Book picks similar to
Mount Misery by Samuel Shem
fiction
medicine
psychology
medical
Awakenings
Oliver Sacks - 1973
It recounts the life histories of those who had been victims of the 1920s encephalitis lethargica epidemic. Sacks chronicles his efforts in the late 1960s to help these patients at the Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx, New York.
When I Was Five I Killed Myself
Howard Buten - 1981
And to Burt, his parents and teachers seem to be speaking a language he cannot understand. This is Burt's story as written in pencil on the walls of Quiet Room in the Children's Trust Residence Center, where he lands after expressing his ardent feelings for a classmate. It begins: When I was five I killed myself....In this rediscovered modern classic from "one of France's best-loved temporary writers" (Time), Howard Buten renders with astounding insight and wry language the tale of a troubled -- or perhaps just perfectly normal -- young boy testing the boundaries of love and life.
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
Stephen Grosz - 2012
These beautifully rendered tales illuminate the fundamental pathways of life from birth to death.A woman finds herself daydreaming as she returns home from a business trip; a young man loses his wallet. We learn, too, from more extreme examples: the patient who points an unloaded gun at a police officer, the compulsive liar who convinces his wife he's dying of cancer. The stories invite compassionate understanding, suggesting answers to the questions that compel and disturb us most about love and loss, parents and children, work and change. The resulting journey will spark new ideas about who we are and why we do what we do.
When Nietzsche Wept
Irvin D. Yalom - 1992
Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him. When he agrees to treat Nietzsche with his experimental "talking cure", Breuer never expects that he, too, will find solace in their sessions. Only through facing his own inner demons can the gifted healer begin to help his patient.In When Nietzsche Wept, Irvin Yalom blends fact and fiction, atmosphere and suspense to unfold an unforgettable story about the redemptive power of friendship.
The Skeleton Cupboard: Stories From a Clinical Psychologist
Tanya Byron - 2014
Through the eyes of her naive and inexperienced younger self, Byron shares remarkable stories inspired by the people she had the privilege to treat. Gripping, poignant, and full of daring black humor, this book reveals the frightening and challenging induction all mental health staff face and highlights their incredible commitment to their patients. It shares the tales of ordinary people with an amazing resilience to life's challenges.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Hannah Green - 1964
It is not a case history or study. I like to think it is a hymn to reality." —Joanne Greenberg
Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry
Jeffrey A. Lieberman - 2015
Lieberman traces the field from its birth as a mystic pseudo-science through its adolescence as a cult of "shrinks" to its late blooming maturity — beginning after World War II — as a science-driven profession that saves lives. With fascinating case studies and portraits of the luminaries of the field — from Sigmund Freud to Eric Kandel — Shrinks is a gripping and illuminating read, and an urgent call-to-arms to dispel the stigma of mental illnesses by treating them as diseases rather than unfortunate states of mind.“A lucid popular history...At once skeptical and triumphalist. It shows just how far psychiatry has come.” —Julia M. Klein, Boston Globe
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Ottessa Moshfegh - 2018
But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
Jon Ronson - 2011
The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath. Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.
Prozac Nation
Elizabeth Wurtzel - 1994
A collective cry for help from a generation who have come of age entrenched in the culture of divorce, economic instability, and AIDS, here is the intensely personal story of a young girl full of promise, whose mood swings have risen and fallen like the lines of a sad ballad.
The Death Committee
Noah Gordon - 1969
But they work in the shadow of the Death Committee, a formidable hospital tribunal where doctors sit in judgment of their peers, deciding who is to blame when a death could have been prevented. During an unforgettable year of love and fear, failure and victory, the young doctors must face the crucial dramas and triumphs of hospital life.
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Andrew Solomon - 2000
His contribution to our understanding not only of mental illness but also of the human condition is truly stunning.The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policymakers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications, the efficacy of alternative treatments, and the impact the malady has had on various demographic populations around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by emerging biological explanations for mental illness.The depth of human experience Solomon chronicles, the range of his intelligence, and his boundless curiosity and compassion will change the reader's view of the world.
Sane New World: Taming The Mind
Ruby Wax - 2013
Ruby Wax - comedian, writer and mental health campaigner - shows us how our minds can jeopardize our sanity. With her own periods of depression and now a Masters from Oxford in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy to draw from, she explains how our busy, chattering, self-critical thoughts drive us to anxiety and stress. If we are to break the cycle, we need to understand how our brains work, rewire our thinking and find calm in a frenetic world. Helping you become the master, not the slave, of your mind, here is the manual to saner living
The Dice Man
Luke Rhinehart - 1971
Because once you hand over your life to the dice, anything can happen. Entertaining, humorous, scary, shocking, subversive, The Dice Man is one of the cult bestsellers of our time.
A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness
S. Nassir Ghaemi - 2011
By combining analysis of the historical evidence with the latest psychiatric research, Ghaemi demonstrates how he thinks these qualities have produced brilliant leadership under the toughest circumstances.individuals and society at large-however high the price for those who endure these illnesses.