A one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive outside the box, Hello, Cruel World is a much-needed unconventional approach to life for those who want to stay on the edge, but alive.Hello, Cruel World features a catalog of 101 alternatives to suicide that range from the playful (moisturize!), to the irreverent (shatter some family values), to the highly controversial. Designed to encourage readers to give themselves permission to unleash their hearts' harmless desires, the book has only one directive: "Don't be mean." It is this guiding principle that brings its reader on a self-validating journey, which forges wholly new paths toward a resounding decision to choose life.Tenderly intimate and unapologetically edgy, Kate Bornstein is the radical role model, the affectionate best friend, and the guiding mentor all in one.

    From Mary Lamb, sister of Charles, who in the throes of a nervous breakdown turned on her mother with a kitchen knife, to Freud, Jung, and Lacan, who developed the new women-centered therapies, Lisa Appignanesi’s research traces how more and more of the inner lives and emotions of women have become a matter for medics and therapists. Here too is the story of how over the years symptoms and diagnoses have developed together to create fashions in illness and how treatments have succeeded or sometimes failed. Mad, Bad, and Sad takes us on a fascinating journey through the fragile, extraordinary human mind.

    This authoritative, easy-to-use self-help program is based on methods clinically proven to reduce the recurrence of chronic unhappiness. Informative chapters reveal the hidden psychological mechanisms that cause depression and demonstrate powerful ways to strengthen your resilience in the face of life's misfortunes. Kabat-Zinn lends his calm, familiar voice to the accompanying CD of guided meditations, making this a complete package for anyone looking to regain a sense of balance and contentment.

    Written with the practitioner in mind, the book demonstrates how this transdiagnostic approach can be used with the full range of eating disorders seen in clinical practice. Christopher Fairburn and colleagues describe in detail how to tailor CBT-E to the needs of individual patients, and how to adapt it for patients who require hospitalization. Also addressed are frequently encountered co-occurring disorders and how to manage them. Reproducible appendices feature the Eating Disorder Examination interview and questionnaire. CBT-E is recognized as a best practice for the treatment of adult eating disorders by the U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

    In the vein of popular favorites such as Girl, Interrupted and Manic, Lonely approaches loneliness in the way that Andrew Soloman’s The Noonday Demon approached depression, and lifts the veil on a mostly ignored population who often suffer their disorder in silence.

    Research shows that DBT can improve your ability to handle distress without losing control and acting destructively. In order to make use of these techniques, you need to build skills in four key areas-distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook, a collaborative effort from three esteemed authors, offers straightforward, step-by-step exercises for learning these concepts and putting them to work for real and lasting change. Start by working on the introductory exercises and, after making progress, move on to the advanced-skills chapters. Whether you are a professional or a general reader, whether you use this book to support work done in therapy or as the basis for self-help, you'll benefit from this clear and practical guide to better managing your emotions.This book has been awarded The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Seal of Merit — an award bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, our books offer powerful tools readers can use to jump-start changes in their lives.

    Currently, millions of people in the U.S. routinely use these pills. Are these miracle drugs, quickly curing depression? Or is their popularity a sign that we now inappropriately redefine normal life problems as diseases? Are they prescribed too often or too seldom? How do they affect self-images?David Karp approaches these questions from the inside, having suffered from clinical depression for most of his adult life. In this book he explores the relationship between pills and personhood by listening to a group of experts who rarely get the chance to speak on the matter—those who are taking the medications. Their voices, extracted from interviews Karp conducted, color the pages with their experiences and reactions--humor, gratitude, frustration, hope, and puzzlement. Here, the patients themselves articulate their impressions of what drugs do to them and for them. They reflect on difficult issues, such as the process of becoming committed to medication, quandaries about personal authenticity, and relations with family and friends.The stories are honest and vivid, from a distraught teenager who shuns antidepressants while regularly using street drugs to a woman who still yearns for a spiritual solution to depression even after telling intimates "I'm on Prozac and it's saving me." The book provides unflinching portraits of people attempting to make sense of a process far more complex and mysterious than doctors or pharmaceutical companies generally admit.

    With a muckraker's passion, Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles, and that we as a society are deeply deluded about their efficacy. Tracing over three centuries of "cures" for madness, Whitaker shows how medical therapies have been used to silence patients and dull their minds. He tells of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practices of "spinning" the insane, extracting their teeth, ovaries, and intestines, and submerging patients in freezing water. The "cures" in the 1920s and 1930s were no less barbaric as eugenic attitudes toward the mentally ill led to brain-damaging lobotomies and electroshock therapy. Perhaps Whitaker's most damning revelation, however, is his report of how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies in an effort to prove the effectiveness of their products. Based on exhaustive research culled from old patient medical records, historical accounts, numerous interviews, and hundreds of government documents, Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, what it means to be "insane," and what we value most about the human mind.

