Author: Amanda Jayne Gilmer
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1665585242
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Book Description
The author wrote this book for her mum who stood by her side whether she understood or not. On being schizoaffective a surreal soul has it's roots in phenomenology and existentialism. Focusing on the experiences of being unwell in the form of poetry. A journey into my mind at the time of being unwell. It aims to develop understanding of mental illness. Those who are affected will be able to relate to it. Professionals, students and anyone interested in mental health will gain insight and understanding.
On Being Schizoaffective—A Surreal Soul
Author: Amanda Jayne Gilmer
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1665585242
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Book Description
The author wrote this book for her mum who stood by her side whether she understood or not. On being schizoaffective a surreal soul has it's roots in phenomenology and existentialism. Focusing on the experiences of being unwell in the form of poetry. A journey into my mind at the time of being unwell. It aims to develop understanding of mental illness. Those who are affected will be able to relate to it. Professionals, students and anyone interested in mental health will gain insight and understanding.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1665585242
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Book Description
The author wrote this book for her mum who stood by her side whether she understood or not. On being schizoaffective a surreal soul has it's roots in phenomenology and existentialism. Focusing on the experiences of being unwell in the form of poetry. A journey into my mind at the time of being unwell. It aims to develop understanding of mental illness. Those who are affected will be able to relate to it. Professionals, students and anyone interested in mental health will gain insight and understanding.
A Road Back from Schizophrenia
Author: Arnhild Lauveng
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1620879131
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 142
Book Description
For ten years, Arnhild Lauveng suffered as a schizophrenic, going in and out of the hospital for months or even a year at a time. A Road Back from Schizophrenia gives extraordinary insight into the logic (and life) of a schizophrenic. Lauveng illuminates her loss of identity, her sense of being controlled from the outside, and her relationship to the voices she heard and her sometimes terrifying hallucinations. Painful recollections of moments of humiliation inflicted by thoughtless medical professionals are juxtaposed with Lauveng’s own understanding of how such patients are outwardly irrational and often violent. She paints a surreal world—sometimes full of terror and sometimes of beauty—in which “the Captain” rules her by the rod and the school’s corridors are filled with wolves. When she was diagnosed with the mental illness, it was emphasized that this was a congenital disease, and that she would have to live with it for the rest of her life. Today, however, she calls herself a “former schizophrenic,” has stopped taking medication for the illness, and currently works as a clinical psychologist. Lauveng, though sometimes critical of mental health care, ultimately attributes her slow journey back to health to the dedicated medical staff who took the time to talk to her and who saw her as a person simply diagnosed with an illness—not the illness incarnate. A powerful memoir for sufferers, their families, and the professionals who care for them.
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1620879131
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 142
Book Description
For ten years, Arnhild Lauveng suffered as a schizophrenic, going in and out of the hospital for months or even a year at a time. A Road Back from Schizophrenia gives extraordinary insight into the logic (and life) of a schizophrenic. Lauveng illuminates her loss of identity, her sense of being controlled from the outside, and her relationship to the voices she heard and her sometimes terrifying hallucinations. Painful recollections of moments of humiliation inflicted by thoughtless medical professionals are juxtaposed with Lauveng’s own understanding of how such patients are outwardly irrational and often violent. She paints a surreal world—sometimes full of terror and sometimes of beauty—in which “the Captain” rules her by the rod and the school’s corridors are filled with wolves. When she was diagnosed with the mental illness, it was emphasized that this was a congenital disease, and that she would have to live with it for the rest of her life. Today, however, she calls herself a “former schizophrenic,” has stopped taking medication for the illness, and currently works as a clinical psychologist. Lauveng, though sometimes critical of mental health care, ultimately attributes her slow journey back to health to the dedicated medical staff who took the time to talk to her and who saw her as a person simply diagnosed with an illness—not the illness incarnate. A powerful memoir for sufferers, their families, and the professionals who care for them.
