For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness--how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people--sane, normal, well-adjusted members of society--went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all...

Since its introduction as a brief, empirically validated treatment for depression, “Interpersonal Psychotherapy” has broadened its scope and repertoire to include disorders of behavior and personality as well as disorders of mood. Practitioners in today's managed care climate will welcome this encyclopedic reference consolidating the 1984 manual (revised) with new applications and research results plus studies in process and in promise and an...

Adam has just been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He sees and hears people who aren't there: Rebecca, a beautiful girl who understands him; the Mob Boss, who harasses him; and Jason, the naked guy who's unfailingly polite. It should be easy to separate the real from the not real, but Adam can't. Still, there's hope. As Adam starts fresh at a new school, he begins a drug trial that helps him ignore his visions. Suddenly everything seems possible, even...

In the mid-1960s, the course of Arthur Janov's professional life as a psychotherapist changed in a single day. During a therapy session, Dr. Janov heard, "an eerie scream welling up from the depths of a young man who was lying on the floor." Janov came to believe that this scream was the product of some unconscious, intangible wound that the patient was unable to resolve-an event the psychotherapist coined " Primal Pain." Janov subsequently devoted...

"The acclaimed author of The Unquiet Mind considers the age-old quest for relief from psychic pain and the role of the gifted healer in the journey back to health. "To treat, even to cure, is not always to heal." In this expansive cultural history of the treatment and healing of suffering, Kay Jamison writes about what makes an effective healer, and the role of imagination and memory in the regeneration of the mind. From the trauma of the bloodiest...

"If you are one of the millions of people who feel that your brain just "isn't working right"-- that you have brain fog, memory loss, depression, or anxiety, or that your ability to maintain a balanced, happy mood has been lost long ago -- take heart.The problem is not "in your head," it is in your microbiome (trillions of health-promoting bacteria) and your gut -- and there are proven natural solutions that can help you not only reduce symptoms but...

A noted neuroscientist reveals groundbreaking research on how fitness and exercise can combat mental health conditions such as anxiety, dementia, ADHD, and depression, and offers a plan for improving focus, creativity, and sleep. "Jennifer Heisz shares paradigm-shifting research on how exercise affects the brain, finding that intervals of intense workouts, or even leisurely walks, help stop depression and dementia, lessen anxiety and ADHD, and encourage...

"The loss of reason, a sense of alienation from the commonsense world we all like to imagine we inhabit, the shattering emotional turmoil that seizes hold and won't let go--these are some of the traits we associate with madness. Today, mental disturbance is most commonly viewed through a medical lens, but societies have also sought to make sense of it through religion or the supernatural, or by constructing psychological or social explanations in...