Michelle's Story: One Woman's Escape from a Lifetime of Abuse


Shelley Chase - 2012
    Her first husband, and then her second husband end up abusing her also. Later on, both her surviving children were abused, one by her ex husband, another by a trusted boyfriend. Michelle finally manages to free herself from this cycle of abuse. This is her true story of her escape. It is Michelle's hope that her story will encourage others who are trapped in abuse to seek freedom.

Broken People


Scott Hildreth - 2013
    With an overbearing obnoxious attitude, he allows few people to enter his otherwise private life. Most of the people that he encounters come from his internet blog, and pose no real threat to him or to his odd lifestyle. The Fat Kid is a self-proclaimed therapist who devotes his life to help people that have difficulties helping themselves, people he considers to be ‘broken’. When he encounters a bulimic teenage girl through his internet blog who threatens to commit suicide, he begins to reflect on parts of his life that he has spent years repressing. He continues to assist her, and many other ‘Broken People’ through his blog. When he meets an extremely independent woman who challenges him, his way of living, and his way of viewing life, he reluctantly listens. In doing so he challenges his past mistakes, his future, and ultimately he finds himself. Five broken people, five points of view, one story. From each of five characters perspective, this story unfolds and grips you from the beginning. If there is any part of you that feels broken, this book is a mirror held before you. In the end, you'll see your true reflection. From time to time, a book comes along, and makes you stop. It makes you stop and second guess who you are, what you’re doing in life, with life, and for the ones you love. This is that book. Through colorfully painted characters, “Broken People” forces the reader to reflect on self. There will be a broken part of you in one (or all) of these characters, guaranteed. Through The Fat Kid, his reflections on past experiences, and his online assistance to others, we are exposed to everything that high school kids these days deal with. Additionally, we are exposed to what parents should be considering, thinking, and doing - but often don't. The writings of Catherine Ryan Hyde, John Green, and Donna Tartt are similar. If you loved those reads, you'll certainly love Broken People. The characters in this book come to life before your eyes, and you become one with them. The result is a book that will have you laughing, crying, contemplating your own life, and the lives of your parents and/or children. A must read for parents and children alike, regardless of age. It gives teens and young adults an honest look at what parents consider, and provides parents with a realistic view of what teens are exposed to in today’s competitive social networking world.

Desk Reference to the Diagnostic Criteria From DSM-IV-TR


American Psychiatric Association - 2000
    It includes all the diagnostic criteria from DSM-IV-TR(R) in an easy-to-use, spiralbound format. It includes a pull-out chart of the DSM-IV-TR Classification.Changes were made to the following diagnostic criteria: - Personality Change Due to a General Medical Condition - Paraphilias- Tic Disorders

Skin Game


Caroline Kettlewell - 1999
    Skin Game employs clear language and candid reflection to grant general readers as well as students an uncensored profile of a complex and unsettling disorder. "[This] mesmeric memoir examines the obsession with cutting that is believed to afflict somewhere around two million Americans, nearly all of them female," Francine Prose noted in Elle. "[Kettlewell's] language soars and its intensity deepens whenever she is recalling the lost joys and the thrilling sensation of sharp steel against her tender skin."

The Burn Journals


Brent Runyon - 2004
    During that year of physical recovery, Runyon began to question what he’d done, undertaking the complicated journey from near-death back to high school, and from suicide back to the emotional mainstream of life.In the tradition of Running with Scissors and Girl, Interrupted, The Burn Journals is a truly remarkable book about teenage despair and recovery.

Boys Don't Cry: Why I Hid My Depression and Why Men Need to Talk about Their Mental Health


Tim Grayburn - 2017
    Depression and undiagnosed mental illness are huge contributors to these deaths as they're often more difficult to diagnose in men. And those men don't tend to talk about the typical symptoms or visit their doctor. Meet Tim.For nearly a decade he kept his depression secret. It made him feel so weak and shameful he thought it would destroy his whole life if anyone found out.And Tim is not alone.After finally opening up he realised that mental illness was affecting many men around the globe - and he knew that wasn't ok.A brutally honest, wickedly warming and heart-breaking tale about what it really takes to be a 'real man', written by one who decided that he wanted to change the world by no longer being silent.This is Tim's story, but it could be yours too.

Silent Child


Toni Maguire - 2020
    There are some memories labelled 'Look at', and others 'Leave well alone'...Emily Smith was held in a prison of fear for ten years. When she was four, her father left and a new man was brought into her life. He loved her, he kept telling her so, but the emotional and physical abuse she suffered at his hands were a daily nightmare. Until one day, after he crept into her bedroom, her life became unbearable.Emily found she was different in another way as her autism became more noticeable and punishments for her 'abnormal' behaviour more severe. Astonishingly, she managed to escape her home of hell, where she was abused right in front of her mother. Emily determinedly gained a university place and emerged triumphant with a new life and family in Ireland, desperate to treat her daughter, so similar to her, to a different life.Heartbreakingly true, Silent Child is a testament to Emily's strength as she sheds light on rampant abuse still happening today. Powerful and shocking, sharing her story means she finally has a voice to say: enough.

