The most extraordinary thing he found when writing about his experiences is that the most common comment about his work is "OMG that's me. You are telling my story. I don't feel so alone now."Living with mental illness is hard, but it's especially difficult when dealing with more than one condition at the same time. Many books about coping with mental illness focus on one disorder, such as bipolar disorder, anxiety, panic attacks, or depression. Because Dave Mowry didn't see any that dealt with his situation of living with multiple disorders simultaneously, he decided to write about it himself.OMG That's Me! is sometimes funny, often poignant, but always deeply honest, open, and personal. Mowry's stories let others know there is help and there is hope, and that they too can recover and live a full life. This book is a must read for family members and friends who will gain true insight into the experiences of loved ones living with a mental illness. This book is a must read for mental health professionals who will better understand the symptoms faced by their patients. And ordinary people will see the strength, resilience, and beauty of people that will shatter the stigma surrounding mental illness.

    Or it’s just bad luck—and doctors alone hold the keys to optimal health. For years, Lissa Rankin, M.D., believed the same. But when her own health started to suffer, and she turned to Western medical treatments, she found that they not only failed to help; they made her worse. So she decided to take matters into her own hands.     Through her research, Dr. Rankin discovered that the health care she had been taught to practice was missing something crucial: a recognition of the body’s innate ability to self-repair and an appreciation for how we can control these self-healing mechanisms with the power of the mind. In an attempt to better understand this phenomenon, she explored peer-reviewed medical literature and found evidence that the medical establishment had been proving that the body can heal itself for over 50 years.     Using extraordinary cases of spontaneous healing, Dr. Rankin shows how thoughts, feelings, and beliefs can alter the body’s physiology. She lays out the scientific data proving that loneliness, pessimism, depression, fear, and anxiety damage the body, while intimate relationships, gratitude, meditation, sex, and authentic self-expression flip on the body’s self-healing processes.     In the final section of the book, you’ll be introduced to a radical new wellness model based on Dr. Rankin’s scientific findings. Her unique six-step program will help you uncover where things might be out of whack in your life—spiritually, creatively, environmentally, nutritionally, and in your professional and personal relationships—so that you can create a customized treatment plan aimed at bolstering these health-promoting pieces of your life. You’ll learn how to listen to your body’s “whispers” before they turn to life-threatening “screams” that can be prevented with proper self-care, and you’ll learn how to trust your inner guidance when making decisions about your health and your life.

    But it's not, perhaps, the story you expect.Gavin Francis is a GP who works in both urban and rural communities, splitting his time between Edinburgh and the islands of Orkney. When the pandemic ripped through our society he saw how it affected every walk of life: the anxious teenager, the isolated care home resident, the struggling furloughed worker and homeless ex-prisoner, all united by their vulnerability in the face of a global disaster. And he saw how the true cost of the virus was measured not just in infections, or deaths, or ITU beds, but in the consequences of the measures taken against it.In this deeply personal account of nine months spent caring for a society in crisis, Francis will take you from rural village streets to local clinics and communal city stairways. And in telling this story, he reveals others: of loneliness and hope, illness and recovery, and of what we can achieve when we care for each other.

    Applying the same objective criteria to legal and illegal substances, an argument is made that legality is not a clear measure for harm. Tackling a variety of questions, such as Which is more harmful—Ecstasy or alcohol? Can addiction be cured? and Does the "War on Drugs" have serious unintended effects that can hurt children?, this analysis equips readers with the ability to make educated decisions regarding drugs both personally and in their communities. Broadening the scope of the discussion, a framework is explored for formulating national drug policies that will minimize a myriad of harms—social, medical, criminal, financial, and environmental.

    Eilene Zimmerman noticed that her ex-husband looked thin, seemed distracted, and was frequently absent from activities with their children. She thought he looked sick and needed to see a doctor, and indeed, he told her he had been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. Yet in many ways, Peter also seemed to have it all: a beautiful house by the beach purchased after their divorce, expensive cars, and other luxuries that came with an affluent life. Eilene assumed his odd behavior was due to stress and overwork--he was a senior partner at a prominent law firm and had been working more than 60 hours a week for the last 20 years.Although they were divorced, Eilene and Peter had been partners and friends for decades, so, when her calls to Peter were not returned for several days, Eilene went to his house to see if he was OK.So begins Smacked, a brilliant, moving memoir of Eilene's shocking discovery, one that sets her on a journey to find out how a man she knew for nearly 30 years became a drug addict, and hid it so well that neither she nor anyone else in his life suspected what was happening. Eilene discovers that Peter led a secret life, one that started with pills and ended with opioids, cocaine and methamphetamine. Peter was also addicted to work; the last call he ever made was to dial into a conference call.Eilene is determined to learn all she can about Peter's hidden life, and also about drug addiction among ambitious and high achieving professionals like him. Through extensive research and interviews, she presents a picture of drug dependence today in that moneyed, upwardly mobile world. She also embarks on a journey to recreate her life in the wake of loss, both of the person--and the relationship--that profoundly defined the woman she had become.Smacked takes readers on an intimate journey into a little-known part of the drug epidemic, through the story of one man, one woman and one family.

