Mental Health Biography

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.

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?

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.

Todas as bizarrices que marcaram o desenvolvimento desta ciência Há séculos, o funcionamento da mente humana é motivo de grande curiosidade. Estudos, experimentos e tratamentos – dos mais simples aos mais bizarros – têm sido desenvolvidos sobre todas as esferas da psique. Na Idade Média, por exemplo, era comum pensar que pessoas com transtornos psíquicos tinham "o diabo no corpo", e tratamentos como sangrias e acorrentamentos se tornaram habituais.

Marine Sgt. John Peck survived an IED during the War on Terror that left him with a traumatic brain injury, amnesia, and cost him his marriage. He survived another three years later, one that left him with three and a half limbs missing. He’s one of only two living people to survive the flesh-eating fungus he contracted in recovery at Walter Reed, one that left him as a quadruple amputee. And that’s only the beginning of his story. What followed was a recovery nothing short of miraculous.

From New York Times best-selling author, Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist, and leading Alzheimer's advocate Meryl Comer comes a profoundly intimate account of her husband's battle with Alzheimer's disease, one of today's most pressing - and least understood - health epidemics.

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.

When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life. What they both assume will be a casual vacation tryst turns into a passionate, transatlantic love affair, as they rendezvous in London, Marrakech, Milan, the Aeolian Islands, and San Francisco.

War is loud. But what happens when it goes quiet? I Saw the Silence is a haunting and hopeful memoir from humanitarian storyteller Paolo Sebastiano Sivillica. Set in the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo, this book chronicles Paolo’s journey as a witness not to bullets or explosions, but to what comes after: trauma, silence, and survival. Through deeply personal reflections and composite stories of survivors, the memoir explores invisible wounds left by decades of conflict.

Whether serving in the Special Forces, rowing oceans or investigating some of the world’s most notorious drug cartels, Jason Fox has overcome more than his fair share of emotional and mental conflicts. Now, he shares the tools he’s developed at the cutting edge of an elite military career and shows how you, too, can build the resilience and inner strength to overcome whatever challenges life puts in front of you.

"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.

The journey of a man, father, and sailor, Anchored in Resilience: Overcoming Adversity through Mental Health Awareness is the true story of adventures, lessons, and growth as seen through the eyes of a boy looking for love, a young man looking for answers, and an adult yearning to inspire. Author and Navy veteran Amaury Ponciano shares vulnerable truths, revelations, and experiences from over twenty years of Naval service. Anchored in Resilience is a memoir of healing—because healing starts with understanding our wounds.

Dr. Loren A. Olson has frequently been asked two questions: How could you not know that you were gay until the age of forty? Wasn't your marriage just a sham to protect yourself at your wife's expense? In Finally Out, Dr. Olson vigorously answers both questions by telling the inspiring story of his evolving sexuality, into which he intelligently weaves psychological concepts and gay history.

In the Shadow of Fame, by the daughter of world-renowned psychoanalyst and theorist Erik Erikson, is the intimate story of her struggle to come to terms with her father's fame and to develop a sense of self in a family, and world, in which being famous is the very definition of being a worthwhile human being. And, while her story is unique in its personal details, it is also a description of the struggle faced by all of us in a modern world.

A collection of the journals, fiction, and letters of the late Esther Grace Earl, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 16. Essays by family and friends will help to tell Esther’s story along with an introduction by award-winning author John Green who dedicated his #1 bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars to her.

In Losing It, William Ian Miller brings his inimitable wit and learning to the subject of growing old: too old to matter, of either rightly losing your confidence or wrongly maintaining it, culpably refusing to face the fact that you are losing it. The "it" in Miller's "losing it" refers mainly to mental faculties - memory, processing speed, sensory acuity, the capacity to focus. But it includes other evidence as wel l- sags and flaccidities, aches and pains, failing joints and organs. What are we to make of these tell-tale signs?

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.

Nate Wagner faced despair in his early 20s. After the loss of his only brother to suicide, Nate struggled to find hope, reimagine his life, and achieve a new normal. Drawing on his clinical training and work and his own life experience, Nate shares his story with listeners, offering practical suggestions and honest reflections to invite the listener into his journey from despair to hope.

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.

Five Trips chronicles Emmy Award-winning journalist Kendis Gibson’s personal journey through five psychedelic experiences, exploring the access issues faced by the BIPOC community in using psychedelics for mental health conditions, set against the backdrop of his challenges as a Black journalist at ABC network and the racial treatment that fueled his public meltdowns.