Surviving Schizophrenia & Mind and Soul Poetry
Author: Bob Crew
Publisher: Chipmunkapublishing ltd
ISBN: 184747117X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
By Bob Crew ISBN: 9781847471178 Published: 2007 Pages: 170 Key Themes: poetry Description This book of poetry provides us with a wide-ranging picture of mental health in the UK and the contribution that poetry can make to a better understanding of our mental condition and the reasons for it. The eighteen poems in this collection are written in remembrance of the late Roy Crew, who suffered from schizophrenia in Britain from the 1940s until the 1960s. They are written by his brother, Bob Crew, who is a published poet who visited Roy regularly and observed him carefully throughout his long illness. They tell the story of Roy's illness and ultimate survival and they are the kind of poems that Roy could not have written for himself because his condition was too severe and he had no apparent talent for poetry. About the Author Bob Crew is a published author and poet whose others books - Sea Poems, Gurkhas at War and The Beheading & other True Stories - are currently in the bookstalls and on Amazon.
Publisher: Chipmunkapublishing ltd
ISBN: 184747117X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
By Bob Crew ISBN: 9781847471178 Published: 2007 Pages: 170 Key Themes: poetry Description This book of poetry provides us with a wide-ranging picture of mental health in the UK and the contribution that poetry can make to a better understanding of our mental condition and the reasons for it. The eighteen poems in this collection are written in remembrance of the late Roy Crew, who suffered from schizophrenia in Britain from the 1940s until the 1960s. They are written by his brother, Bob Crew, who is a published poet who visited Roy regularly and observed him carefully throughout his long illness. They tell the story of Roy's illness and ultimate survival and they are the kind of poems that Roy could not have written for himself because his condition was too severe and he had no apparent talent for poetry. About the Author Bob Crew is a published author and poet whose others books - Sea Poems, Gurkhas at War and The Beheading & other True Stories - are currently in the bookstalls and on Amazon.
The Surreal Reich
Author: Joseph Howard Tyson
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450240194
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 562
Book Description
The Third Reich proves Lord Byron's maxim that truth is stranger than fiction. Hitler's mania made the Reich surreal. This book documents his neuroses, charisma, ruthlessness, and "storybook" rise to power. It's alarming that an astute psychopath with acting ability became an absolute dictator in a modern European state. German political naivety contributed to his miraculous ascent. During election campaigns between 1927 and 1933 Hitler posed as an anti-Communist savior, while concealing his real agenda of war, genocide, and quack "eugenics." The Surreal Reich closely examines all leading Nazis. It shows how Hitler had different sets of favorites at various times. Dietrich Eckart, Rudolf Hess, and Ernst Rohm in the early years; Hermann Goering and Josef Goebbels through the middle period, then Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann from 1939 to 1945. Nazism's heyday occurred during an era of supposed progress. Yet escalating war casualties in that "enlightened age" tell a different story. 620,000 people died in America's Civil War, only 5% of them civilians. World War I caused approximately 16 million fatalities. Most of the 5 million non-combatants succumbed from starvation or Spanish Influenza. World War II resulted in 60 million deaths, 52% of them civilians. One warped "idealist" sparked that fruitless orgy of destruction: Adolf Hitler.
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450240194
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 562
Book Description
The Third Reich proves Lord Byron's maxim that truth is stranger than fiction. Hitler's mania made the Reich surreal. This book documents his neuroses, charisma, ruthlessness, and "storybook" rise to power. It's alarming that an astute psychopath with acting ability became an absolute dictator in a modern European state. German political naivety contributed to his miraculous ascent. During election campaigns between 1927 and 1933 Hitler posed as an anti-Communist savior, while concealing his real agenda of war, genocide, and quack "eugenics." The Surreal Reich closely examines all leading Nazis. It shows how Hitler had different sets of favorites at various times. Dietrich Eckart, Rudolf Hess, and Ernst Rohm in the early years; Hermann Goering and Josef Goebbels through the middle period, then Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann from 1939 to 1945. Nazism's heyday occurred during an era of supposed progress. Yet escalating war casualties in that "enlightened age" tell a different story. 620,000 people died in America's Civil War, only 5% of them civilians. World War I caused approximately 16 million fatalities. Most of the 5 million non-combatants succumbed from starvation or Spanish Influenza. World War II resulted in 60 million deaths, 52% of them civilians. One warped "idealist" sparked that fruitless orgy of destruction: Adolf Hitler.
