Mental Illness

Anxiety is a very serious issue and especially the fear of illness is a real ordeal for many sufferers. But fear is also a feeling that every human being carries within him or her, which is vital or essential for survival and is stronger or weaker in each person depending on their personality. Fear drives, inspires, mobilizes one's own forces, leads to success, but can also make you sick - so sick that life becomes hell. Hypochondria - as the fear of illness is specifically called - is a phenomenon of completely exaggerated fears that can push sufferers to their limits.

If someone had told me in 2008 that the single most time-consuming issue facing me as one of the newest of America’s three thousand-and-eighty-one sheriffs would be mental health, I would have laughed. I was the SWAT team leader. I was a drug education officer on patrol and a street-level narcotics interdiction officer for a larger (by Iowa standards) sheriff’s office. I would do the occasional court-ordered, emergency mental health committal and the random transport from one health care facility to another mental health facility on a judge’s order from time to time.

We live in an age uniquely attentive to the problem of mental illness. More than half of us will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder at some point in our lifetime. It has been easy, for centuries, to relegate persistent emotional and mental struggles entirely to the realm of a failed personal work ethic ("Just don't worry so much!"), not enough faith ("Just pray harder!"), or, in recent years, a chemical imbalance in our brains ("Just take this pill!").

Inmates in correctional facilities suffering from psychiatric or substance abuse disorders sometimes display any one of a number of frightening behaviors: verbal outbursts, physical threats and even violence. This comprehensive guidebook offers correctional officers in jail settings strategies to keep themselves and inmates as safe as possible, while functioning at the highest level of professionalism. The first two sections of the book discuss the environment within jail and in the surrounding community that chronically mentally ill individuals cycle within. The third section is concerned ...

Three years ago mortuary cosmetologist Phoebe Glassman lost her husband in a tragic accident. No longer the hopeful wife and mother she once was, Phoebe is disappearing into her grief and into the quietude of her job - restoring to the dead the illusion of life. Then the body of a woman named Pauline Steele arrives in the mortuary, and for Phoebe, everything changes. Pauline is unmistakably Phoebe’s mirror image and bears an alarmingly familiar tattoo. Even more startling is that among Pauline’s effects is a faded photograph of Phoebe.

Who Wants Normal? lifts the lid off a subject that is too often shrouded in awkwardness and silence. It offers support, inspiration and a sense of solidarity to the many, many women with disabilities and long-term health issues – as well as opening the eyes of anyone wanting to better understand the many facets of living with a disability.

The study of classic and contemporary films can provide a powerful avenue to understand the experience of mental illness. In Madness at the Movies, James Charney, MD, a practicing psychiatrist and long-time cinephile, examines films that delve deeply into characters’ inner worlds, and he analyzes moments that help define their particular mental illness.

Heather Fowler's fourth collection of fiction speaks to the language of need. Desperate, obsessive, even demented need is voiced by characters ill or ill-advised. From modern to historical, cyber to stalker, explicit to tender, the relationships in Elegantly Naked in My Sexy Mental Illness translate love and lust into disorder.

Plagued by depression her entire life, it wasn’t until her early 50s that writer and book critic Bethanne Patrick, advocating for her own care, received a medical diagnosis that would set her on the path to wellness and stability. Recognizing the intergenerational effects of trauma and mental health struggles, Patrick unearths the stories of her past in order to forge a better future for herself and her two daughters, dismantling the stigmas surrounding mental health challenges that can plague families into silence and resignation.

Based on decades of research, Chronotherapy shows you how to harness the power of light to reset your natural clock and boost your mood, be more alert, and get a good night's sleep. A good night's sleep can be hard to get. Sleep problems and depressed mood often go hand in hand, forming a frustrating cycle. Only now are we beginning to understand the way these problems are based in the working of the brain's inner clock, through the science of chronobiology - the study of circadian rhythms and their regulation by light and darkness.

How to Survive Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is an inspirational and insightful look at a topic that is often much misunderstood in today's society. This book offers knowledge and hope to the listener. The author discusses coping methods, and she uses her own personal struggle with the illness as an example of how to overcome BPD. Author Stephanie Anne Allen has educational, professional, and extensive personal experience when it comes to this disorder.

