Download or read book Blaming the Brain written by Elliot Valenstein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Blaming the Brain Elliott Valenstein exposes the many weaknesses inherent in the scientific arguments supporting the widely accepted theory that biochemical imbalances are the main cause of mental illness. He lays bare the commercial motives of drug companies and their huge stake in expanding their markets. This provocative book will force patients, practitioners, and prescribers alike to rethink the causes of mental illness and the methods by which we treat it.
Download or read book Blaming the Brain written by Elliot S. Valenstein and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eminent neuroscientist challenges the conventional wisdom that mental illness is biochemical--striking at the heart of our "Prozac Nation", he argues that we are medicating ourselves unnecessarily.
Download or read book Blaming the Brain written by Elliot S. Valenstein and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-09-03 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.
Download or read book Blame It on the Brain written by Edward T. Welch and published by New Growth Press. This book was released on 2012-01-30 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever been surprised at how some people have accused their brain, making it responsible for some of their bad behavior? As human problems seem to get both deeper and more widespread, people are desperate for solutions — and the quicker the better! How wonderful it would be, many think, if the right pill or genetic alteration could ...
Download or read book Blaming the Victim written by William Ryan and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-12-29 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic work that refutes the lies we tell ourselves about race, poverty and the poor. Here are three myths about poverty in America: – Minority children perform poorly in school because they are “culturally deprived.” – African-Americans are handicapped by a family structure that is typically unstable and matriarchal. – Poor people suffer from bad health because of ignorance and lack of interest in proper health care. Blaming the Victim was the first book to identify these truisms as part of the system of denial that even the best-intentioned Americans have constructed around the unpalatable realities of race and class. Originally published in 1970, William Ryan's groundbreaking and exhaustively researched work challenges both liberal and conservative assumptions, serving up a devastating critique of the mindset that causes us to blame the poor for their poverty and the powerless for their powerlessness. More than twenty years later, it is even more meaningful for its diagnosis of the psychic underpinnings of racial and social injustice.
Download or read book Mind Fixers Psychiatry s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness written by Anne Harrington and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book You Are Not Your Brain written by Jeffrey Schwartz MD and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two neuroscience experts explain how their 4-Step Method can help identify negative thoughts and change bad habits for good. A leading neuroplasticity researcher and the coauthor of the groundbreaking books Brain Lock and The Mind and the Brain, Jeffrey M. Schwartz has spent his career studying the human brain. He pioneered the first mindfulness-based treatment program for people suffering from OCD, teaching patients how to achieve long-term relief from their compulsions. Schwartz works with psychiatrist Rebecca Gladding to refine a program that successfully explains how the brain works and why we often feel besieged by overactive brain circuits (i.e. bad habits, social anxieties, etc.) the key to making life changes that you want—to make your brain work for you—is to consciously choose to “starve” these circuits of focused attention, thereby decreasing their influence and strength. You Are Not Your Brain carefully outlines their program, showing readers how to identify negative impulses, channel them through the power of focused attention, and ultimately lead more fulfilling and empowered lives.
Download or read book When Someone You Love Has a Mental Illness written by Rebecca Woolis and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1992-09-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This indispensable book about love and mental health addresses the short-term, daily problems of living with a person with mental illness, as well as long-term planning and care. Of special note are the forty-three “Quick Reference Guides” about such topics as: responding to hallucinations, delusions, violence and anger; helping your loved one comply with treatment plans and medication; deciding if the person should live at home or in a facility; choosing a doctor and dealing with mental health professionals; handling the holidays and family activities; managing stress; helping siblings and adult children with their special concerns. “Ms. Woolis produced a handbook which is both practical and accessible, eminently useful for all of us who have a family member with a serious mental illness.” –E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., author of Surviving Schizophrenia “Rebecca Woolis presents easy-to-follow practical guidelines for coping with the multitude of problems that regularly confront families. In minutes the reader can find helpful suggestions for dealing with any problem that might arise.” –Christopher S. Amenson, Ph.D., Director, Pacific Clinics East
Download or read book Train Your Mind Change Your Brain written by Sharon Begley and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-11-12 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cutting-edge science and the ancient wisdom of Buddhism have come together to reveal that, contrary to popular belief, we have the power to literally change our brains by changing our minds. Recent pioneering experiments in neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to change in response to experience—reveal that the brain is capable of altering its structure and function, and even of generating new neurons, a power we retain well into old age. The brain can adapt, heal, renew itself after trauma, compensate for disabilities, rewire itself to overcome dyslexia, and break cycles of depression and OCD. And as scientists are learning from studies performed on Buddhist monks, it is not only the outside world that can change the brain, so can the mind and, in particular, focused attention through the classic Buddhist practice of mindfulness. With her gift for making science accessible, meaningful, and compelling, science writer Sharon Begley illuminates a profound shift in our understanding of how the brain and the mind interact and takes us to the leading edge of a revolution in what it means to be human. Praise for Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain “There are two great things about this book. One is that it shows us how nothing about our brains is set in stone. The other is that it is written by Sharon Begley, one of the best science writers around. Begley is superb at framing the latest facts within the larger context of the field. This is a terrific book.”—Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers “Excellent . . . elegant and lucid prose . . . an open mind here will be rewarded.”—Discover “A strong dose of hope along with a strong does of science and Buddhist thought.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune
Download or read book Hidden Valley Road written by Robert Kolker and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #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.
