Download or read book Ordinarily Well written by Peter D. Kramer and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do antidepressants work, or are they glorified dummy pills? How can we tell? In Ordinarily Well, the celebrated psychiatrist and author Peter D. Kramer examines the growing controversy about the popular medications. A practicing doctor who trained as a psychotherapist and worked with pioneers in psychopharmacology, Kramer combines moving accounts of his patients’ dilemmas with an eye-opening history of drug research to cast antidepressants in a new light. Kramer homes in on the moment of clinical decision making: Prescribe or not? What evidence should doctors bring to bear? Using the wide range of reference that readers have come to expect in his books, he traces and critiques the growth of skepticism toward antidepressants. He examines industry-sponsored research, highlighting its shortcomings. He unpacks the “inside baseball” of psychiatry—statistics—and shows how findings can be skewed toward desired conclusions. Kramer never loses sight of patients. He writes with empathy about his clinical encounters over decades as he weighed treatments, analyzed trial results, and observed medications’ influence on his patients’ symptoms, behavior, careers, families, and quality of life. He updates his prior writing about the nature of depression as a destructive illness and the effect of antidepressants on traits like low self-worth. Crucially, he shows how antidepressants act in practice: less often as miracle cures than as useful, and welcome, tools for helping troubled people achieve an underrated goal—becoming ordinarily well.

Download or read book Ordinarily Well written by Peter D. Kramer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An eminent psychologist and writer discusses the value of antidepressant drugs"--

Download or read book Listening to Prozac written by Peter D. Kramer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1997-09-01 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling examination of the revolutionary antidepressant, with a new introduction and afterword reflecting on Prozac’s legacy and the latest medical research “Peter Kramer is an analyst of exceptional sensitivity and insight. To read his prose on virtually any subject is to be provoked, enthralled, illuminated.” —Joyce Carol Oates When antidepressants like Prozac first became available, Peter D. Kramer prescribed them, only to hear patients say that on medication, they felt different—less ill at ease, more like the person they had always imagined themselves to be. Referencing disciplines from cellular biology to animal ethology, Dr. Kramer worked to explain these reports. The result was Listening to Prozac, a revolutionary book that offered new perspectives on antidepressants, mood disorders, and our understanding of the self—and that became an instant national and international bestseller. In this thirtieth anniversary edition, Dr. Kramer looks back at the influence of his groundbreaking book, traces progress in the relevant sciences, follows trends in the use and public understanding of antidepressants, and assesses potential breakthroughs in the treatment of depression. The new introduction and afterword reinforce and reinvigorate a book that the New York Times called “originally insightful” and “intelligent and informative,” a window on a medicine that is “telling us new things about the chemistry of human character.”

Download or read book Should You Leave written by Peter D. Kramer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his phenomenal bestseller Listening to Prozac, Peter Kramer explored the makeup of the modern self. Now, in his superbly written new book, he focuses his intelligent, compassionate eye on the complexities of partnerships and why intimacy is so difficult for us. With the art of a novelist and the skill of a brilliant psychiatrist, Kramer addresses advice seekers struggling with such complex questions as: How do we choose our partners? How well do we know them? How do mood states affect our assessment of them and theirs of us? What does “working on a relationship” truly entail? When should we try to improve a relationship, and when should we leave? Equally at home with Shakespeare, Emerson, and Kierkegaard as it is with Freud and Jung, Should You Leave? is a literary tour de force from a uniquely insightful observer and a profoundly resonant and helpful approach to resolving dilemmas of the heart.

Download or read book Against Depression written by Peter D. Kramer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-07-25 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Deeply felt... [Kramer's] book is a polemic against a society that accepts depression as a fact of life." —O, The Oprah Magazine A profound look at depression by the author of The New York Times Bestseller, Listening to Prozac In his landmark bestseller Listening to Prozac, Peter Kramer revolutionized the way we think about antidepressants and the culture in which they are so widely used. Now Kramer offers a frank and unflinching look at the condition those medications treat: depression. Definitively refuting our notions of "heroic melancholy," he walks readers through groundbreaking new research—studies that confirm depression's status as a devastating disease and suggest pathways toward resilience. Thought-provoking and enlightening, Against Depression provides a bold revision of our understanding of mood disorder and promises hope to the millions who suffer from it.

Download or read book The Exceptionally Extraordinarily Ordinary First Day of School written by Albert Lorenz and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the first day back to school from summer vacation, John is the new kid. When the librarian asks him if the school is any different from his last one, he begins a wildly imaginative story about what it was like. What follows are hilarious scenarios—his old school bus was a safari jeep pulled by wild creatures, the school was a castle, and the lunch menu included worms! His imagination wins him the attention and awe of his librarian and peers, setting the tone for a compelling story about conquering the fears of being a new kid, as well as the first-day jitters that many children experience. Albert Lorenz’s over-the-top illustrations, reminiscent of the work of MAD magazine’s early artists, bring the story to life. Speech bubbles and side panels make reference to and define objects in the art (in the most humorous and irreverent way).

Download or read book Obit written by Jim Sheeler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-04-29 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like Everything I Really Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten, or Tuesdays with Morrie, Obit is a wise and deeply moving book that illuminates the human condition. For ten years, Jim Sheeler has scoured Colorado looking for subjects whose stories he will tell for the last time. Most are unknowns, but that doesn't mean they're nobodies. Their obituaries are sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, and chock full of life lessons as taught by the people we all pass on the street every day. And thanks to Sheeler's brilliant and compassionate prose, it's not too late to meet them.

