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The definitive guide to the science of psychedelics--"the perfect intro for anyone curious about psychedelics and MDMA" (Ethan Nadelmann, founder and former executive director, Drug Policy Alliance)--and how they can impact our health by world-renowned, leading authority Professor David Nutt.
 

We are on the cusp of a major revolution in psychiatric medicine and neuroscience. After fifty years of prohibition, criminalization and fear, science is finally showing us that psychedelics are not dangerous or harmful. Instead, when used according to tested, safe and ethical guidelines, they are our most powerful newest treatment of mental health conditions, from depression, PTSD, and OCD to disordered eating and even addiction and chronic pain.



Professor David Nutt, one of the world's leading Neuropsychopharmacologists, has spent 15 years researching this field and it is his most significant body of work to date. In 2018, he co-founded the first academic psychedelic research center - underpinned by his mission to provide evidence-based information for people everywhere. It revived interest in the understanding and use of this drug in its many forms, including MDMA, ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, LSD and ketamine. The results of this have been nothing short of ground-breaking for the future categorization of drugs, but also for what we now know about brain mechanisms and our consciousness.



At a time where there is an enormous amount of noise around the benefits of psychedelics, this book contains the knowledge you need to know about a drug that is about to go mainstream, free from the hot air, direct from the expert.



Are you ready to change your mind?

"A vibrant graphic memoir full of dark humor, Nervosa is an insightful look into the torment of disordered eating that will be a source of comfort to others who struggle with their mental health." --STARRED REVIEW, Foreword Reviews

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder. It is not a phase, a fad, or a choice. It is a debilitating illness, manifested in a distorted relationship with food, but which actually has more to do with issues of control. It is often a puzzle for doctors, therapists, parents, and friends. And so those who suffer from it are belittled, or tragically misunderstood, not only by society but by the healthcare system meant to treat it.

Nervosa is a no-holds-barred, richly textured portrait of one young woman's experience. In her vividly imagined retelling, Hayley Gold lays bare a callous medical system seemingly disinterested in the very patients it is supposed to treat. And traces how her own life was irrevocably damaged by both the system and her own disorder. With brutal honesty and witty sarcastic humor, Gold offers a remarkably candid exploration of the search for hope in the darkness.

An authoritative guide on natural approaches to boost everyday mental wellness and provide extra support when you need it the most.
This mental wellness book helps you manage stressful periods as well as other biological factors that impact your mental wellbeing. You’ll learn how to boost and holistically balance your mental state using natural remedies. 

Neal’s Yard Remedies: Mental Wellness is filled with holistic techniques, herbal remedies, essential oils, foods, exercise, lifestyle strategies, and therapies to empower you. This book offers:  

   • The most comprehensive compendium of natural remedies for mental wellness on the market
   • Chapters on herbal remedies, aromatherapy, foods (including supplements), movement, and alternative therapies
   • A Symptom Checker which you can explore symptoms and access solutions in the book, based on your current need – jitteriness; anxiety attacks; acute stress; grief; low mood, etc
   • Approaches and information endorsed by Neal’s Yard Remedies, world leaders in natural, organic, holistic health.

Learn techniques and mantras for uplifting your mood
 
This beautiful, enlightening book explores how things like the environment, the seasons, hormonal shifts, sleep quality, and gut health can influence your mental health. Delve into how lifestyle choices can inhibit your mental health such as caffeine, alcohol, smoking, pollution, screen time, and isolation from the community.
 
This wellness guide offers uplifting and informed information on why you may experience stress and anxiety, providing you with reassurance and strategies to combat these feelings. Explore the science behind natural remedies and use this book as a reliable resource for advice on mindfulness, yoga, breathing exercises, acupuncture, herbal remedies, and reiki.

Expand your wellness collection

This series of wellness books explore natural, holistic remedies to boost physical and psychological health and help you find the best solutions for yourself! Other titles in this series include Neals Yard Remedies Essential Oils and Neal’s Yard Remedies Complete Wellness.

A bold, expert, and actionable map for the re-invention of America’s broken mental health care system.