Stalking Irish Madness
Author: Patrick Tracey
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553905597
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
In this powerful, sometimes harrowing, deeply felt story, Patrick Tracey journeys to Ireland to track the origin and solve the mystery of his Irish-American family's multigenerational struggle with schizophrenia. For most Irish Americans, a trip to Ireland is often an occasion to revisit their family's roots. But for Patrick Tracey, the lure of his ancestral home is a much more powerful need: part pilgrimage, part investigation to confront the genealogical mystery of schizophrenia–a disease that had claimed a great-great-great-grandmother, a grandmother, an uncle, and, most recently, two sisters. As long as Tracey could remember, schizophrenia ran on his mother's side, seldom spoken of outright but impossible to ignore. Devastated by the emotional toll the disease had already taken on his family, terrified of passing it on to any children he might have, and inspired by the recent discovery of the first genetic link to schizophrenia, Tracey followed his genealogical trail from Boston to Ireland's county Roscommon, home of his oldest-known schizophrenic ancestor. In a renovated camper, Tracey crossed the Emerald Isle to investigate the country that, until the 1960s, had the world's highest rate of institutionalization for mental illness, following clues and separating fact from fiction in the legendary relationship the Irish have had with madness. Tracey's path leads from fairy mounds and ancient caverns still shrouded in superstition to old pubs whose colorful inhabitants are a treasure trove of local lore. He visits the massive and grim asylum where his famine starved ancestors may have lived. And he interviews the Irish research team that first cracked the schizophrenic code to learn how much–and how little–we know about this often misunderstood disease. Filled with history, science, and lore, Stalking Irish Madness is an unforgettable chronicle of one man's attempt to make sense of his family's past and to find hope for the future of schizophrenic patients. From the Hardcover edition.
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553905597
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
In this powerful, sometimes harrowing, deeply felt story, Patrick Tracey journeys to Ireland to track the origin and solve the mystery of his Irish-American family's multigenerational struggle with schizophrenia. For most Irish Americans, a trip to Ireland is often an occasion to revisit their family's roots. But for Patrick Tracey, the lure of his ancestral home is a much more powerful need: part pilgrimage, part investigation to confront the genealogical mystery of schizophrenia–a disease that had claimed a great-great-great-grandmother, a grandmother, an uncle, and, most recently, two sisters. As long as Tracey could remember, schizophrenia ran on his mother's side, seldom spoken of outright but impossible to ignore. Devastated by the emotional toll the disease had already taken on his family, terrified of passing it on to any children he might have, and inspired by the recent discovery of the first genetic link to schizophrenia, Tracey followed his genealogical trail from Boston to Ireland's county Roscommon, home of his oldest-known schizophrenic ancestor. In a renovated camper, Tracey crossed the Emerald Isle to investigate the country that, until the 1960s, had the world's highest rate of institutionalization for mental illness, following clues and separating fact from fiction in the legendary relationship the Irish have had with madness. Tracey's path leads from fairy mounds and ancient caverns still shrouded in superstition to old pubs whose colorful inhabitants are a treasure trove of local lore. He visits the massive and grim asylum where his famine starved ancestors may have lived. And he interviews the Irish research team that first cracked the schizophrenic code to learn how much–and how little–we know about this often misunderstood disease. Filled with history, science, and lore, Stalking Irish Madness is an unforgettable chronicle of one man's attempt to make sense of his family's past and to find hope for the future of schizophrenic patients. From the Hardcover edition.
Paper Souls
Author: Allie Burke
Publisher: Booktrope Editions
ISBN: 9781620154830
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
From the author of the bestselling, genre-defining Enchanters series comes a new literary tour de force about Emily, a young woman balancing two worlds between her fingertips: the one that is real to her and the one that is real to everyone else... The question is: which one will she choose? Never romanticizing what it means to be a twenty-something schizophrenic in a world broken by normalcy and half-baked fairytales, Allie Burke's latest novel unites Emily and her world at large, spanning from the streets of Russia, to the sheets of her bed, to the idiosyncratic comfort she gets from worlds that don't exist at all. Woven with angst and darkness, bursting with heartache, Paper Souls tells of the irreparably damaged and broken, and how they survive.
Publisher: Booktrope Editions
ISBN: 9781620154830
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
From the author of the bestselling, genre-defining Enchanters series comes a new literary tour de force about Emily, a young woman balancing two worlds between her fingertips: the one that is real to her and the one that is real to everyone else... The question is: which one will she choose? Never romanticizing what it means to be a twenty-something schizophrenic in a world broken by normalcy and half-baked fairytales, Allie Burke's latest novel unites Emily and her world at large, spanning from the streets of Russia, to the sheets of her bed, to the idiosyncratic comfort she gets from worlds that don't exist at all. Woven with angst and darkness, bursting with heartache, Paper Souls tells of the irreparably damaged and broken, and how they survive.
