| | | Me, Myself, and Them: A Firsthand Account of One Young Person’s Experience with Schizophrenia
Adolescent Mental Health Initiative  During his second semester at college, Kurt Snyder became convinced that he was about to discover a fabulously important mathematical principle, spending hours lost in daydreams about numbers and symbols. In time, his thoughts took a darker turn, and he became preoccupied with the idea that cars were following him, or that strangers wanted to harm him. Kurt’s mind had been hijacked by schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder that typically strikes during the late teen or young adult years. In Me, Myself, and Them, Kurt, now an adult, looks back from the vantage point of recovery and eloquently describes the debilitating changes in thoughts and perceptions that took hold of his life during his teens and twenties. As a memoir, this book is remarkable for its unvarnished look at the slow and difficult process of coming back from severe mental illness. Yet Kurt’s memoir is only half the story. With the help of psychiatrist Raquel E. Gur, M.D., Ph.D., and veteran science writer Linda Wasmer Andrews, Kurt paints the big picture for others affected by adolescent schizophrenia. Drawing on the latest scientific and medical evidence, he explains how to recognize warning signs, where to find help, and what treatments have proved effective. Kurt also offers practical advice on topics of particular interest to young people, such as suggestions on managing the illness at home, school, and work, and in relationships with family and friends. Part of the Adolescent Mental Health Initiative series of books written specifically for teens and young adults, My, Myself, and Them offers hope to young people who are struggling with schizophrenia, helping them to understand and manage thechallenges of this illness and go on to lead healthy lives. |
| | | Nobody’s Child
by Marie Balter Balter’s courageous story of hope and healing has inspired millions around the country. After spending the first twenty years of her adult life in a mental hospital, she gradually emerged from the terror of the back wards, eventually to attend graduate school at Harvard University and become a champion for the mentally ill. |
| | | Rewind, Replay, Repeat: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
by Jeff Bell Nagging doubt: It’s a part of everyday life. Who hasn’t doubled back to check on a door or appliance? But what if one check wasn’t enough? Nor two or three? And what if nagging doubt grew so intense that physical senses became all but useless? Such was the case for Jeff Bell, a husband, father, and highly successful radio news anchor—and one of the millions of Americans living with obsessive-compulsived disorder (OCD). Bell’s frank and forthright memoir recounts the depths to which this debilitating anxiety disorder reduced him—to driving his car in continuous circles, scouring his hands in scalding water, and endlessly rewinding, replaying, and repeating in his head even the most mundane daily experiences. Readers will learn what OCD feels like from the inside, and how healing from such a devastating condition is possible through therapy, determination, and the support of loved ones. |
| | | The Day the Voices Stopped: A Schizophrenic’s Journey from Madness to Hope
by Claire Berman A nationally known spokesperson for the mentally ill offers hope and inspiration in this moving story of his decades-long struggle with schizophrenia and his remarkable recovery. |
| | | Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes
by Therese Johnson Borchard Therese Borchard may be one of the frankest, funniest people on the planet. That, combined with her keen writing abilities has made her Beliefnet blog, Beyond Blue, one of the most trafficked blogs on the site. BEYOND BLUE, the book, is part memoir/part self-help. It describes Borchard’s experience of living with manic depression as well as providing cutting-edge research and information on dealing with mood disorders. By exposing her vulnerability, she endears herself immediately to the reader and then reduces even the most depressed to laughter as she provides a companion on the journey to recovery and the knowledge that the reader is not alone. Comprised of four sections and twenty-one chapters, BEYOND BLUE covers a wide range of topics from codependency to addiction, poor body image to postpartum depression, from alternative medicine to psychopharmacology, managing anxiety to applying lessons from therapy. Because of her laser wit and Erma Bombeck sense of humor, every chapter is entertaining as well as serious. |
| | | Running With Scissors: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year-round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull, an electroshock therapy machine could provide entertainment. The funny, harrowing, and bestselling account of an ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary circumstances? |
| | | Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression
by Nell Casey Unholy Ghost is a unique collection of essays about depression that, in the spirit of William Styron’s Darkness Visible, finds vivid expression for an elusive illness suffered by more than one in five Americans today. Unlike any other memoir of depression, however, Unholy Ghost includes many voices and depicts the most complete portrait of the illness. Lauren Slater eloquently describes her own perilous experience as a pregnant woman on antidepressant medication. Susanna Kaysen, writing for the first time about depression since Girl, Interrupted, criticizes herself and others for making too much of the illness. Larry McMurtry recounts the despair that descended after his quadruple bypass surgery. Meri Danquah describes the challenges of racism and depression. Ann Beattie sees melancholy as a consequence of her writing life. And Donald Hall lovingly remembers the “moody seesaw” of his relationship with his wife, Jane Kenyon. The collection also includes an illuminating series of companion pieces. Russell Banks’s and Chase Twichell’s essays represent husbandand-wife perspectives on depression; Rose Styron’s contribution about her husband’s struggle with melancholy is paired with an excerpt from William Styron’s Darkness Visible; and the book’s editor, Nell Casey, juxtaposes her own essay about seeing her sister through her depression with Maud Casey’s account of this experience. These companion pieces portray the complicated bond — a constant grasp for mutual understandingforged by depressives and their family members. With an introduction by Kay Redfield Jamison, Unholy Ghost allows the bewildering experience of depression to beadequately and beautifully rendered. The twenty-two stories that make up this book will offer solace and enlightenment to all readers. |
