Download or read book The Locked Ward written by Dennis O'Donnell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-01-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary account of life behind the locked doors of a secure psychiatric ward from a nurse who worked there for seven years. Dennis O'Donnell started work as an orderly in the Intensive Psychiatric Care Unit of a large hospital in Scotland in 2000. In his daily life he encountered fear, violence and despair but also a considerable amount of care and compassion. Recounting the stories of the patients he worked with, and those of his colleagues on the ward, here he examines major mental health conditions, methods of treatment - medication, how religion, sex, wealth, health and drugs can bear influence on mental health, the prevailing attitudes to psychiatric illness, the authorities, the professionals & society. What emerges is a document of humanity and humour, a remarkable memoir that sheds light on a world that still remains largely unknown. 'This is a superb study of people whose minds have gone wrong, and the art of caring for them' Evening Standard

Download or read book Ins and Outs of a Locked Ward written by Kevin O'Hara and published by . This book was released on with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Ins and Outs of a Locked Ward My 30 Years as a Psychiatric Nurse written by Kevin O'Hara and published by . This book was released on 2022-05 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Collected Schizophrenias written by Esmé Weijun Wang and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Dazzling ... in her kaleidoscopic essays, memoir has been shattered into sliding and overlapping pieces ... mind-expanding' The New York Times Book Review Esmé Weijun Wang was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2013, although the hallucinations and psychotic episodes had started years before that. In the midst of a high functioning life at Yale, Stanford and the literary world, she would find herself floored by an overwhelming terror that 'spread like blood', or convinced that she was dead, or that her friends were robots, or spiders were eating holes in her brain. What happens when your whole conception of yourself is turned upside down? When you're aware of what is occurring to you, but unable to do anything about it? Written with immediacy and unflinching honesty, this visceral and moving book is Wang's story, as she steps both inside and outside of her condition to bring it to light. Following her own diagnosis and the many manifestations of schizophrenia in her life, she ranges over everything from how we label mental illness to her own use of fashion and make-up to present herself as high-functioning, from the failures of the higher education system to how factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease compounded her experiences. Wang's analytical, intelligent eye, honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with haunting personal narrative. The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core and provides unique insight into a condition long misdiagnosed and much misunderstood.

Download or read book The Finest Traditions of My Calling written by Abraham M. Nussbaum and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Patients and doctors alike are keenly aware that the medical world is in the midst of great change. We live in an era of continuous healthcare reforms, many of which focus on high volume, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. This compelling, thoughtful book is the response of a practicing physician who explains how population-based reforms are diminishing the relationship between doctor and patients, to the detriment of both. As an antidote to stubbornly held traditions, Dr. Abraham M. Nussbaum suggests ways that doctors and patients can learn what it means to be ill and to seek medical assistance. Drawing on personal stories, validated studies, and neglected history, the author develops a series of metaphors to explore a doctor's role in different healthcare reform scenarios: scientist, technician, author, gardener, teacher, servant, and witness. Each role shapes what physicians see when they encounter a patient. Dr. Nussbaum cautions that true healthcare reform can happen only when those who practice medicine can see, and be seen by, their patients as fellow creatures. His memoir makes a hopeful appeal for change, and his insights reveal the direction that change must take."--Jacket flap.

Download or read book Ward 81 written by Mary Ellen Mark and published by Damiani Limited. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belief in the coming of a Messiah poses a genuine dilemma. From a Jewish perspective, the historical record is overwhelmingly against it. If, despite all the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people, no legitimate Messiah has come forward, has the belief not been shown to be groundless? Yet for all the problems associated with messianism, the historical record also shows it is an idea with enormous staying power. The prayer book mentions it on page after page. The great Jewish philosophers all wrote about it. Secular thinkers in the twentieth century returned to it and reformulated it. And victims of the Holocaust invoked it in the last few minutes of their life. This book examines the staying power of messianism and formulates it in a way that retains its redemptive force without succumbing to mythology.