International Perspectives in Values-Based Mental Health Practice
Author: Drozdstoy Stoyanov
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030478521
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 415
Book Description
This open access book offers essential information on values-based practice (VBP): the clinical skills involved, teamwork and person-centered care, links between values and evidence, and the importance of partnerships in shared decision-making. Different cultures have different values; for example, partnership in decision-making looks very different, from the highly individualized perspective of European and North American cultures to the collective and family-oriented perspectives common in South East Asia. In turn, African cultures offer yet another perspective, one that falls between these two extremes (called batho pele). The book will benefit everyone concerned with the practical challenges of delivering mental health services. Accordingly, all contributions are developed on the basis of case vignettes, and cover a range of situations in which values underlie tensions or uncertainties regarding how to proceed in clinical practice. Examples include the patient’s autonomy and best interest, the physician’s commitment to establishing high standards of clinical governance, clinical versus community best interest, institutional versus clinical interests, patients insisting on medically unsound but legal treatments etc. Thus far, VBP publications have mainly dealt with clinical scenarios involving individual values (of clinicians and patients). Our objective with this book is to develop a model of VBP that is culturally much broader in scope. As such, it offers a vital resource for mental health stakeholders in an increasingly inter-connected world. It also offers opportunities for cross-learning in values-based practice between cultures with very different clinical care traditions.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030478521
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 415
Book Description
This open access book offers essential information on values-based practice (VBP): the clinical skills involved, teamwork and person-centered care, links between values and evidence, and the importance of partnerships in shared decision-making. Different cultures have different values; for example, partnership in decision-making looks very different, from the highly individualized perspective of European and North American cultures to the collective and family-oriented perspectives common in South East Asia. In turn, African cultures offer yet another perspective, one that falls between these two extremes (called batho pele). The book will benefit everyone concerned with the practical challenges of delivering mental health services. Accordingly, all contributions are developed on the basis of case vignettes, and cover a range of situations in which values underlie tensions or uncertainties regarding how to proceed in clinical practice. Examples include the patient’s autonomy and best interest, the physician’s commitment to establishing high standards of clinical governance, clinical versus community best interest, institutional versus clinical interests, patients insisting on medically unsound but legal treatments etc. Thus far, VBP publications have mainly dealt with clinical scenarios involving individual values (of clinicians and patients). Our objective with this book is to develop a model of VBP that is culturally much broader in scope. As such, it offers a vital resource for mental health stakeholders in an increasingly inter-connected world. It also offers opportunities for cross-learning in values-based practice between cultures with very different clinical care traditions.
Jonathan Harnisch
Author: Jonathan Harnisch
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781499350722
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 804
Book Description
Ben Schreiber has Tourette's syndrome, which causes him to display uncontrollable tics and hops, and to stutter and swear inappropriately. Bullied through his school years, he can never form strong friendships, especially with women. In his late 20s, he plunges into a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse, which culminates in an attempted bank robbery, After he is arrested, his psychiatrist, Dr C, quickly sees Ben's affliction as much more than Tourette's. Inside Ben's head lives Georgie Gust, Ben's alter ego. Georgie is obsessed with his manipulative but extremely sexual next-door neighbor, Claudia Nesbitt. Ben is desperately searching for the unconditional love he never received as a boy. He finds it easier to retreat into his mind to share Georgie's sick obsession with cruel and abusive Claudia than to deal with his real issues. It is up to Dr C to help Ben face the buried terrors of his childhood so that he can finally let go of Georgie and reduce him to the literary character that writer Ben wants him to be.
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781499350722
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 804
Book Description
Ben Schreiber has Tourette's syndrome, which causes him to display uncontrollable tics and hops, and to stutter and swear inappropriately. Bullied through his school years, he can never form strong friendships, especially with women. In his late 20s, he plunges into a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse, which culminates in an attempted bank robbery, After he is arrested, his psychiatrist, Dr C, quickly sees Ben's affliction as much more than Tourette's. Inside Ben's head lives Georgie Gust, Ben's alter ego. Georgie is obsessed with his manipulative but extremely sexual next-door neighbor, Claudia Nesbitt. Ben is desperately searching for the unconditional love he never received as a boy. He finds it easier to retreat into his mind to share Georgie's sick obsession with cruel and abusive Claudia than to deal with his real issues. It is up to Dr C to help Ben face the buried terrors of his childhood so that he can finally let go of Georgie and reduce him to the literary character that writer Ben wants him to be.