| | | Manic: A Memoir
by Terri Cheney “I didn’t tell anyone that I was going to Santa Fe to kill myself.” On the outside, Terri Cheney was a highly successful, attractive Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer. But behind her seemingly flawless façade lay a dangerous secret—for the better part of her life Cheney had been battling debilitating bipolar disorder and concealing a pharmacy’s worth of prescriptions meant to stabilize her moods and make her “normal.” In bursts of prose that mirror the devastating highs and extreme lows of her illness, Cheney describes her roller-coaster life with shocking honesty—from glamorous parties to a night in jail; from flying fourteen kites off the edge of a cliff in a thunderstorm to crying beneath her office desk; from electroshock therapy to a suicide attempt fueled by tequila and prescription painkillers. With Manic, Cheney gives voice to the unarticulated madness she endured. The clinical terms used to describe her illness were so inadequate that she chose to focus instead on her own experience, in her words, “on what bipolar disorder felt like inside my own body.” Here the events unfold episodically, from mood to mood, the way she lived and remembers life. In this way the reader is able to viscerally experience the incredible speeding highs of mania and the crushing blows of depression, just as Cheney did. Manic does not simply explain bipolar disorder—it takes us in its grasp and does not let go. In the tradition of Darkness Visible and An Unquiet Mind, Manic is Girl, Interrupted with the girl all grown up. This harrowing yet hopeful book is more than just a searing insider’s account of what it’s really like to live with bipolar disorder. It is a testament to the sharp beauty of a life lived in extremes. |
| | | On the Edge of Darkness: America’s Most Celebrated Actors, Journalists and Politicians Chronicle Their Most Arduous Journey
by Kathy Cronkite They have made the impossible climb into the spotlight and attained their brightest dreams. But for Mike Wallace, Kitty Dukakis, William Styron, Joan Rivers, and countless other people struggling against the debilitating effects of depression, life’s most challenging battle is waged not in the public eye, but in the darkest recesses of the mind. In her brilliant new work, Kathy Cronkite gives voice to dozens of celebrated professionals who have endured—and conquered—the hopelessness of chronic depression. Most of all, this courageous book brings a ray of hope to the 24 million Americans who live in the shadows of this misunderstood disease, yet bravely seek a path toward the light. You will learn: - What to do when the sadness won’t go away.
- Why women are most vulnerable to unipolar disorder.
- How substance abuse can mask the symptoms of depression.
- The latest therapeutic options for children who are affected by their own—or a parent’s—illness.
- Which effective new treatments can lift the burden of depression—for up to 90 percent of people who suffer from it!
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| | | Shock
by Kitty Dukakis Kitty Dukakis has battled debilitating depression for more than twenty years. Coupled with drug and alcohol addictions that both hid and fueled her suffering, Kitty’s despair was overwhelming. She tried every medication and treatment available; none worked for long. It wasn’t until she tried electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, that she could reclaim her life. Kitty’s dramatic first-person account of how ECT keeps her illness at bay is half the story of Shock. The other half, by award-winning medical reporter Larry Tye, is an engrossing look at the science behind ECT and its dramatic yet subterranean comeback. This book presents a full picture of ECT, analyzing the treatment’s risks along with its benefits. ECT, it turns out, is neither a panacea nor a scourge but a serious option for treating life-threatening and disabling mental diseases, like depression, bipolar disorder, and others. Through Kitty Dukakis’s moving narrative, and interviews with more than one hundred other ECT patients, Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy separates scare from promise, real complications from lurid headlines. In the process Shock offers practical guidance to prospective patients and their families, boldly addressing the controversy surrounding ECT and awakening millions to its capacity to heal. |
| | | Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic-Depressive Illness
by Patty Duke In her revealing bestseller Call Me Anna, Patty Duke shared her long-kept secret: the talented, Oscar-winning actress who won our hearts on The Patty Duke Show was suffering from a serious-but-treatable-mental illness called manic depression. For nearly twenty years, until she was correctly diagnosed at age thirty-five, she careened between periods of extreme euphoria and debilitating depression, prone to delusions and panic attacks, temper tantrums, spending sprees, and suicide attempts. Now in A Brilliant Madness Patty Duke joins with medical reporter Gloria Hochman to shed light on this powerful, paradoxical, and destructive illness. From what it’s like to live with manic-depressive disorder to the latest findings on its most effective treatments, this compassionate and eloquent book provides profound insight into the challenge of mental illness. And though Patty’s story, which ends in a newfound happiness with her cherished family, it offers hope for all those who suffer from mood disorders and for the family, friends, and physicians who love and care for them. |
| | | Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir
