Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions


Russell Brand - 2017
    My qualification is not that I am better than you but I am worse." (Russell Brand)With a rare mix of honesty, humor, and compassion, comedian and movie star Russell Brand mines his own wild story and shares the advice and wisdom he has gained through his 14 years of recovery. Brand speaks to those suffering along the full spectrum of addiction - from drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar addictions to addictions to work, stress, bad relationships, digital media, and fame. Brand understands that addiction can take many shapes and sizes and how the process of staying clean, sane, and unhooked is a daily activity. He believes that the question is not "why are you addicted?" but "what pain is your addiction masking? Why are you running - into the wrong job, the wrong life, the wrong person's arms?"Russell has been in all the 12-step fellowships going, he's started his own men's group, he's a therapy regular and a practiced yogi - and while he's worked on this material as part of his comedy and previous best sellers, he's never before shared the tools that really took him out of it, that keep him clean and clear. Here he provides not only a recovery plan but an attempt to make sense of the ailing world.PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

Prognosis: A Memoir of My Brain


Sarah Vallance - 2019
    The next morning, things take a sharp turn as she’s led from work to the emergency room. By the end of the week, a neurologist delivers a devastating prognosis: Sarah suffered a traumatic brain injury that has caused her IQ to plummet, with no hope of recovery. Her brain has irrevocably changed.Afraid of judgment and deemed no longer fit for work, Sarah isolates herself from the outside world. She spends months at home, with her dogs as her only source of companionship, battling a personality she no longer recognizes and her shock and rage over losing simple functions she’d taken for granted. Her life is consumed by fear and shame until a chance encounter gives Sarah hope that her brain can heal. That conversation lights a small flame of determination, and Sarah begins to push back, painstakingly reteaching herself to read and write, and eventually reentering the workforce and a new, if unpredictable, life.In this highly intimate account of devastation and renewal, Sarah pulls back the curtain on life with traumatic brain injury, an affliction where the wounds are invisible and the lasting effects are often misunderstood. Over years of frustrating setbacks and uncertain triumphs, Sarah comes to terms with her disability and finds love with a woman who helps her embrace a new, accepting sense of self.

Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia


Anita HeissDeborah Cheetham - 2018
    Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect.

Ten Hail Marys


Kate Howarth - 2010
    Abandoned by her mother as a baby and by her volatile grandmother as a young girl, Kate Howarth was shunted between Aboriginal relatives and expected to grow up fast. It was a childhood beset by hardship, abuse, profound grief, and poverty, but buoyed with the hope that one day she would make a better life for herself and her child. Incredibly moving, this is the compelling true story of a childhood lost and a young woman’s hard-won self-possession.

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.

With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial


Kathryn Mannix - 2017
    Kathryn Mannix has studied and practiced palliative care for thirty years. In With the End in Mind , she shares beautifully crafted stories from a lifetime of caring for the dying, and makes a case for the therapeutic power of approaching death not with trepidation, but with openness, clarity, and understanding. Weaving the details of her own experiences as a caregiver through stories of her patients, their families, and their distinctive lives, Dr. Mannix discusses the universal, but deeply personal, process of dying. With meditations on life, death, and the space between them, With the End in Mind describes the possibility of meeting death gently, with forethought and preparation, and shows the unexpected beauty, dignity, and profound humanity of life coming to an end.

Journey of a Thousand Storms: A Refugee's Story


Kooshyar Karimi - 2016
    Until he was kidnapped by the Intelligence Service.Behind his professional success, Kooshyar was a rebel on several fronts. Marginalised since boyhood as a Jew in a fundamentalist Islamic state, he was a member of a political group that opposed the government. He'd also been using his medical skills illegally, to save unmarried pregnant women from death by stoning.Snatched from the street, he was jailed and tortured and then forced to spy for the regime, before finally escaping to Turkey. There he faced a whole new struggle to keep his family safe while awaiting refugee status from the UN. He was forbidden to work and at the mercy of corrupt police, con men and red tape. Then life became more dangerous still, when the Intelligence Service tracked him down and used his mother, back in Iran, as blackmail.Kooshyar's inspiring story of how he managed to forge a new life in Australia is heightened by his largeness of heart, strength of character, and insight into human behaviour, from the unfathomably evil to the selflessly kind. With the skill of a natural storyteller, Journey of a Thousand Storms recounts a life of endurance, compassion and gritty determination.