Download or read book Grt Desperate Cures written by Elliot S. Valenstein and published by . This book was released on 1986-05-11 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Blaming Mothers written by Linda C. Fentiman and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping explanation of the biases that lead to the blaming of pregnant women and mothers. Are mothers truly a danger to their children’s health? In 2004, a mentally disabled young woman in Utah was charged by prosecutors with murder after she declined to have a Caesarian section and subsequently delivered a stillborn child. In 2010, a pregnant woman who attempted suicide when the baby’s father abandoned her was charged with murder and attempted feticide after the daughter she delivered prematurely died. These are just two of the many cases that portray mothers as the major source of health risk for their children. The American legal system is deeply shaped by unconscious risk perception that distorts core legal principles to punish mothers who “fail to protect” their children. In Blaming Mothers, Professor Fentiman explores how mothers became legal targets. She explains the psychological processes we use to confront tragic events and the unconscious race, class, and gender biases that affect our perceptions and influence the decisions of prosecutors, judges, and jurors. Fentiman examines legal actions taken against pregnant women in the name of “fetal protection” including court ordered C-sections and maintaining brain-dead pregnant women on life support to gestate a fetus, as well as charges brought against mothers who fail to protect their children from an abusive male partner. She considers the claims of physicians and policymakers that refusing to breastfeed is risky to children’s health. And she explores the legal treatment of lead-poisoned children, in which landlords and lead paint manufacturers are not held responsible for exposing children to high levels of lead, while mothers are blamed for their children’s injuries. Blaming Mothers is a powerful call to reexamine who - and what - we consider risky to children’s health. Fentiman offers an important framework for evaluating childhood risk that, rather than scapegoating mothers, provides concrete solutions that promote the health of all of America’s children. Read a piece by Linda Fentiman on shaming and blaming mothers under the law on The Gender Policy Report.
Download or read book Mental Health Inc written by Art Levine and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mental health system in America is hardly the front-burner issue it should be, despite lip service about reform after each new tragic mass killing. Yet every American should care deeply about fixing a system a presidential commission reported was in “shambles.” By some measures, 20 percent of Americans have some sort of mental health condition, including the most vulnerable among us—veterans, children, the elderly, prisoners, the homeless.With Mental Health, Inc., award-winning investigative journalist Art Levine delivers a Shock Doctrine-style exposé of the failures of our out of control, profit-driven mental health system, with a special emphasis on dangerous residential treatment facilities and the failures of the pharmaceutical industry, including the overdrugging of children with antipsychotics and the disastrous maltreatment of veterans with PTSD by the scandal-wracked VA.Levine provides compelling narrative portraits of victims who needlessly died and some mentally ill people who won unexpected victories in their lives by getting smart, personalized help from “pyschosocial” programs that incorporate safe and appropriate prescribing, along with therapy and social support. He contrasts their stories with corrupt Big Pharma executives and researchers who created fraudulent marketing schemes. Levine also tells the dramatic David vs. Goliath stories of a few brave reformers, including Harvard-trained psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Stefan Kruszewski, who has acted as a whistleblower in several major cases, leading to important federal and state settlements; in addition, the book spotlights pioneering clinicians challenging outmoded, drug-and-sedate practices that leave 90 percent of people with serious mental illness too disabled to work.By taking a comprehensive look at mental health abuses and dangerous, ineffective practices as well as pointing toward solutions for creating a system for effective, proven and compassionate care, Art Levine’s essential Mental Health, Inc. is a call to action for politicians and citizens alike—needed now more than ever.
Download or read book Take Charge Now written by William J. Knaus and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2008-04-21 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Comprehensively covers many deadly aspects of blaming-blaming oneself, other people, and external conditions-and does so in an exceptionally clear, readable, and charming manner."-Albert Ellis, Ph.D., President, Albert Ellis Institute for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy "Dr. Knaus provides a clear path away from fault-finding and condemnation to a tolerant, assertive, and fufilling modus vivendi. I heartily recommend it!"-Arnold Lazarus, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Rutgers University Take charge of your life once and for all with this proven program for ending the blame habit "Who's to blame?" Is this your first thought when something goes wrong? Do you find yourself trapped in a web of finger-pointing, criticism, and fault-finding when there's a problem? Or does fear of blame or criticism paralyze you into inaction? Bestselling author and therapist William Knaus shows you how to overcome the self-destructive tendency to blame and achieve a more rewarding and happier life. Here, you'll learn valuable steps to increase your ability to resolve conflicts, improve your self-confidence, and avoid damaging "blame traps" that can frustrate personal and professional fulfillment. Take Charge Now! provides you with the necessary skills to recognize potential blame situations and defuse them with confidence. You'll also learn to build stronger relationships as you discover how to understand other points of view while standing up for your own. Packed with imaginative ideas and thought-provoking exercises, Take Charge Now! presents a vital program for improving your life
Download or read book A Common Struggle written by Patrick Joseph Kennedy and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patrick J. Kennedy, the former congressman and youngest child of Senator Ted Kennedy, opens up about his personal and political battle with mental illness and addiction for the first time. This candid memoir focuses on the years from his 'coming out' about suffering from bipolar disorder and addiction to the present day, and examines his journey toward recovery while reflecting on America's treatment of mental health.
Download or read book The Biology of Desire written by Marc Lewis and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the vivid, true stories of five people who journeyed into and out of addiction, a renowned neuroscientist explains why the "disease model" of addiction is wrong and illuminates the path to recovery. The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing. Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it's supposed to do-seek pleasure and relief-in a world that's not cooperating. As a result, most treatment based on the disease model fails. Lewis shows how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery. This is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.
