Mental Health Biography

The project was simple: An attractive, successful magazine journalist, Robin Rinaldi, would move into a San Francisco apartment, join a dating site, and get laid. Never mind that she already owned a beautiful flat a few blocks away, that she was 44, or that she was married to a man she'd been in love with for 18 years. What followed - a year of sex, heartbreak, and unexpected revelation - is the topic of this riveting memoir, The Wild Oats Project.

As with the two prior volumes of True Crime Case Histories, I want to start with a quick word of warning. Most news articles and television true crime shows skim over the sticky details of truly gruesome crimes. In my books I don't gloss over the facts, regardless of how horrible they may be. I try to give my listeners a clear and accurate description on just how demented the killers really were. I do my best not to leave anything out. The stories included in these books are not for the squeamish.

On October 15 1977, Christine Eadie and Helen Scott left the World's End pub after a fun-filled night with two men in their arms. They had their whole lives ahead of them. They had nothing to fear and everything to look forward to. Their naked bodies were discovered the following day. They were found six miles apart from each other. No attempt had been made to conceal their bodies, and both girls had been beaten, gagged, tied, raped and strangled. The case attracted widespread media attention and despite the Police's best efforts, they were unable to identify a culprit.

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.

Late one night, while Rebecca Fogg was alone in her apartment, her hand was partially amputated in an explosion. Quick thinking saved her life, but the journey to recovery would be a slow one. As the doctors rebuilt her hand, Rebecca (who also survived 9/11) began rebuilding her sense of self by studying the physical and psychological process of recovery.

When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle, in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became inseparable. Both children of professors, the boys were best friends and fierce rivals who soon followed each other to Yale University. Michael blazed through Yale in three years, graduating summa cum laude and landing a top-flight consulting job. Then one day, Jonathan received a devastating call: Michael had suffered a psychotic break and was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Michael was still in hospital when he learned he'd been accepted to Yale Law School.

When Özlem Cekic became the first Muslim MP in the Danish Parliament, her email inbox was inundated with hate mail and threats, and her gut reaction was to delete and ignore each abusive message. But eventually, she decided to take a risk. She started replying to each message and inviting the senders to meet and engage in dialogue over coffee. And with time, understanding, and patience, she began to make a difference, both in the lives of those who hated her before even meeting her, and in her own life.

When Pepper Stetler was told that her daughter who has Down Syndrome would be regularly required to take IQ tests to secure support in school, she asked a simple question: why? In questioning the authority and relevance of the test, Stetler sets herself on a winding investigation into how the IQ test came to be the irrefutable standard for measuring intelligence. The unsettling history causes Stetler to wonder what influence this test will have over her daughter's future and whether Louisa should be taking it at all.

The struggles and humiliations of adolescence are told in an unflinching, funny, surprisingly universal tale of one good Jewish girl's battle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Baynard Woods thought he had escaped the backwards ways of the South Carolina he grew up in, a world defined by country music, NASCAR, and the confederacy. He’d fled the South long ago, transforming himself into a politically left-leaning writer and educator. Then he was accused of discriminating against a Black student at a local university. How could I be racist? he wondered. Whiteness was a problem, but it wasn’t really his problem. He taught at a majority Black school and wrote essays about education and Civil Rights.

Nina McCall was one of many women unfairly imprisoned by the United States government throughout the 20th century. Tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of women and girls were locked up - usually without due process - simply because officials suspected these women were prostitutes, carrying STIs, or just "promiscuous." This discriminatory program, dubbed the "American Plan", lasted from the 1910s into the 1950s, implicating a number of luminaries, including Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Earl Warren, and even Eliot Ness.

Bob Bourne was everything a son wants to emulate—an NHL All-Star, a Sports Illustrated “Sportsman of the Year,” a Stanley Cup champion. Justin Bourne followed in those huge footsteps, leading his teams in scoring year after year, and finally garnering an invitation to the New York Islanders’ training camp—the same team his father had played for.

How would you like to achieve unimaginable success, attain unspeakable wealth, and be successful in life and relationships? Listen to this digitally mastered collection and learn how you can enjoy the life that you want, experiencing all of the success and happiness that you envision, by controlling and managing your thoughts and actions.

Renowned sociologist Janice Johnson Dias has devoted her life to nurturing and training girls to become changemakers - whether through her investment in her daughter Marley’s humanitarian projects or through her work with the GrassROOTS Community Foundation “SuperCamp” she cofounded for girls. In these unprecedented times, her work has never been more urgent, as parents find themselves asking: How do we teach girls to change the world?

In this insightful and funny book, Scott Kelly shares how a distracted student with poor grades became a record-breaking astronaut and commander of the International Space Station. People think that astronauts are always perfect. "Failure's not an option", right? But as Scott shares in his deeply intimate book, he believes that it's our mistakes and challenges that have the potential to lead to greatness.

In Bodies, author Ian Winwood explores the music industry's many failures, from addiction and mental health issues to its ongoing exploitation of artists. Much more than a touchline reporter, Winwood also tells the story of his own mental health collapse, following the shocking death of his father, in which extinction-level behaviour was given perfect cover by a reckless industry.

When Mallary Tenore Tarpley lost her mother at eleven years old, she wanted to stop time. If growing up meant living without her mother, then she wanted to stay little forever. What started as small acts of food restriction soon turned into a full-blown eating disorder, and a year later, Tarpley was admitted to Boston’s Children’s Hospital. With honesty and grace, Slip chronicles Tarpley’s childhood struggles with anorexia to her present-day experiences grappling with recovery. This book tells Tarpley’s story, but it also transcends her personal narrative.

As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, she explores her experimental treatment of transcranial magnetic stimulation with brutal honesty. But also with brutal humour. Jenny discusses the frustration of dealing with her insurance company in ‘An Open Letter to My Insurance Company’, which should be an anthem for anyone who has ever had to call their insurance company to try and get a claim covered.

With those chilling words, the author’s world was shattered. What began as an unimaginable tragedy unraveled into a devastating story of mental illness, family bonds, and the fragile line between love and fear. In this gripping true crime memoir, the author takes listeners inside the courtroom where shocking revelations exposed the depth of his sister’s mental unraveling. Through raw and unflinching honesty, he reflects on the haunting events that led to that fateful day and the lasting impact on those left behind.

Exclusive interviews with the top athletes in sports today. Trust the Grind: How World-Class Athletes Got to the Top reveals how these men and women reached the heights of their profession so that you can too. Each chapter tells a different story, as each superstar shares the habit that helped them accomplish their goals and reach the pinnacle of their profession.