Surrealism
Author: Penelope Rosemont
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872868265
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
A series of personal and historical encounters with surrealism from one of its foremost practitioners in the United States. "Penelope Rosemont has given us, better than anyone else in the English language, a marvelous, meticulous exploration of the surrealist experience, in all its infinite variety."—Gerome Kamrowski, American Surrealist Painter One of the hallmarks of Surrealism is the encounter, often by chance, with a key person, place, or object through a trajectory no one could have predicted. Penelope Rosemont draws on a lifetime of such experiences in her collection of essays, Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields. From her youthful forays as a radical student in Chicago to her pivotal meeting with André Breton and the Surrealist Movement in Paris, Rosemont—one of the movement's leading exponents in the United States—documents her unending search for the Marvelous. Surrealism finds her rubbing shoulders with some of the movement's most important visual artists, such as Man Ray, Leonora Carrington, Mimi Parent, and Toyen; discussing politics and spectacle with Guy Debord; and crossing paths with poet Ted Joans and outsider artist Lee Godie. The book also includes scholarly investigations into American radicals like George Francis Train and Mary MacLane, the myth of the Golden Goose, and Dada precursor Emmy Hennings. Praise for Surrealism: "Rosemont is not delivering dry abstractions, as so many academic 'specialists,' but telling us about warm and exciting human encounters, illuminated by the subversive spirit of Permanent Enchantment."—Michael Löwy, author of Ecosocialism "This compelling and well-drawn book lets us see the adventures, inspirations, and relationships that have shaped Penelope Rosemont's art and rebellion."—David Roediger, author of Class, Race, and Marxism "The broad sampling of essays included here offer a compelling entry point for curious readers and an essential compendium for surrealist practitioners."—Abigail Susik, professor of art history, Willamette University "Rosemont's welcome memoir has a double virtue, as testament to the enduring radiance of Surrealism, and as a memento to the Sixties, revealing a sweetly beating wonderment at the heart of that absurdly maligned decade."—Jed Rasula, author of Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century "Artist, historian, and social activist, Rosemont writes from the inside out. Like a rare, hybrid flower growing out of the earth, she complicates, expands, and opens the strange and beautiful meadow where Surrealism continues to live and thrive.”—Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Wild Milk "In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Penelope Rosemont, long a keeper of surrealism's revolutionary flame, shows how a penetrating look into the past can liberate the future."—Andrew Joron, author of The Absolute Letter "Rosemont recreates the feverish antics and immediate reception her close-knit, sleep-deprived, beat-attired squad find in the established, moray-breaking Parisian and international surrealists. Revolution is here, between the covers."—Gillian Conoley, author of A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New and Selected Poems and translator of Thousand Times Broken: Three Books by Henri Michaux
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872868265
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
A series of personal and historical encounters with surrealism from one of its foremost practitioners in the United States. "Penelope Rosemont has given us, better than anyone else in the English language, a marvelous, meticulous exploration of the surrealist experience, in all its infinite variety."—Gerome Kamrowski, American Surrealist Painter One of the hallmarks of Surrealism is the encounter, often by chance, with a key person, place, or object through a trajectory no one could have predicted. Penelope Rosemont draws on a lifetime of such experiences in her collection of essays, Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields. From her youthful forays as a radical student in Chicago to her pivotal meeting with André Breton and the Surrealist Movement in Paris, Rosemont—one of the movement's leading exponents in the United States—documents her unending search for the Marvelous. Surrealism finds her rubbing shoulders with some of the movement's most important visual artists, such as Man Ray, Leonora Carrington, Mimi Parent, and Toyen; discussing politics and spectacle with Guy Debord; and crossing paths with poet Ted Joans and outsider artist Lee Godie. The book also includes scholarly investigations into American radicals like George Francis Train and Mary MacLane, the myth of the Golden Goose, and Dada precursor Emmy Hennings. Praise for Surrealism: "Rosemont is not delivering dry abstractions, as so many academic 'specialists,' but telling us about warm and exciting human encounters, illuminated by the subversive spirit of Permanent Enchantment."—Michael Löwy, author of Ecosocialism "This compelling and well-drawn book lets us see the adventures, inspirations, and relationships that have shaped Penelope Rosemont's art and rebellion."—David Roediger, author of Class, Race, and Marxism "The broad sampling of essays included here offer a compelling entry point for curious readers and an essential compendium for surrealist practitioners."