Alice in the Looking Glass: A Mother and Daughter's Experience of Anorexia


Jo Kingsley - 2005
    In the first part of the book Jo Davenport writes with raw intensity about Alice's illness and what she hopes is her recovery. At ten, Alice was an easy going, free spirited child with a tremendous sense of humour and adored by everyone who knew her. At eleven, she started to develop her 'rigmaroles' - little rituals which grew into severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - and then, at fourteen, turned into anorexia. Jo describes her journey through what she calls Planet Anorexia, recognising the amazing support she received both professionally and personally and telling of the long periods of despair, guilt, anger and, as the mother of a much-loved child, sheer terror. By opening her heart and writing this book her wish is to pass on her experiences as the mother of an anorexic child, to share all her doubts, failures, anxieties and eventually some successes in the hope of supporting other families going through the same trauma. In the second part of the book Alice, now eighteen and on the road to recovery, also looks back over the past eight years. recovery, other sufferers she met, and her relationship with her mother, friends and siblings. Finally, Jo brings the story up to date and offers guidance and hope to others who love and care for an anorexic child.

Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism


Ron Suskind - 2014
    It is the saga of Owen Suskind, who happens to be the son of one of America's most noted writers, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Ron Suskind. He's also autistic. The twisting, 20-year journey of this boy and his family will change that way you see autism, old Disney movies, and the power of imagination to heal a shattered, upside-down world.

Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.


Julie Holland - 2009
    Recounts stories from her vast case files that are alternately terrifying, tragically comic, and profoundly moving, all while she deals with her best friend and fellow doctor's fight with cancer.

Mad Girl


Bryony Gordon - 2016
    It's caused alopecia, bulimia, and drug dependency. And Bryony is sick of it. Keeping silent about her illness has given it a cachet it simply does not deserve, so here she shares her story with trademark wit and dazzling honesty.A hugely successful columnist for the Telegraph, a bestselling author, and a happily married mother of an adorable daughter, Bryony has managed to laugh and live well while simultaneously grappling with her illness. Now it's time for her to speak out. Writing with her characteristic warmth and dark humour, Bryony explores her relationship with her OCD and depression as only she can.Mad Girl is a shocking, funny, unpredictable, heart-wrenching, raw and jaw-droppingly truthful celebration of life with mental illness.

Dude, Where's my Stethoscope


Donovan Gray - 2012
    The adventure begins during the author's formative years in medical school and takes the reader through two decades of thought-provoking rural and urban-based ER and family practice experiences. Humorously written in an engaging mash-up of formal prose and informal medical slang with a nod to pop culture and ancient mythology, Dude is a powerful book that is certain to please readers of all stripes.

Diary of a H.O. (House Officer): A Collection of Short Stories from a Surgeon's First Year of Training.


Brandon Green - 2020
    The book offers insight into 21st century modern healthcare and the state of society. You will laugh, cry, and question your beliefs about the healthcare system and patients. Read this before you go to the doctor next and share this information with your family. Throughout the United States stories like these are unfolding each day as you witness the stress of physician training and the ups and downs of the physician's and patient's lives. Dr. Brandon Green is a pseudonym, or pen name, for author who wishes to remain anonymous. He is an Attending Surgeon at an inner-city Level 1 Trauma Center. The author's goals for writing this book include the following: 1.Create awareness and discussion about today’s healthcare and society. 2.Raise money with 30% of profits from the sale of this book being donated to healthcare non-profit organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and any current global medical pandemic funds. 3.Therapy for the author to recount the intern year, which was more stressful and educational than ever imagined. Unexpected emotions occurred and life lessons were taught beyond the surgical training. The short stories are real occurrences that happened to the author and his other two co-interns in one residency year. The author broke ties with the publisher who wanted to adjust the stories to meet societal norms, and now the work is being self published with profits as above going to charity instead of a large publishing company. The names and locations have been changed to provide privacy protection and follow HIPPA guidelines. The author hopes to continue dialogue and discussion on stories from behind the scenes at hospitals, clinics, and in the operating rooms. It's beneficial to communicate with colleagues and other healthcare professionals and staff running into similar circumstances on a day to day basis. Please visit DIARYOFAHO.COM and email your stories to be published on the website and social media.This is a work of sociology, psychology, medicine, surgery, dealing with the public, putting others ins front of yourself, and self-reflective learning. Any story will be accepted and uploaded into the blog and social media. Stories will be screened for HIPPA compliance prior to publishing online. Thank you for taking the time to read and understand what’s happening in modern healthcare training.

