Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness

Mind Fixers tells the history of psychiatry’s quest to understand the biological basis of mental illness and asks where we need to go from here. In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington, author of The Cure Within, explores psychiatry’s repeatedly frustrated struggle to understand mental disorder in biomedical terms. She shows how the stalling of early twentieth century efforts in this direction allowed Freudians and social scientists to insist, with some justification, that they had better ways of analyzing and fixing minds. But when the Freudians overreached, they drove psychiatry into a state of crisis that a new “biological revolution” was meant to alleviate. Harrington shows how little that biological revolution had to do with breakthroughs in science, and why the field has fallen into a state of crisis in our own time. Mind Fixers makes clear that psychiatry’s waxing and waning biological enthusiasms have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors, including immigration, warfare, grassroots activism, and assumptions about race and gender. Government programs designed to empty the state mental hospitals, acrid rivalries between different factions in the field, industry profit mongering, consumerism, and an uncritical media have all contributed to the story as well. In focusing particularly on the search for the biological roots of schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder, Harrington underscores the high human stakes for the millions of people who have sought medical answers for their mental suffering. This is not just a story about doctors and scientists, but about countless ordinary people and their loved ones. A clear-eyed, evenhanded, and yet passionate tour de force, Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future, both for those who suffer and for those whose job it is to care for them.

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What Is Mental Illness?

McNally drives at one point over and over again; survivors of trauma remember their abuse all too well. He argues that there is next to no evidence linking trauma to amnesia, even in cases of sexual abuse. He dismantles all the major studies, one by one, reinterpreting the results, questioning the assumptions, pointing out the lack of verification and dismissing the underpinning of trauma-amnesia theory.

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Stopping the Noise in Your Head

If you or someone you love suffers from excessive worry, anxiety, panic, OCD, or phobias, you know how crippling it can be. Of course, worry can be an important asset when it forces our attention on problem-solving. But anxious worrying can cause us to unnecessarily focus on a threat, to retreat and avoid, and to seek reassurance and safety—which is no way to foster a life of growth and excitement. In his fifth published book, Dr. Reid Wilson proposes a groundbreaking, paradoxical approach to overcoming anxiety, worry, OCD, panic, and phobias by moving away from comfort, confidence, and security and willingly moving toward uncertainty, distress and discomfort. Through the use of unconventional strategies, readers will learn how to confront anxiety head-on and step forward into the face of threat. Drawing on a range of sources—from firefighters and fitness instructors to Sir Isaac Newton and Muhammad Ali—Stopping the Noise in Your Head: The New Way to Overcome Anxiety and Worry demonstrates the importance of shifting our perspective and stepping toward our challenges in order to regain control of our lives.

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The Mindfulness Solution

Offers advice for achieving happiness and dealing with life’s obstacles through mindfulness, with strategies for cultivating this state of mind and setting up a formal daily practice routine.

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Perfection pending

Perfection pending

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Wrightslaw

Special Education law is confusing to parents, educators, advocates, and most attorneys. Wrightslaw: Special Education Law, 2nd Edition provides a clear roadmap to the laws and how to get better services for all children with disabilities. Wrightslaw: Special Education Law, 2nd Edition is an invaluale resource for parents, advocates, educators, and attorneys. you will refer to this book again and again.

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The Bipolar Relationship

Bipolar is a condition that affects peoples’ relationships with others as much as it affects their own mental state. When one person in a couple is experiencing the extreme highs and lows of a disorder like this one, it’s impossible for their partner not to feel the strain too. Reassuring yet realistic, Dr. Bloch, Dr. Golden, and Nancy Rosenfeld explain what’s normal, what’s not, what might change, and what definitely won’t. They provide information and advice on typical troubling relationship topics, such as: Communication Trust and loyalty Family planning Finances Sex Maintaining a sense of self By understanding the reality of bipolar and what it means for a relationship, couples will relate to each other better today and plan for a successful future together tomorrow.

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Care of the Soul

In this special twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Thomas Moore’s bestselling Care of the Soul, which includes a new introduction by the author, readers are presented with a revolutionary approach to thinking about daily life—everyday activities, events, problems, and creative opportunities—and a therapeutic lifestyle is proposed that focuses on looking more deeply into emotional problems and learning how to sense sacredness in ordinary things. Basing his writing on the ancient model of “care of the soul”—which provided a religious context for viewing the everyday events of life—Moore brings “care of the soul” into the twenty-first century. Promising to deepen and broaden the readers’ perspectives on their life experiences, Moore draws on his own life as a therapist practicing “care of the soul,” as well as his studies of the world’s religions and his work in music and art, to create this inspirational guide that examines the connections between spirituality and the problems of individuals and society. “Thoughtful, eloquent, inspiring.” —San Francisco Chronicle “I soulfully recommend it without reservation.” —John Bradshaw, author of Homecoming

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Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders

Emerging conceptualizations of major emotional disorders emphasize their commonalities rather than their differences, including considerable overlap in disorder phenomenology, a common set of vulnerabilities to development of emotional disorders, and generalization of treatment response across disorders. Current research lends support for a unified transdiagnostic approach to treatment of these disorders that considers these commonalities and is applicable to a range of emotional disorders. Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders, part of the TreatmentsThatWork series of therapist manuals and patient workbooks, is a radical departure from disorder-specific treatments of various emotional disorders, and is designed to be applicable to all anxiety and unipolar mood disorders, as well as other disorders with strong emotional components, such as many somatoform and dissociative disorders. The Unified Protocol (UP) capitalizes on the contributions made by cognitive-behavioral theorists by distilling and incorporating the common principles of CBT present in all evidenced based protocols for specific emotional disorders, as well as drawing on the field of emotion science for insights into deficits in emotion regulation. The UP contains seven modules and focuses on four core strategies: becoming mindfully aware of emotional experience; reappraising rigid emotion laden attributions; identifying and preventing behavioral and emotional avoidance; and facilatating exposure to both interoceptive and situational cues associated with emotional experiences. Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders will be an essential resource for all therapists and psychiatrists who implement CBT strategies, as well as any clinician treating anxiety and depressive disorders.

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Social Anxiety and Phobia in Adolescents

This volume brings together research into diverse aspects of social anxiety and its clinical form, social phobia, in adolescents. Development of the condition, clinical manifestations and treatment strategies are all addressed, with emphasis on ways in which adolescent development and context are reflected in the manifestation and treatment of symptoms. The book is divided into three parts that review epidemiological, neurobiological and sociopsychological research on vulnerability factors, examine the phenomenology and assessment of social anxiety and phobia in different developmental contexts and discuss evidence-based prevention and treatment options for adolescent social anxiety and phobia. Social Anxiety and Phobia in Adolescents will be informative and interesting for all child and adolescent psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists as well as for school psychologists and counsellors.

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