First Aid for the Psychiatry Clerkship: A Student-To-Student Guide


Latha G. Stead - 2002
    Its organization and thoroughness are unsurpassed, putting it above similar review books. Students who thoroughly read this book should have no trouble successfully completing their psychiatry clerkship and passing the shelf exam. As course director for the core psychiatry clerkship at my institution, I will recommend this book to students."--Doody's Review Service"First Aid for the Psychiatry Clerkship" gives you the core information needed to impress on the wards and pass the psychiatry clerkship exam. Written by students who know what it takes to succeed, and based on the national guidelines for the psychiatry clerkship, the book is filled with mnemonics, ward and exam tips, tables, clinical images, algorithms, and newly added mini-cases.Features Completely revised based on the psychiatry clerkship's core competencies Written by medical students who passed and reviewed by faculty for accuracy NEW integrated mini-cases illustrate classic patient presentations and/or commonly tested scenarios NEW illustrations and management algorithms Updated throughout with enhanced sections on medications, depression/anxiety, and child psychiatry Helps students hone in on the most important concepts for the clerkship and the examThe content you need to ace the clerkship: Section I: How to Succeed in the Psychiatry Clerkship Section II: High-Yield Facts; Examination and Diagnosis; Psychotic Disorders; Mood Disorders; Anxiety and Adjustment Disorders; Personality Disorders; Substance-Related Disorders; Cognitive Disorders; Geriatric Disorders; Psychiatric Disorders in Children; Dissociative Disorders; Somataform and Factitious Disorders; Impulse Control Disorders; Eating Disordes; Disorders; Sleep Disorders; Sexual Disorders; Psychtherapies; Psychopharmacology; Legal Issues; Section III: Awards and Opportunities.

Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story


Alexander Shulgin - 1990
    This book gives details of their research and investigations into the use of psychedelic drugs for the study of the human mind, and is also a love story. The second half of the book describes in detail a wealth of phenethlyamines, their physical properties, dosages used, duration of effects observed, and commentary on effects.

Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Rain Forest


Mark J. Plotkin - 1993
    Aspirin, the world's most widely used drug, is based on compounds originally extracted from the bark of a willow tree, and more than a quarter of medicines found on pharmacy shelves contain plant compounds. Now Western medicine, faced with health crises such as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, has begun to look to the healing plants used by indigenous peoples to develop powerful new medicines. Nowhere is the search more promising than in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest, home to a quarter of all botanical species on this planet—as well as hundreds of Indian tribes whose medicinal plants have never been studied by Western scientists. In Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin recounts his travels and studies with some of the most powerful Amazonian shamans, who taught him the plant lore their tribes have spent thousands of years gleaning from the rain forest.For more than a decade, Dr. Plotkin has raced against time to harvest and record new plants before the rain forests' fragile ecosystems succumb to overdevelopment—and before the Indians abandon their own culture and learning for the seductive appeal of Western material culture. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice relates nine of the author's quests, taking the reader along on a wild odyssey as he participates in healing rituals; discovers the secret of curare, the lethal arrow poison that kills in minutes; tries the hallucinogenic snuff epena that enables the Indians to speak with their spirit world; and earns the respect and fellowship of the mysterious shamans as he proves that he shares both their endurance and their reverence for the rain forest. Mark Plotkin combines the Darwinian spirit of the great writer-explorers of the nineteenth century—curious, discursive, and rigorously scientific—with a very modern concern for the erosion of our environment and the vanishing culture of native peoples.

The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines in Psychiatry


David M. Taylor - 1999
    Where do you look for information when transferring a patient from one drug to another? Where do you find a clear overview when dealing with a complex patient (e.g, with co-morbid epilepsy or liver disease or HIV infection)? Where can you seek advice on prescribing psychotropics during pregnancy? "The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines in Psychiatry"! The leading clinical reference for handling prescribing problems as encountered in daily practice and for formulating prescribing policy.Evidence-based and written by expertsThis book is the essential guide for anyone responsible for prescribing, dispensing or administering drugs for patients with mental health disorders. All the evidence has been reviewed and summarized succinctly by an expert team of psychiatrists and pharmacists.New content and improved formatThis new edition makes greater use of tables and boxes to facilitate quick reference and includes new sections on cytochrome-mediated interactions and psychiatric side effects of non-psychotropic drugs.Clinically relevantChapters address plasma monitoring, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety, children and adolescents, substance abuse and special patient groups. Each section has a full reference list. The book covers prescribing drugs outside their licensed indications and their interaction with substances such as alcohol, nicotine and caffeine.Useful for all levels of experienceTrainees will gain important information regarding the rational, safe and effective use of medications for patients with mental illness. Experienced clinicians will find excellent guidance regarding more complex issues that they may not encounter regularly.Why the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines in Psychiatry?Long recognized as an international trailblazer in mental health care, the Maudsley Hospital earned its reputation for excellence in both in-patient and community care. It is highly regarded for its research, and pioneered the use of clinical neuroscience. You can trust "The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines in Psychiatry" to be scientifically sound and clinically effective.