    They speak their own language, they abide by their own rules, and they seem to exist to drive adults crazy. But adolescence is a typical stage of human development that is the essential preparation for success in the adult world. The more you understand about your teen’s brain, the better prepared you will be to handle this turbulent time in your child’s life.Professor Abigail Baird has devoted the majority of her career to studying adolescence, and in this Audible Original, she shares the latest perspectives on this amazing time of cognitive and behavioral growth. The 10 lectures in this series will reveal that adolescent behavior is much easier to understand than most people think. Rather than seeing the teen years as a crucible to be endured by parents and young people alike, this series offers a practical perspective for adults who hope to help teens truly thrive in their personal journeys to adulthood—not merely to survive their adolescence.Whether you are a parent, someone who works with teens, or even a teen yourself, this course will shed new light on a period of human development that is all too often incorrectly described as a time where psychological peril is inevitable.

    But doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice have a profound impact on medical care. And while much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. In What Doctors Feel, Dr. Danielle Ofri has taken on the task of dissecting the hidden emotional responses of doctors, and how these directly influence patients.How do the stresses of medical life—from paperwork to grueling hours to lawsuits to facing death—affect the medical care that doctors can offer their patients? Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Danielle Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care.With her renowned eye for dramatic detail, Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients and her forever fear of making another. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. But doctors don’t only feel fear, grief, and frustration. Ofri also reveals that doctors tell bad jokes about “toxic sock syndrome,” cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness.  The stories here reveal the undeniable truth that emotions have a distinct effect on how doctors care for their patients. For both clinicians and patients, understanding what doctors feel can make all the difference in giving and getting the best medical care.

    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.

    When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from "Lewis Carroll," Ayelet Waldman is at a low point. Her mood storms have become intolerably severe; she has tried nearly every medication possible; her husband and children are suffering with her. So she opens the vial, places two drops on her tongue, and joins the ranks of an underground but increasingly vocal group of scientists and civilians successfully using therapeutic microdoses of LSD. As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month--bursts of productivity, sleepless nights, a newfound sense of equanimity--she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is eye-opening, often hilarious, and utterly enthralling.

    As corporations seek to save money and government agencies aim to increase constituent access, minimum qualifications for the guardians of our nation’s healthcare continue to decline—with deadly consequences. This is a story that has not yet been told, and one that has dangerous repercussions for all Americans.

    Disappointed that her mind does not always deal well with the pressures of modern life, Emma decided to go on mind-toning journey.Is it possible to tone your mind just as you can tone your body so it becomes more resilient and better prepared to deal with what life throws at you?By looking at some of the new and tried and tested techniques, from meditation to mental preparation involved in extreme sports and military training, Emma has devised a programme that will help everyone achieve mental stability.

    But in this groundbreaking book, prize-winning historian Edith Sheffer exposes that Asperger was not only involved in the racial policies of Hitler’s Third Reich, he was complicit in the murder of children.As the Nazi regime slaughtered millions across Europe during World War Two, it sorted people according to race, religion, behavior, and physical condition for either treatment or elimination. Nazi psychiatrists targeted children with different kinds of minds—especially those thought to lack social skills—claiming the Reich had no place for them. Asperger and his colleagues endeavored to mold certain "autistic" children into productive citizens, while transferring others they deemed untreatable to Spiegelgrund, one of the Reich’s deadliest child-killing centers.In the first comprehensive history of the links between autism and Nazism, Sheffer uncovers how a diagnosis common today emerged from the atrocities of the Third Reich. With vivid storytelling and wide-ranging research, Asperger’s Children will move readers to rethink how societies assess, label, and treat those diagnosed with disabilities.

    And no one is more aware of this than top cardiologist Dr. Chauncey Crandall, who has performed over 40,000 heart procedures during his career.In his new book, The Simple Heart Cure, you’ll find this top doc’s groundbreaking approach to preventing and reversing heart disease — an approach honed by his study of foreign cultures free of heart disease and decades of experience helping patients achieve a healthier heart at any age.Dr. Crandall is living proof of his program’s success. At the age of 48, and with no major risk factors, he found himself in the ER with a “widow-maker” blockage of his main coronary artery. After emergency heart surgery, he recovered from heart disease using the same course of treatment he recommends to his thousands of patients — and details for your benefit — in The Simple Heart Cure.His unique perspective as both doctor and patient helps him empathize with the difficulties in making a transition from years of bad habits to a heart-healthy way of life. Plus, Dr. Crandall believes in using every weapon in his medical arsenal — conventional medicine, emerging treatments, lifestyle changes, even alternative therapies — to help his patients recover.Here are just a few of the potentially life-saving gems you’ll discover: • Proven ways to banish bad cholesterol • How to slash your risk of a deadly heart attack by 61% • 8 easy steps to head off that high blood pressure • How you can safeguard against stroke • Simple strategies to unclog your arteries without surgery • What your belly says about your heart health • Must-have heart tests for everyone over 50 • Easy solutions to steer clear of statin drugs, and much more...So whether you just want to prevent heart problems, or you’ve already had a heart attack, you’ll find the help you need in The Simple Heart Cure, along with tasty, heart-healthy menus and a 90-day week-by-week plan to help you start taking action immediately.

    Nestled in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, the town of Johnson City had always seemed exempt from the anxieties of modern American life. But when the local hospital treated its first AIDS patient, a crisis that had once seemed an urban problem had arrived in the town to stay. Working in Johnson City was Abraham Verghese, a young Indian doctor specializing in infectious diseases. Dr. Verghese became by necessity the local AIDS expert, soon besieged by a shocking number of male and female patients whose stories came to occupy his mind, and even take over his life. Verghese brought a singular perspective to Johnson City: as a doctor unique in his abilities; as an outsider who could talk to people suspicious of local practitioners; above all, as a writer of grace and compassion who saw that what was happening in this conservative community was both a medical and a spiritual emergency."

    Why We Get Sick compels readers to reexamine the age-old attitudes toward sickness. Line drawings.