The Mind's Eye


Oliver Sacks - 2010
    Alongside remarkable stories of people who have lost these abilities but adapted with courage, resilience and ingenuity, there is an added, personal element: one day in late 2005, Sacks became aware of a dazzling, flashing light in one part of his visual field; it was not the familiar migraine aura he had experienced since childhood, and just two days later a malignant tumor in one eye was diagnosed. In subsequent journal entries - some of which are included in The Mind's Eye - he chronicled the experience of living with cancer, recording both the effects of the tumor itself, and radiation therapy. In turning himself into a case history, Sacks has given us perhaps his most intimate, impressive and insightful (no pun intended) book yet.

Where the Roots Reach for Water: A Personal and Natural History of Melancholia


Jeffery Smith - 1999
    Eventually, all his prescribed antidepressant medications proved ineffective. Unlike so many personal accounts, Where the Roots Reach for Water tells the story of what happened to Smith after he decided to give them up. Trying to learn how to make a life with his illness, Smith sets out to get at the essence of--using the old term for depression--melancholia.Deftly woven into his "personal history" is a "natural history" of this ancient illness. Drawing on centuries of art, writing and medical treatises, Smith finds ancient links between melancholia and spirituality, love and sex, music and philosophy, gardening, and, importantly, our relationship with landscapes.

Magic Trees of the Mind: How to Nurture Your Child's Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions from Birth Through Adolescence


Marian C. Diamond - 1998
    At each stage of development, the brain's ability to gain new skills and process information is refined.As a leading researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, Marion Diamond has been a pioneer in this field of research. Now, Diamond and award-winning science writer Janet Hopson present a comprehensive enrichment program designed to help parents prepare their children for a lifetime of learning.

Let Me Hear Your Voice: A Family's Triumph over Autism


Catherine Maurice - 1993
    In her first year, she picked up words, smiled and laughed, and learned to walk. But then Anne-Marie began to turn inward. And when her little girl lost some of the words she had acquired, cried inconsolably, and showed no interest in anyone around her, Catherine Maurice took her to doctors who gave her a devastating diagnosis: autism.In their desperate struggle to save their daughter, the Maurices plunged into a medical nightmare of false hopes, "miracle cures," and infuriating suggestions that Anne-Marie's autism was somehow their fault. Finally, Anne-Marie was saved by an intensive behavioral therapy.Let Me Hear Your Voice is a mother's illuminating account of how one family triumphed over autism. It is an absolutely unforgettable book, as beautifully written as it is informative.

Rescuing Jeffrey: A Memoir


Richard Galli - 2000
    Although his father, Richard, saved him, Jeffrey was paralyzed with a devastating spinal cord injury. In this book, Richard Galli offers a compelling, disarmingly honest account of the decisions and experiences confronted by all such individuals who suddenly find themselves wholly dependant on others to survive—and of the realities that must be likewise faced by their families.A lawyer and former journalist, Galli writes with much intelligence and stark emotional intensity of life as it is really lived by quadriplegics and those who care for them. An unforgettable story about tragedy, love, and the choices we make at the brink of survival, Rescuing Jeffrey is "gut-wrenchingly candid," as Publishers Weekly observed, and "likely to arouse controversy and sharply divided reactions . . . Yet this eloquent story of heartbreak and hope is ultimately life affirming." The book will be must-reading for all students of counseling, rehabilitation, and related disciplines.