Songspirals: Sharing women's wisdom of Country through songlines


Gay'wu Group of WomenKate Lloyd - 2019
    Songspirals are the essence of people in this land, the essence of every clan. We belong to the land and it belongs to us. We sing to the land, sing about the land. We are that land. It sings to us.' Aboriginal Australian cultures are the oldest living cultures on earth and at the heart of Aboriginal cultures is song. These ancient narratives of landscape have often been described as a means of navigating across vast distances without a map, but they are much, much more than this. Songspirals are sung by Aboriginal people to awaken Country, to make and remake the life-giving connections between people and place. Songspirals are radically different ways of understanding the relationship people can have with the landscape.For Yolngu people from North East Arnhem Land, women and men play different roles in bringing songlines to life, yet the vast majority of what has been published is about men's place in songlines. Songspirals is a rare opportunity for outsiders to experience Aboriginal women's role in crying the songlines in a very authentic and direct form.'Songspirals are Life. These are cultural words from wise women. As an Aboriginal woman this is profound to learn. As a human being Songspirals is an absolute privilege to read.' - Ali Cobby Eckermann, Yankunytjatjara poet 'To read Songspirals is to change the way you see, think and feel this country.' - Clare Wright, award-winning historian and author 'A rare and intimate window into traditional women's cultural life and their visceral connection to Country. A generous invitation for the rest of us.' - Kerry O'Brien, Walkley Award-winning journalist

Farewell to the Father


Timothy Elliott - 2016
    A charismatic, well-respected doctor by day, Tim's father became a roaring madman at night.The house was our castle, and Dad was our king. He was an unpredictable king, tyrannous and moody, lethal one day, loving the next.This is an extraordinary memoir of growing up with a parent afflicted by mental illness: a complex elegy, powerfully told, loaded with love, rage and surprising humour. It is about the lengths children will go to protect themselves - and their families - from shame or harm, and how adapting to that adversity becomes and intractable part of who we are as adults.PRAISE FOR TIM ELLIOT"...he has brought us a most extraordinary memoir - bitter-sweet, tragicomic - and in the end redemptive." Sydney Morning Herald"Searing piece on mental illness... Bravo" Jessica Rowe"One of the finest, most moving pieces on mental illness you'll ever read" Professor Simon Chapman

Emotional Female


Yumiko Kadota - 2021
    A self-confessed workaholic, she regularly put 'knife before life', knowing it was all going to be worth it because it would lead to her longed-for career.But if the punishing hours in surgery weren't hard enough, she also faced challenges as a young female surgeon navigating a male-dominated specialty. She was regularly left to carry out complex procedures without senior surgeons' oversight; she was called all sorts of things, from 'emotional' to 'too confident'; and she was expected to work a relentless on-call roster - sometimes seventy hours a week or more - to prove herself.Eventually it was too much and Yumiko quit.Emotional Female is her account of what it was like to train in the Australian public hospital system, and what made her walk away.Yumiko Kadota is a voice for her generation when it comes to burnout and finding the resilience to rebuild after suffering a physical, emotional and existential breakdown. This is a brave, honest and unflinching work from a major new talent.

Ah Well, Nobody's Perfect: The untold stories


Ian Molly Meldrum - 2016
    Molly gives us his unforgettable encounters with The Beatles, Elton John, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Madonna, John Farnham, Bruce Springsteen, the Bee Gees, Rod Stewart, Russell Crowe, Oasis, Beyonce and Prince. As well as the tales that surround his other loves: the Australian cricket team, the St Kilda footy club and the Melbourne Storm."I have a lot of love for the great Ian 'Molly' Meldrum" - Shane WarneNo one has lived a life like Ian 'Molly' Meldrum. And no one can tell a story like Molly.