—Abigail Susik, professor of art history, Willamette University "Rosemont's welcome memoir has a double virtue, as testament to the enduring radiance of Surrealism, and as a memento to the Sixties, revealing a sweetly beating wonderment at the heart of that absurdly maligned decade."—Jed Rasula, author of Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century "Artist, historian, and social activist, Rosemont writes from the inside out. Like a rare, hybrid flower growing out of the earth, she complicates, expands, and opens the strange and beautiful meadow where Surrealism continues to live and thrive.”—Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Wild Milk "In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Penelope Rosemont, long a keeper of surrealism's revolutionary flame, shows how a penetrating look into the past can liberate the future."—Andrew Joron, author of The Absolute Letter "Rosemont recreates the feverish antics and immediate reception her close-knit, sleep-deprived, beat-attired squad find in the established, moray-breaking Parisian and international surrealists. Revolution is here, between the covers."—Gillian Conoley, author of A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New and Selected Poems and translator of Thousand Times Broken: Three Books by Henri Michaux
Healing
Author: Thomas Insel, MD
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593298047
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
A bold, expert, and actionable map for the re-invention of America’s broken mental health care system. “Healing is truly one of the best books ever written about mental illness, and I think I’ve read them all." —Pete Earley, author of Crazy As director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas Insel was giving a presentation when the father of a boy with schizophrenia yelled from the back of the room, “Our house is on fire and you’re telling me about the chemistry of the paint! What are you doing to put out the fire?” Dr. Insel knew in his heart that the answer was not nearly enough. The gargantuan American mental health industry was not healing millions who were desperately in need. He left his position atop the mental health research world to investigate all that was broken—and what a better path to mental health might look like. In the United States, we have treatments that work, but our system fails at every stage to deliver care well. Even before COVID, mental illness was claiming a life every eleven minutes by suicide. Quality of care varies widely, and much of the field lacks accountability. We focus on drug therapies for symptom reduction rather than on plans for long-term recovery. Care is often unaffordable and unavailable, particularly for those who need it most and are homeless or incarcerated. Where was the justice for the millions of Americans suffering from mental illness? Who was helping their families? But Dr. Insel also found that we do have approaches that work, both in the U.S. and globally. Mental illnesses are medical problems, but he discovers that the cures for the crisis are not just medical, but social. This path to healing, built upon what he calls the three Ps (people, place, and purpose), is more straightforward than we might imagine. Dr. Insel offers a comprehensive plan for our failing system and for families trying to discern the way forward. The fruit of a lifetime of expertise and a global quest for answers, Healing is a hopeful, actionable account and achievable vision for us all in this time of mental health crisis.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593298047
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
A bold, expert, and actionable map for the re-invention of America’s broken mental health care system. “Healing is truly one of the best books ever written about mental illness, and I think I’ve read them all." —Pete Earley, author of Crazy As director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas Insel was giving a presentation when the father of a boy with schizophrenia yelled from the back of the room, “Our house is on fire and you’re telling me about the chemistry of the paint! What are you doing to put out the fire?” Dr. Insel knew in his heart that the answer was not nearly enough. The gargantuan American mental health industry was not healing millions who were desperately in need. He left his position atop the mental health research world to investigate all that was broken—and what a better path to mental health might look like. In the United States, we have treatments that work, but our system fails at every stage to deliver care well. Even before COVID, mental illness was claiming a life every eleven minutes by suicide. Quality of care varies widely, and much of the field lacks accountability. We focus on drug therapies for symptom reduction rather than on plans for long-term recovery. Care is often unaffordable and unavailable, particularly for those who need it most and are homeless or incarcerated. Where was the justice for the millions of Americans suffering from mental illness? Who was helping their families? But Dr. Insel also found that we do have approaches that work, both in the U.S. and globally. Mental illnesses are medical problems, but he discovers that the cures for the crisis are not just medical, but social. This path to healing, built upon what he calls the three Ps (people, place, and purpose), is more straightforward than we might imagine. Dr. Insel offers a comprehensive plan for our failing system and for families trying to discern the way forward. The fruit of a lifetime of expertise and a global quest for answers, Healing is a hopeful, actionable account and achievable vision for us all in this time of mental health crisis.