“Healing is truly one of the best books ever written about mental illness, and I think I’ve read them all." —Pete Earley, author of Crazy

As director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas Insel was giving a presentation when the father of a boy with schizophrenia yelled from the back of the room, “Our house is on fire and you’re telling me about the chemistry of the paint! What are you doing to put out the fire?” Dr. Insel knew in his heart that the answer was not nearly enough. The gargantuan American mental health industry was not healing millions who were desperately in need. He left his position atop the mental health research world to investigate all that was broken—and what a better path to mental health might look like.
 
In the United States, we have treatments that work, but our system fails at every stage to deliver care well. Even before COVID, mental illness was claiming a life every eleven minutes by suicide. Quality of care varies widely, and much of the field lacks accountability. We focus on drug therapies for symptom reduction rather than on plans for long-term recovery. Care is often unaffordable and unavailable, particularly for those who need it most and are homeless or incarcerated. Where was the justice for the millions of Americans suffering from mental illness? Who was helping their families?
 
But Dr. Insel also found that we do have approaches that work, both in the U.S. and globally. Mental illnesses are medical problems, but he discovers that the cures for the crisis are not just medical, but social. This path to healing, built upon what he calls the three Ps (people, place, and purpose), is more straightforward than we might imagine. Dr. Insel offers a comprehensive plan for our failing system and for families trying to discern the way forward.
 
The fruit of a lifetime of expertise and a global quest for answers, Healing is a hopeful, actionable account and achievable vision for us all in this time of mental health crisis.

* Finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award * Washington Post Notable Book of the Year * People Magazine Best Book of the Year * Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year *

"Extraordinary and courageous . . . No doubt if everyone were to read this book, the world would change."---New York Times Book Review

New York Times-bestselling author Ron Powers offers a searching, richly researched narrative of the social history of mental illness in America paired with the deeply personal story of his two sons' battles with schizophrenia.

From the centuries of torture of "lunatiks" at Bedlam Asylum to the infamous eugenics era to the follies of the anti-psychiatry movement to the current landscape in which too many families struggle alone to manage afflicted love ones, Powers limns our fears and myths about mental illness and the fractured public policies that have resulted.

Braided with that history is the moving story of Powers's beloved son Kevin--spirited, endearing, and gifted--who triumphed even while suffering from schizophrenia until finally he did not, and the story of his courageous surviving son Dean, who is also schizophrenic.

A blend of history, biography, memoir, and current affairs ending with a consideration of where we might go from here, this is a thought-provoking look at a dreaded illness that has long been misunderstood.

For readers of Hidden Valley Road and Patient H.M., an "intimate and compassionate portrait" (Grace M. Cho) of the Genain quadruplets, the harrowing violence they experienced, and its psychological and political consequences.​



In 1954, researchers at the newly formed National Institute of Mental Health set out to study the genetics of schizophrenia. When they got word that four 24-year-old identical quadruplets in Lansing, Michigan, had all been diagnosed with the mental illness, they could hardly believe their ears. Here was incontrovertible proof of hereditary transmission and, thus, a chance to bring international fame to their fledgling institution.



The case of the pseudonymous Genain quadruplets, they soon found, was hardly so straightforward. Contrary to fawning media portrayals of a picture-perfect Christian family, the sisters had endured the stuff of nightmares. Behind closed doors, their parents had taken shocking measures to preserve their innocence while sowing fears of sex and the outside world. In public, the quadruplets were treated as communal property, as townsfolk and members of the press had long ago projected their own paranoid fantasies about the rapidly diversifying American landscape onto the fair-skinned, ribbon-wearing quartet who danced and sang about Christopher Columbus. Even as the sisters' erratic behaviors became impossible to ignore and the NIMH whisked the women off for study, their sterling image did not falter.



Girls and Their Monsters chronicles the extraordinary lives of the quadruplets and the lead psychologist who studied them, asking questions that speak directly to our times: How do delusions come to take root, both in individuals and in nations? Why does society profess to be "saving the children" when it readily exploits them? What are the authoritarian ends of innocence myths? And how do people, particularly those with serious mental illness, go on after enduring the unspeakable? Can the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood help the deeply wounded heal?

Easy, accessible guidance for addressing an essential element to college success: mental health

While being in college can be an exciting time, it can also be a period of uncertainty, anxiety, loneliness, and even depression. The College Student’s Guide to Mental Health is for any college student who wants to understand and maintain mental and emotional health.

Mia Nosanow, a licensed psychologist and college therapist, has drawn upon her more than twenty years of direct experience counseling a diverse college student body to write a comprehensive mental and emotional health manual designed specifically for college students.