    William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick explain current thinking on the process of behavior change, present the principles of MI, and provide detailed guidelines for putting it into practice. Case examples illustrate key points and demonstrate the benefits of MI in addictions treatment and other clinical contexts. The authors also discuss the process of learning MI. The volume’s final section brings together an array of leading MI practitioners to present their work in diverse settings.

    So why does she binge eat and then stick her fingers down her throat several times a day? That’s what the doctors and psychiatrists at Golden Slopes hope to help her discover. But first Janie must survive everyday conflicts between the Barfers and the Starvers, attempts by the head psychiatrist to fish painful memories out of her emotional waters, and shifting friendships and alliances among the kids in the ward.

    What can you do to help when every attempt to address the behavior seems to push him or her further away? In this compassionate, straightforward book, Dr. Michael Hollander, a leading authority on self-injury, spells out the facts about cutting--and what to do to make it stop. You’ll learn how overwhelming emotions lead some teens to hurt themselves, and how proven treatments--chief among them dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)--can help your child become well again. Helping Teens Who Cut demonstrates how to talk to your teen about cutting without making it worse, and explains exactly what to look for in a therapist or treatment program. Drawing on decades of clinical experience as well as the latest research, Dr. Hollander provides concrete ways to help your son or daughter cope with extreme emotions without resorting to self-injury. You’ll also learn practical communication and problem-solving skills that can reduce family stress, making it easier to care for yourself and your teen during the recovery process. Winner--American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award

    You're not stuck with the brain you're born with. Here are just a few of neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen's surprising--and effective--"brain prescriptions" that can help heal your brain and change your life:To Quell Anxiety and Panic: ¸  Use simple breathing techniques to immediately calm inner turmoilTo Fight Depression: ¸  Learn how to kill ANTs (automatic negative thoughts)To Curb Anger: ¸  Follow the Amen anti-anger diet and learn the nutrients that calm rageTo Conquer Impulsiveness and Learn to Focus: ¸  Develop total focus with the "One-Page Miracle"To Stop Obsessive Worrying: ¸  Follow the "get unstuck" writing exercise and learn other problem-solving exercises

    Materialism, pressure to achieve, perfectionism, and disconnection are combining to create a perfect storm that is devastating children of privilege and their parents alike.In this eye-opening, provocative, and essential book, clinical psychologist Madeline Levine explodes one child-rearing myth after another. With empathy and candor, she identifies toxic cultural influences and well-intentioned, but misguided, parenting practices that are detrimental to a child's healthy self-development. Her thoughtful, practical advice provides solutions that will enable parents to help their emotionally troubled "star" child cultivate an authentic sense of self.

    This empowering book presents  the insights and techniques of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) a revolutionary new psychotherapy based on cutting-edge research in behavioral psychology. By clarifying your values and developing mindfulness (a technique for living fully in the present moment), ACT helps you escape the happiness trap and find true satisfaction in life.     The techniques presented in The Happiness Trap will help readers to:    • Reduce stress and worry    • Handle painful feelings and thoughts more effectively    • Break self-defeating habits    • Overcome insecurity and self-doubt    • Create a rich, full, and meaningful life

    I caught a glimpse of a very thin girl with dead, straight, long, dry peroxided hair and a skimpy outfit like a whorish doll. I turned sideways to look at her. I saw a child. I saw a witch. I saw a dumb blonde. It took a few seconds for my mind to register that the girl in the mirror was me. I looked her up and down. I was thin, blonde and tanned and I was still not happy." Being Ana is the story of one young woman's fight to find strength in vulnerability, truth in her identity and meaning in being herself. Shani Raviv is a struggling adolescent living in an eccentric, all-female, diet-free household in South Africa. At age fourteen, belonging to a girl clique, she gets hooked on a system of counting calories that traps her inside a crazed mind. Over the next decade, Shani embarks on an unholy pilgrimage: from aerobics addict to Israeli soldier to rave bunny to wannabe reborn, she tries to find self-worth in sex, everlasting happiness in drugs and alcohol, comfort in cutting, and above all, salvation in starving. A spiritual epiphany one night awakens her to the fearful realization that she has lost her sense of self to Anorexia (Ana). Shani has to decide whether to surrender and risk losing Ana-which was all she knew-to go in search of nourishment and her true self in a sane and sober world.