Download or read book Gracefully Insane written by Alex Beam and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2009-07-21 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Its landscaped ground, chosen by Frederick Law Olmsted and dotted with Tudor mansions, could belong to a New England prep school. There are no fences, no guards, no locked gates. But McLean Hospital is a mental institution-one of the most famous, most elite, and once most luxurious in America. McLean "alumni" include Olmsted himself, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor and Ray Charles, as well as (more secretly) other notables from among the rich and famous. In its "golden age," McLean provided as genteel an environment for the treatment of mental illness as one could imagine. But the golden age is over, and a downsized, downscale McLean-despite its affiliation with Harvard University-is struggling to stay afloat. Gracefully Insane, by Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, is a fascinating and emotional biography of McLean Hospital from its founding in 1817 through today. It is filled with stories about patients and doctors: the Ralph Waldo Emerson prot'g' whose brilliance disappeared along with his madness; Anne Sexton's poetry seminar, and many more. The story of McLean is also the story of the hopes and failures of psychology and psychotherapy; of the evolution of attitudes about mental illness, of approaches to treatment, and of the economic pressures that are making McLean-and other institutions like it-relics of a bygone age. This is a compelling and often oddly poignant reading for fans of books like Plath's The Bell Jar and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted (both inspired by their author's stays at McLean) and for anyone interested in the history of medicine or psychotherapy, or the social history of New England.

Download or read book Psychward written by Stephen B. Seager and published by Berkley. This book was released on 1992 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting true story of an aspiring psychiatrist's year of discovery, frustration, and triumph, this shockingly candid memoir is a real-life One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Emotionally charged --Kirkus.

Download or read book The Ghost Garden written by Susan Doherty and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A compelling act of connection, leavened with humour, clear-eyed yet packed with hope." —Ann-Marie MacDonald A rare work of narrative non-fiction that illuminates a world most of us try not to see: the daily lives of the severely mentally ill, who are medicated, marginalized, locked away and shunned. Susan Doherty's groundbreaking book brings us a population of lost souls, ill-served by society, feared, shunted from locked wards to rooming houses to the streets to jail and back again. For the past 10 years, many who have cycled in and out of the locked wards of the Douglas Institute in Montreal found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the wards and then accompanies her friends out into the world. With their full cooperation, she brings us intimate stories that challenge our views of people with mental illness. Through "Caroline Evans," a woman in her early sixties whom Susan has known since she was a bright, sunny school girl, we experience living with schizophrenia, such as when Caroline was convinced she could save her roommate from the devil by pouring boiling water into her ear... She has been through it all, including having to navigate an indifferent justice system that is incapable of serving the severely ill. Susan interleaves Caroline's story with vignettes about her other friends—stories that reveal their hopes, circumstances, personalities, humanity. Susan found that if she can hang in through the first 10-15 minutes of every coffee date with someone in the grip of psychosis, true communication results. Their "madness" is not otherworldly: instead it tells us something about how they're surviving their lives and what they've been through. The Ghost Garden carries a cargo of compassion and empathy that motivates us to re-examine our understanding of justice, society and humanity.

Download or read book So Called Normal written by Mark Henick and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vital and triumphant story of perseverance and recovery by one of Canada’s foremost advocates for mental health When Mark Henick was a teenager in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, he was overwhelmed by depression and anxiety that led to a series of increasingly dangerous suicide attempts. One night, he climbed onto a bridge over an overpass and stood in the wind, clinging to a girder. Someone shouted, “Jump, you coward!” Another man, a stranger in a brown coat, talked to him quietly, calmly and with deep empathy. Just as Henick’s feet touched open air, the man in the brown coat encircled his chest and pulled him to safety. This near-death experience changed Henick’s life forever. So-Called Normal is Henick’s memoir about growing up in a broken home and the events that led to that fateful night on the bridge. It is a vivid and personal account of the mental health challenges he experienced in childhood and his subsequent journey toward healing and recovery.

Download or read book Psych Ward Zombies written by James Novus and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-08-08 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The patients of Eldemere Psychiatric Hospital are turning into zombies, and the hospital's poorly designed security system has trapped everyone inside. A group of unlikely heroes must rely on their wits, luck, and at least one straitjacket to survive until help can arrive the following day. A dwarf psychiatrist, an heiress nurse, and a professional wrestler unite to save the hospital's juvenile patients from the raging horde of ghouls. Their quest will bring them face to face with a legion of undead patients, zombified psychiatrists, deranged administrators, and one fiendishly handsome serial killer. Approximately 52,000 words. Genre is humor/adventure/horror.

Download or read book Only for a Fortnight written by Sue Read and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2012 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intensely moving, frequently shocking account of a child's life in an adult mental hospital.

Download or read book My Lovely Wife written by Mark Lukach and published by Bluebird. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark and Giulia's life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well-adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that she was the devil and that her loved ones were not safe. All she wanted was to die. Eventually, Giulia fully recovered, and the couple had a son. But, soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended. A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Breathtaking in its candor, radiant with compassion, and written with dazzling lyricism, Lukach's is an intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife's mental illness, anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers' faith in the power of love.