Presented in clear, practical language and organized in short chapters, this book breaks down common problems and provides actionable strategies for addressing them. Whether students want to understand challenging emotions, transform negative thoughts, improve relationships, or explore the connection between time management and mental health, these topics and more can be found in this one book — a valuable tool for college students as well as the families and professionals who support them.

From psychotherapist and TikTok personality Dr. Annie Zimmerman comes a toolkit to transform yourself and your relationships, with advice on how to heal past trauma, build sustainable connections, and take ownership of your mental health.

Every day, psychotherapist Dr. Annie Zimmerman meets clients in her private London practice who are struggling with their lives. They're committed to achieving personal growth, making changes--but they're struck at the question stage. They ask her: Why can't I sleep? Why do I keep going back to a bad relationship? Why did I lose my temper? What is wrong with me?

Here's the thing: nothing is wrong with them. It's just that they're asking themselves the wrong questions.

In Your Pocket Therapist, Dr. Zimmerman helps readers delve into their past to identify old, unhelpful patterns and teach them how to unlock the present. The book combines practical tools with anecdotes gleaned from the therapy room, distilling complex psychological concepts with her signature warmth and empathy. Her belief--galvanized by her hundreds of thousands of followers--is that if we learn to understand the roots of our suffering, we can bring about meaningful--and permanent--change in our lives. It comes down to learning how to ask the right questions.

A brilliant, necessary toolkit for those who want to break free from past patterns and embrace a life of abundant self-awareness and connection, Your Pocket Therapist is an absolute must-read in the field of psychology.

A Guardian Best Book of 2021

A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma.

For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma—from the eighteenth century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy.

Nobody’s Normal argues that stigma is a social process that can be explained through cultural history, a process that began the moment we defined mental illness, that we learn from within our communities, and that we ultimately have the power to change. Though the legacies of shame and secrecy are still with us today, Grinker writes that we are at the cusp of ending the marginalization of the mentally ill. In the twenty-first century, mental illnesses are fast becoming a more accepted and visible part of human diversity.

Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Grinker takes readers on an international journey to discover the origins of, and variances in, our cultural response to neurodiversity.

Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately hopeful, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma.

From award-winning journalist Meg Kissinger, a searing memoir of a family besieged by mental illness, as well as an incisive exploration of the systems that failed them and a testament to the love that sustained them.

Growing up in the 1960s in the suburbs of Chicago, Meg Kissinger’s family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. Whether they were spending summer days on the shores of Lake Michigan, barreling down the ski slopes, or navigating the trials of their Catholic school, the Kissingers always knew how to live large and play hard.

But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding—a heavily medicated mother hospitalized for anxiety and depression, a manic father prone to violence, and children in the throes of bipolar disorder and depression, two of whom would take their own lives. Through it all, the Kissingers faced the world with their signature dark humor and the unspoken family rule: never talk about it.

While You Were Out begins as the personal story of one family’s struggles then opens outward, as Kissinger details how childhood tragedy catalyzed a journalism career focused on exposing our country’s flawed mental health care. Combining the intimacy of memoir with the rigor of investigative reporting, the book explores the consequences of shame, the havoc of botched public policy, and the hope offered by new treatment strategies.

Powerful, candid and filled with surprising humor, this is the story of one family’s love and resilience in face of great loss.

How we can use what we’ve learned about the brain to improve our mental health

There are many routes to mental well-being. In this groundbreaking book, neuroscientist Camilla Nord offers a fascinating tour of the scientific developments that are revolutionising the way we think about mental health, showing why and how events—and treatments—can affect people in such different ways.

In The Balanced Brain, Nord explains how our brain constructs our sense of mental health—actively striving to maintain balance in response to our changing circumstances. While a mentally healthy brain deals well with life’s turbulence, poor mental health results when the brain struggles with disruption. But just what is the brain trying to balance? Nord describes the foundations of mental health in the brain—from the neurobiology of pleasure, pain and desire to the role of mood-mediating chemicals like dopamine, serotonin and opioids. She then pivots to interventions, revealing how antidepressants, placebos and even recreational drugs work; how psychotherapy changes brain chemistry; and how the brain and body interact to make us feel physically (as well as mentally) healthy. Along the way, Nord explains how the seemingly small things we use to lift our moods—a piece of chocolate, a walk, a chat with a friend—work on the same pathways in our brains as the latest treatments for mental health disorders.