The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves


Siri Hustvedt - 2009
    Despite her flapping arms and shaking legs, she continued to speak clearly and was able to finish her speech. It was as if she had suddenly become two people: a calm orator and a shuddering wreck. Then the seizures happened again and again. The Shaking Woman tracks Hustvedt’s search for a diagnosis, one that takes her inside the thought processes of several scientific disciplines, each one of which offers a distinct perspective on her paroxysms but no ready solution. In the process, she finds herself entangled in fundamental questions: What is the relationship between brain and mind? How do we remember? What is the self?During her investigations, Hustvedt joins a discussion group in which neurologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and brain scientists trade ideas to develop a new field: neuropsychoanalysis. She volunteers as a writing teacher for psychiatric in-patients at the Payne Whitney clinic in New York City and unearths precedents in medical history that illuminate the origins of and shifts in our theories about the mind-body problem. In The Shaking Woman, Hustvedt synthesizes her experience and research into a compelling mystery: Who is the shaking woman? In the end, the story she tells becomes, in the words of George Makari, author of Revolution in Mind, “a brilliant illumination for us all.”

Sick: A Memoir


Porochista Khakpour - 2018
    For most of that time, she didn't know why. All of her trips to the ER and her daily anguish, pain, and lethargy only ever resulted in one question: How could any one person be this sick? Several drug addictions, three major hospitalizations, and over $100,000 later, she finally had a diagnosis: late-stage Lyme disease. Sick is Khakpour's arduous, emotional journey—as a woman, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of undiagnosed health problems—through the chronic illness that perpetually left her a victim of anxiety, living a life stymied by an unknown condition.Divided by settings, Khakpour guides the reader through her illness by way of the locations that changed her course—New York, LA, New Mexico, and Germany—as she meditates on both the physical and psychological impacts of uncertainty, and the eventual challenge of accepting the diagnosis she had searched for over the course of her adult life. With candor and grace, she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness, her addiction to the benzodiazepines prescribed by her psychiatrists, and her ever-deteriorating physical health. A story about survival, pain, and transformation, Sick is a candid, illuminating narrative of hope and uncertainty, boldly examining the deep impact of illness on one woman's life.

The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness


Lori Schiller - 1994
    Six years later she made her first suicide attempt, then wandered the streets of New York City dressed in ragged clothes, tormenting voices crying out in her mind. Lori Schiller had entered the horrifying world of full-blown schizophrenia. She began an ordeal of hospitalizations, halfway houses, relapses, more suicide attempts, and constant, withering despair. But against all odds, she survived. Now in this personal account, she tells how she did it, taking us not only into her own shattered world, but drawing on the words of the doctors who treated her and family members who suffered with her.In this new edition, Lori Schiller recounts the dramatic years following the original publication -- a period involving addiction, relapse, and ultimately, love and recovery.Moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, THE QUIET ROOM is a classic testimony to the ravages of mental illness and the power of perseverance and courage.

Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart


James R. Doty - 2016
    Today he is the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, of which the Dalai Lama is a founding benefactor. But back then his life was at a dead end until at twelve he wandered into a magic shop looking for a plastic thumb. Instead he met Ruth, a woman who taught him a series of exercises to ease his own suffering and manifest his greatest desires. Her final mandate was that he keep his heart open and teach these techniques to others. She gave him his first glimpse of the unique relationship between the brain and the heart.Doty would go on to put Ruth’s practices to work with extraordinary results—power and wealth that he could only imagine as a twelve-year-old, riding his orange Sting-Ray bike. But he neglects Ruth’s most important lesson, to keep his heart open, with disastrous results—until he has the opportunity to make a spectacular charitable contribution that will virtually ruin him. Part memoir, part science, part inspiration, and part practical instruction, Into the Magic Shop shows us how we can fundamentally change our lives by first changing our brains and our hearts.