by Laura Flynn When Laura Flynn was a little girl, her beautiful, dynamic mother, Sally, was the center of her imagination. It wasn’t long, however, before Sally’s fun-loving side slowly and methodically became absorbed by madness. As Laura’s parents divorced and her father struggled to gain custody, Sally’s symptoms bloomed in earnest while Laura and her sisters united in flights of fancy of the sort their mother taught them so that they might deflect the danger threatening their fragile family. Set in 1970s San Francisco, Swallow the Ocean is redolent with place. In luminous prose, this memoir paints a most intimate portrait of what might have been a catastrophic childhood had Laura and her sisters not been resilient and determined enough to survive their environment even as they yearned to escape it. |
| | | Janet Frame: An Autobiography
by Janet Frame New Zealand’s preeminent writer Janet Frame brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections, gathered here for the first time in a single volume. From a childhood and adolescence spent in a poor but intellectually intense railway family, through life as a student, and years of incarceration in mental hospitals, eventually followed by her entry into the saving world of writers and the “Mirror City” that sustains them, we are given not only a record of the events of a life, but also “the transformation of ordinary facts and ideas into a shining palace of mirrors.” Frame’s journey of self-discovery, from New Zealand to London, to Paris and Barcelona, and then home again, is a heartfelt and courageous account of a writer’s beginnings as well as one woman’s personal struggle to survive. |
| | | Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert The celebrated author of The Last American Man creates an irresistible, candid, and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure and spiritual devotion. |
| | | Puppy Chow Is Better Than Prozac: The True Story of a Man and the Dog Who Saved His Life
by Bruce Goldstein Meet Ozzy. For the suicidally depressed author, this furry antidepressant came with only one side effect-unconditional, slobbery love. |
| | | Long Shot: My Bipolar Life and the Horses Who Saved Me
by Sylvia Harris Sylvia Harris, the second African American female jockey in the United States to win a major thoroughbred horse race, describes her life as a single mother crippled by her struggles with bipolar depression. Signs of Harris’s bipolar disorder surfaced shortly after she left high school and her love of horses became her salvation from debilitating manic and depressive episodes. Throughout the book Harris details how she discovered the healing power of horses and got her life back on track.. |
| | | Soaring & Crashing: My Bipolar Adventures
by Holly Hollan Holly Hollan’s personal journey into the throes of Bipolar (formerly called manic-depression) will leave readers with an intimate understanding of the disorder, and a hopeful way to cope with the future. Hollan uses Soaring & Crashing to bring readers into an account of her life with Bipolar. She travels through a troubled childhood, and into an equally tumultuous adulthood, illustrating the ups and downs of this often misunderstood and stigmatized condition. Ultimately, readers will be confronted with the knowledge that those coping with mental illness lead purposeful and full lives, and although the challenges faced by those with bipolar may be of a different nature than those of the general population, in the end we are all simply riding the roller coaster of life. Soaring & Crashing is an honest, soulful account of one woman’s journey to the borders of her mind, and will prove an exciting, moving read for anyone willing to jump on that roller coaster and hang on until the end! |
| | | Madness: A Bipolar Life
by Marya Hornbacher When Marya Hornbacher published her first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have the piece of shattering knowledge that would finally make sense of the chaos of her life. At age twenty-four, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disorder. In Madness, Hornbacher tells her new story. Through scenes of astonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside her own desperate attempts to counteract violently careening mood swings by self-starvation, substance abuse, numbing sex, and self-mutilation. How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madness that all but destroys her, and what it is like to live in a difficult and sometimes beautiful life and marriage—where bipolar always beckons—is at the center of this brave and heart-stopping memoir. Millions of people in America today are struggling with a variety of disorders that may disguise their bipolar disease. Marya Hornbacher’s fiercely self-aware portrait revolutionizes our understanding of this all-too-common, all-too-misunderstood disorder. |
| | | An Unquiet Mind
by Kay Redfield Jamison As a founder of UCLA’s Affective Disorder Clinic and a co-author of a standard medical text, Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison may be the foremost authority on manic-depressive illness. She is also one of its survivors. And it is this dual perspective — as healer and healed — that makes Jamison’s memoir so lucid, learned, and profoundly affecting. Even as she was pursuing her psychiatric training, Jamison found herself succumbing to the exhilarating highs and paralyzing lows that afflicted many of her patients. Though the disorder brought her seemingly boundless energy and mercurial creativity, it also propelled her into spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempt at suicide. Powerfully candid, exceptionally wise, An Unquiet Mind is one of those rare books that has the power to transform lives — and even save them. |
| | | Nothing Was the Same
by Kay Redfield Jamison From the internationally acclaimed author of An Unquiet Mind comes a haunting meditation on mortality, grief, and loss. |
| | | The Up and Down Life: The Truth About Bipolar Disorder--the Good, the Bad, and the Funny
by Paul E. Jones Paul Jones, a stand-up comedian and workshop leader who suffers from bipolar disorder, uses humor, honesty, and hard-won practical advice to dispel the stigma surrounding mental illnesses and shed light on the challenges of living with bipolar disorder. Offering an intimate view of life with bipolar disorder—including the most common mistakes bipolar individuals make and how to avoid them— and covering every aspect from diagnosis, social life, home life, and career, this is an accessible and engaging guide from someone who’s been there and can help readers cope and thrive. | |