Understanding the cause of poor mental health is one of the crucial questions of our time. But the answer is unique to each of us, and it requires finding what helps our brains rebalance and thrive. With so many factors at play, there are more possibilities for recovery and resilience than we might think.

Written with authority and compassion, this is the essential resource for individuals and families seeking expert guidance on diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, featuring inspiring, true stories from real people in their own words.

Millions of people in the United States are affected by mental illness every year, and the Covid-19 pandemic only further exposed the shortcomings of the American mental health system. Too many are confused, afraid, and overwhelmed, with many asking themselves the same questions: What does it mean when different doctors give me different diagnoses? What if my insurance won't cover my treatment? Will I ever feel better? Families and friends are often left in the dark about how best to help their loved ones, from dealing with financial and logistical issues, to handling the emotional challenges of loving someone who is suffering.

You Are Not Alone is here to offer help. Written by Dr. Ken Duckworth with the wisdom of a psychiatrist and the vulnerability of a peer, this comprehensive guide centers the poignant lived experiences of over 125 individuals from across the country whose first-person stories illustrate the diversity of mental health journeys. This book also provides

• Practical guidance on dealing with a vast array of mental health conditions and navigating care
• Research-based evidence on what treatments and approaches work
• Insight and advice from renowned clinical experts and practitioners

   

This singular resource--the first book from the National Alliance on Mental Illness--is a powerful reminder that help is here, and you are never alone.

Tired of feeling like shit but can't afford therapy? Finding a good therapist is hard. Finding a good therapist you vibe with-and who won't break the bank-is even harder. In This Book Is Cheaper Than Therapy, seasoned therapist Liz Kelly brings the therapy office to you. So even if money is tight, your insurance doesn't cover therapy, you can't find quality practitioners in your area, or you've been stuck on a therapist's waitlist for months, you can still feel better now. With her cheeky humor, undeniable wit, and perfectly timed f-bombs, Liz has a talent for explaining complex mental health concepts in a way you can understand and can put into practice immediately. And don't worry-at no point in this book will you ever hear the phrase "healing journey," "your truth," or any other over-used therapy platitudes. Instead, you'll learn how to: * Practice real self-care when life feels overwhelming (and no, shopping doesn't count) * Quiet and tame your inner critic (because, let's be honest, you're way too hard on yourself) * Manage all the feels (even the ones you pretend you can ignore) * Set boundaries and master the art of saying no (especially when it's really, really hard) * Maintain healthy relationships and find your people (I promise, they're out there!) * Cope with the pain of grief and loss (even when it feels like it'll never get better) * Prioritize your values to create a more meaningful, kick-ass life (because you deserve it!) Imagine if Tina Fey were your best friend and next-door neighbor... and she also just happened to be an experienced therapist. It is possible to feel better-just take that first step and let Liz be your guide.

The first comprehensive history of "psychiatry's bible"—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Over the past seventy years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies promote. Although the manual is portrayed as an authoritative corpus of psychiatric knowledge, it is a product of intense political conflicts, dissension, and factionalism. The manual results from struggles among psychiatric researchers and clinicians, different mental health professions, and a variety of patient, familial, feminist, gay, and veterans' interest groups. The DSM is fundamentally a social document that both reflects and shapes the professional, economic, and cultural forces associated with its use.

In DSM, Allan V. Horwitz examines how the manual, known colloquially as "psychiatry's bible," has been at the center of thinking about mental health in the United States since its original publication in 1952. The first book to examine its entire history, this volume draws on both archival sources and the literature on modern psychiatry to show how the history of the DSM is more a story of the growing social importance of psychiatric diagnoses than of increasing knowledge about the nature of mental disorder. Despite attempts to replace it, Horwitz argues that the DSM persists because its diagnostic entities are closely intertwined with too many interests that benefit from them.

This comprehensive treatment should appeal to not only specialists but also anyone who is interested in how diagnoses of mental illness have evolved over the past seven decades—from unwanted and often imposed labels to resources that lead to valued mental health treatments and social services.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF GQ's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY • The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

"Reads like a medical detective journey and sheds light on a topic so many of us face: mental illness." —Oprah Winfrey

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.