Download or read book Rabbit Hole written by Mark Billingham and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping standalone thriller from the “first-rate British crime writer” and internationally bestselling author of the Tom Thorne novels (The Washington Post). Alice Armitage is a police officer. Or she was. Or perhaps she just imagines she was. Whatever the truth is, following a debilitating bout of PTSD, self-medication with drink and drugs, and a psychotic breakdown, Alice is now a long-term patient in an acute psychiatric ward. When one of her fellow patients is murdered, Alice becomes convinced that she has identified the killer and that she can catch them. Ignored by the police, she begins her own investigation. But when her prime suspect becomes the second victim, Alice’s life begins to unravel still further as she realizes that she cannot trust anyone, least of all herself. Praise for Mark Billingham and the Tom Thorne novels “Morse, Rebus, and now Thorne. The next superstar detective is already with us―don’t miss him.” —Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series “Billingham is a world-class writer and Tom Thorne is a wonderful creation. Rush to read these books.” —Karin Slaughter, international bestselling author “With each of his books, Mark Billingham gets better and better. These are stories and characters you don’t want to leave.” —Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch series “Mark Billingham has brought a rare and welcome blend of humanity, dimension, and excitement to the genre.” —George Pelecanos, writer and producer of The Wire “Tom Thorne is one of the most credible and engaging heroes in contemporary crime fiction.” —Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus novels and The Travelling Companion

Download or read book Last of the Donkey Pilgrims written by Kevin O'Hara and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-02 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vietnam veteran and psychiatric nurse returns to Ireland, his mother's homeland, to discover his family roots and answers to his questions about himself, embarking on a whimsical odyssey around Ireland in a donkey cart on a journey of the soul.

Download or read book Unspeakable written by Susan Burch and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007-11-19 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent seventy-six years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including six in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life. Using legal records, institutional files, and extensive oral history interviews--some conducted in sign language--Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner piece together the story of a deaf man accused in 1925 of attempted rape, found insane at a lunacy hearing, committed to the criminal ward of the State Hospital for the Colored Insane, castrated, forced to labor for the institution, and held at the hospital for more than seven decades. Junius Wilson's life was shaped by some of the major developments of twentieth-century America: Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement, deinstitutionalization, the rise of professional social work, and the emergence of the deaf and disability rights movements. In addition to offering a bottom-up history of life in a segregated mental institution, Burch and Joyner's work also enriches the traditional interpretation of Jim Crow by highlighting the complicated intersections of race and disability as well as of community and language. This moving study expands the boundaries of what biography can and should be. There is much to learn and remember about Junius Wilson--and the countless others who have lived unspeakable histories.

Download or read book Falling Into the Fire written by Christine Montross and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Falling Into the Fire is psychiatrist Christine Montross’s thoughtful investigation of the gripping patient encounters that have challenged and deepened her practice. The majority of the patients Montross treats in Falling Into the Fire are seen in the locked inpatient wards of a psychiatric hospital; all are in moments of profound crisis. We meet a young woman who habitually commits self-injury, having ingested light bulbs, a box of nails, and a steak knife, among other objects. Her repeated visits to the hospital incite the frustration of the staff, leading Montross to examine how emotion can interfere with proper care. A recent college graduate, dressed in a tunic and declaring that love emanates from everything around him, is brought to the ER by his concerned girlfriend. Is it ecstasy or psychosis? What legal ability do doctors have to hospitalize—and sometimes medicate—a patient against his will? A new mother is admitted with incessant visions of harming her child. Is she psychotic and a danger or does she suffer from obsessive thoughts? Her course of treatment—and her child’s future—depends upon whether she receives the correct diagnosis. Each case study presents its own line of inquiry, leading Montross to seek relevant psychiatric knowledge from diverse sources. A doctor of uncommon curiosity and compassion, Montross discovers lessons in medieval dancing plagues, in leading forensic and neurological research, and in moments from her own life. Beautifully written, deeply felt, Falling Into the Fire brings us inside the doctor’s mind, illuminating the grave human costs of mental illness as well as the challenges of diagnosis and treatment. Throughout, Montross confronts the larger question of psychiatry: What is to be done when a patient’s experiences cannot be accounted for, or helped, by what contemporary medicine knows about the brain? When all else fails, Montross finds, what remains is the capacity to abide, to sit with the desperate in their darkest moments. At once rigorous and meditative, Falling Into the Fire is an intimate portrait of psychiatry, allowing the reader to witness the humanity of the practice and the enduring mysteries of the mind