Why do some people find sleep a simple thing, while others struggle? What are the easy methods for consistently getting a good nights sleep? Cut through the nonsense with the best-selling solution to quickly and easily ending Insomnia forever. The book introduces listeners to unique advice, gathered from research around the world, laid out in a simple and concise way. As a recovered Insomniac herself, the author Jessica Connors knows firsthand just how much a lack of sleep can disrupt your entire life. It is time to fix this!

Those in uniform keep our world safe and often pay a high price for fulfilling their duty mentally and emotionally. Retired Sergeant Eric Weaver can attest to this, as he lives with mental illness and struggled with the issue of suicide on numerous occasions, including multiple hospitalizations, while serving as a police sergeant. In Overcoming the Darkness, he gives a raw accounting of his own experiences coupled with knowledge and pragmatic advice gained from 20 years of instructing literally thousands in law enforcement about mental illness, substance use, PTSD, and suicide.

In this clear-sighted and provocative exploration of psychiatry, acclaimed sociologist Andrew Scull traces the history of its attempts to understand and mitigate mental illness: from the age of the asylum and unimaginable surgical and chemical interventions, through the rise and fall of Freud and the talking cure and on to our own time of drug companies and antidepressants. Through it all, Scull argues, the often vain and rash attempts to come to terms with the enigma of mental disorder have frequently resulted in dire consequences for the patient.

Divided into quintets, Up from the Downtrodden offers the possibility of hope to anyone feeling hopeless in the world today. The poems within, culled from a period of inspiration and resurgence after more than a decade of hopeless struggling and despair, honor both the darkness and the light. There is a chance, when the two are integrated, to turn what is bitter in life, sweet. ‘heavy metals’dissociative staring at the wall again they turned up the volume zero calorie heavy metals to defend against they demons

After leaving behind a trail of drug-addled destruction, Jay finds himself confined to the walls of a psychiatric hospital, forced for the first time to confront his darkest demons. He is met with the torture of reliving painful memories without anything to blur them, forced to truly look at himself in the mirror and confront the reality of what he has become. Then he must walk back through the thick brushes of pain, regret, and childhood trauma. And thus begins a gripping, emotional and intense journey in finding himself through the other patients he meets, the staff that cares for him, ...

Steffi has been a selective mute for most of her life. The condition's name has always felt ironic to her, because she certainly does not "select" not to speak. In fact, she would give anything to be able to speak as easily and often as everyone around her can. She suffers from crippling anxiety, and uncontrollably, in most situations simply can't open her mouth to get out the words. Steffi's been silent for so long that she feels completely invisible. But Rhys, the new boy at school, sees her.

Sometimes, in order to find your soul, you have to lose your mind. Kyle Getty was a successful, accomplished person. Until the day he lost his mind and brutally assaulted a man who was bullying a disabled person. Now, Kyle has been placed into court ordered therapy at Fallbrooke Mental Institution in Oregon. Waiting to meet him at Fallbrooke are a group of fellow “clients” that he will never forget. There is the young man who will only speak in rhymes and the French girl who cannot sleep. There is the old man who is trying to sketch his memories in the face of his Alzheimer’s, and ...

What would cause a mother to contact a hitman to kill her own children? Some ungrateful bastards. When Martha’s husband dies horrifically, she is forced to care for Zoom, Berry and Dodson alone. And although she does all she can to manage their lives, she grows more unstable by the day. When three unrelated incidents occur, she snaps and loses touch with reality. Sensing that his mother is on the brink of a mental breakdown, Zoom, the oldest of the Bastards, does all he can to control his outrageously trouble prone siblings. That is until secrets of the past impact his future. Funny…...

Busted for smoking pot, college-bound suburbanite Danny is incredulous when forced to spend the night in jail. He’s repulsed by his cellmate, a homeless and mentally ill drug addict who keeps him awake all night with his delusional rants. By morning, Danny’s world is completely upended.