vonnegut set out in search of Eden with his VW bug, his girlfriend, his dog, and his ideals, but genetic predisposition and a whole lot of shit going down made him crazy in a culture that told him mental illness is a myth and schizophrenia is a sane response to an insane society. Describing his experiences during the late '60s and early '70s, Eden Express reveals how Mark went from being a recent college grad who was in love and living communally on a farm to having nervous breakdowns.

Awakenings - which inspired the major motion picture - is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and their extraordinary transformations.

Psychoanalyst Justin A. Frank takes a deep dive into the psyche of our president. Using observations gained from a close study of Trump's patterns of thought, action, and communication, Dr. Frank gives us a full portrait of the personality we saw on display during his remarkable campaign and helps us understand what has driven the decision-making during his first years in office. The result is filled with important revelations about our nation's leader and disturbing insights into his childhood, his family, his business dealings, and his unusual relationship with alternative facts.

Many people grapple with destructive thought processes or a "critical inner voice" that directs their behavior and, to varying degrees, limits their lives. Using deeply personal and very human stories based on his own clinical practice, noted psychologist Robert W. Firestone illustrates the struggles of his clients to give words to this "enemy within", and in the process overcome its damaging influence.

For Chavez, an elementary school librarian and mother of two boys, the signs of mounting anxiety and depression had been present for a while, though she had done her very best to ignore them. Then, one night, while her husband was away on business, Julie found herself locked in a debilitating panic attack that threw her life into a tailspin. The terrifying aftershocks left her grappling with questions about the origin of her anxiety and where it would lead next. What follows is a funny, unflinchingly open account, offering an intimate portrait of how one woman found her way back from the edge.

When neuroscientist Susan Barry was 50 years old, she took an unforgettable trip to Manhattan. As she emerged from the dim light of the subway into the sunshine, she saw a view of the city that she had witnessed many times in the past but now saw in an astonishingly new way. Skyscrapers on street corners appeared to loom out toward her like the bows of giant ships. Tree branches projected upward and outward, enclosing and commanding palpable volumes of space.

I was you. I was once afraid, anxious, confused and lost. I was crippled with panic attacks, trapped by agoraphobia, and riddled with constant anxiety. I almost lost everything important in my life as my world became smaller and smaller. This is the story of my journey through anxiety, panic disorder, and agoraphobia. The good, the bad, and the ugly of panic attacks, anxiety symptoms, irrational and obsessive thoughts, and being afraid to leave my house or be left alone.

Are you ready to lead a life that is full of virtue, where you are able to lead a good life that isn't controlled by your emotions but still allows you to have empathy and feelings for others? Stoicism is an ancient thought that has stood the test of time and can provide you with the fulfilling life that you are looking for.