My Beautiful Failure


Janet Ruth Young - 2012
    Billy, struggling with the deteriorating relationship with his depressed father, is the only one who understands. Through her pain, he sees hope. Through her tears, he feels her heart. And through her despair, he finds love. But is that enough?     Acclaimed author Janet Ruth Young has written a stunning and powerful story with no easy answers; it is about pain and heartbreak, reality and illusion, and finding redemption and the strength to forgive in the darkest of times.

Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person


Anna Mehler Paperny - 2019
    Illuminating, completely engaging—it's essential reading for all since we all know someone whose life, family or friends are touched by the disease that directly afflicts a fifth of Canadians. In her early twenties, while outwardly thriving in her dream job and enjoying warm familial support and a strong social network, award-winning journalist Anna Mehler Paperny found herself trapped by feelings of failure and despair. Her first suicide attempt—ingesting a deadly mix of sleeping pills and antifreeze—landed her in the ICU, followed by weeks of enforced detention that ran the gamut of horrifying, boring, hilarious, and absurd. This was Anna's entry into the labyrinthine psychiatric care system responsible for providing care to millions of Canadians.As she struggled to survive the psych ward and as an outpatient—enduring the "survivor's" shame of facing concerned family, friends, and co-workers; finding (or not) the right therapist, the right meds; staying healthy, insured, and employed—Anna could not help but turn her demanding journalist's eye on her condition and on the system in which she found herself. She set off on a quest to "know her enemy," interviewing leading practitioners in the field across Canada and the US—from psychiatrists to neurological experts, brain-mapping pioneers to heroic family practitioners, and others dabbling in novel hypotheses. She reveals in courageously frank detail her own experiences with the pharmacological pitfalls and side effects of long-term treatment, and offers moving case studies of conversations with others, opening wide a window into how we treat (and fail to treat) the disease that accounts for more years swallowed up by disability than any other in the world.

Clinical Mental Health Counseling in Community and Agency Settings


Samuel T. Gladding - 2009
    It examines the many roles and functions community counselors perform, the variety of settings in which their work is done, and how that work differs from one client population to another.

I'm Not Bad, I'm Just Mad: A Workbook to Help Kids Control Their Anger


Anna Greenwald - 2008
    But some children have trouble with impulsivity and self-control. Left unaddressed, these issues can lead to some very serious problems in adolescence and adulthood. Anger control problems are the number one reason that children are referred for therapy, affecting children as young as three years old. Since anger problems in children may indicate other significant concerns, it pays to address anger in kids as soon as possible. If a child in your life has an anger problem, you need the friendly, effective activities in this book.I'm Not Bad, I'm Just Mad contains forty activities for issues such as recognizing anger triggers, better problem solving, and communication tips for defusing conflict before it gets out of hand. The workbook explores common lifestyle issues such as lack of sleep that can make anger problems worse. These fun activities will help kids talk about their feelings and learn to control them.

Parenting Your Out-of-Control Teenager: 7 Steps to Reestablish Authority and Reclaim Love


Scott P. Sells - 2001
    But literally millions of teens take their rebellion to a point where it disrupts their families and endangers their own futures or even their lives. If one of these teens is yours, you've probably lived through years of conflicting advice and pat solutions that don't last. Finally, this breakthrough guide from a master therapist will show you the seven steps to positive, permanent change for you and your teenager: 1. Learn the real reasons for teen misbehavior. 2. Make an ironclad contract to stop that behavior. 3. Troubleshoot future problems. 4. End button-pushing. 5. Stop the "seven aces" -- from disrespect to threats of violence. 6. Mobilize outside help. 7. Reclaim lost love within the family.Clear, compassionate, and packed with real-life solutions to real-life problems, Parenting Your Out-of-Control Teenager gives parents the tools they need to turn their families' lives around for good.

Girl, Interrupted


Susanna Kaysen - 1993
    She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele--Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles--as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching documnet that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.

Manic: A Memoir


Terri Cheney - 2008
    But behind her seemingly flawless façade lay a dangerous secret—for the better part of her life Cheney had been battling debilitating bipolar disorder and concealing a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions meant to stabilize her moods and make her "normal."In bursts of prose that mirror the devastating highs and extreme lows of her illness, Cheney describes her roller-coaster life with shocking honesty—from glamorous parties to a night in jail; from flying fourteen kites off the edge of a cliff in a thunderstorm to crying beneath her office desk; from electroshock therapy to a suicide attempt fueled by tequila and prescription painkillers.With Manic, Cheney gives voice to the unarticulated madness she endured. The clinical terms used to describe her illness were so inadequate that she chose to focus instead on her own experience, in her words, "on what bipolar disorder felt like inside my own body." Here the events unfold episodically, from mood to mood, the way she lived and remembers life. In this way the reader is able to viscerally experience the incredible speeding highs of mania and the crushing blows of depression, just as Cheney did. Manic does not simply explain bipolar disorder—it takes us in its grasp and does not let go.In the tradition of Darkness Visible and An Unquiet Mind, Manic is Girl, Interrupted with the girl all grown up. This harrowing yet hopeful book is more than just a searing insider's account of what it's really like to live with bipolar disorder. It is a testament to the sharp beauty of a life lived in extremes.

Diary of a Suicide


Wallace E. Baker - 1913