Download or read book Curious Behavior written by Robert R. Provine and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-31 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Provine boldly goes where other scientists seldom tread—in search of hiccups, coughs, yawns, sneezes, and other lowly, undignified human behaviors. Upon investigation, these instinctive acts bear the imprint of our evolutionary origins and can be uniquely valuable tools for understanding how the human brain works and what makes us different from other species. Many activities showcased in Curious Behavior are contagious, but none surpasses yawning in this regard—just reading the word can make one succumb. Though we often take it as a sign of sleepiness or boredom, yawning holds clues to the development of our sociality and ability to empathize with others. Its inescapable transmission reminds us that we are sometimes unaware, neurologically programmed beasts of the herd. Other neglected behaviors yield similar revelations. Tickling, we learn, may be the key to programming personhood into robots. Coughing comes in musical, medical, and social varieties. Farting and belching have import for the evolution of human speech. And prenatal behavior is offered as the strangest exhibit of all, defying postnatal logic in every way. Our earthiest acts define Homo sapiens as much as language, bipedalism, tool use, and other more studied characteristics. As Provine guides us through peculiarities right under our noses, he beckons us to follow with self-experiments: tickling our own feet, keeping a log of when we laugh, and attempting to suppress yawns and sneezes. Such humble investigations provide fodder for grade school science projects as well as doctoral dissertations. Small Science can yield big rewards.

Download or read book Ordinary Greatness written by Pamela Bilbrey and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-06-22 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to leverage ordinary greatness to create a competitive advantage for any organization Enabling readers to maximize leadership skills, no matter the venue, Ordinary Greatness helps those who are in leadership positions to optimize their organizational results by improving their ability to recognize and create greatness in those who they lead. Featuring real-world stories, this practical guide helps readers relate to both famous and everyday heroes and shows leaders how to improve their immediate environment. In addition, actionable tips and insights are included to equip business leaders to remove the blinders that keep them from seeing their organization's ordinary greatness. Pamela Bilbrey and Brian Jones are organizational consultants, executive coaches, and international speakers and workshop facilitators

Download or read book The First Cell written by Azra Raza and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the fascinating scholarship of The Emperor of All Maladies and the deeply personal experience of When Breath Becomes Air, a world-class oncologist examines the current state of cancer and its devastating impact on the individuals it affects -- including herself. In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must. A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her own husband's oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is no ordinary book of medicine, but a book of wisdom and grace by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable easier to bear.

Download or read book He Wanted the Moon written by Mimi Baird and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon to be a major motion picture, from Brad Pitt and Tony Kushner A Washington Post Best Book of 2015 A mid-century doctor's raw, unvarnished account of his own descent into madness, and his daughter's attempt to piece his life back together and make sense of her own. Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Dr. Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself. By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized multiple times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged. He later received a lobotomy and died from a consequent seizure, his research incomplete, his achievements unrecognized. Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had worked on throughout his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape. This remarkable document, reflecting periods of both manic exhilaration and clear-headed health, presents a startling portrait of a man who was a uniquely astute observer of his own condition, struggling with a disease for which there was no cure, racing against time to unlock the key to treatment before his illness became impossible to manage. Fifty years after being told her father would forever be “ill” and “away,” Mimi Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. In time her fingers became stained with the lead of the pencil he had used to write his manuscript, as she devoted herself to understanding who he was, why he disappeared, and what legacy she had inherited. The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the reaches of the mind and the redeeming power of a determined heart.

Download or read book Tune It Out written by Jamie Sumner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the acclaimed Roll with It comes a moving novel about a girl with a sensory processing disorder who has to find her own voice after her whole world turns upside down. Lou Montgomery has the voice of an angel, or so her mother tells her and anyone else who will listen. But Lou can only hear the fear in her own voice. She’s never liked crowds or loud noises or even high fives; in fact, she’s terrified of them, which makes her pretty sure there’s something wrong with her. When Lou crashes their pickup on a dark and snowy road, child services separate the mother-daughter duo. Now she has to start all over again at a fancy private school far away from anything she’s ever known. With help from an outgoing new friend, her aunt and uncle, and the school counselor, she begins to see things differently. A sensory processing disorder isn’t something to be ashamed of, and music might just be the thing that saves Lou—and maybe her mom, too.

Download or read book Moments of Engagement written by Peter D. Kramer and published by W W Norton & Company Incorporated. This book was released on 1989 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through fascinating case histories and revealing encounters with patients, Dr. Kramer provides a compassionate, immensely eloquent view of how psychiatry really works. Written by the author of the national bestseller, Listening to Prozac.

Download or read book What Doctors Feel written by Danielle Ofri and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the emotional side of medicine—the shame, fear, anger, anxiety, empathy, and even love that affect patient care Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. 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.

Download or read book Ordinarily Extraordinary written by Patrick P Long and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-22 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Patrick Long's wife, Melanie, suffers a terrifying stroke at the age of 45, a medical battle ensues that threatens to devastate their already cancer-altered lives. As Patrick strives to maintain normal routines for their four young children, he struggles through confrontations with doctors while watching Melanie suffer mysterious episodes that continually impair her speech. Throughout weeks of distressing setbacks, Patrick reflects on their lives, candidly revealing marital clashes, personal trauma, failures, and regrets-along with the recognition of Melanie's indomitable spirit that bolsters him even when cancer's worst consequence takes the fight from them. Determined to set a positive tone for their family, Patrick rejects pity and finds inspiration in the extraordinary community surrounding them, vowing to not just survive, but thrive.

Download or read book Too Much of a Good Thing written by Lee Goldman and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dean of Columbia University's medical school explains why our bodies are out of sync with today's environment and how we can correct this to save our health. Over the past 200 years, human life-expectancy has approximately doubled. Yet we face soaring worldwide rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, mental illness, heart disease, and stroke. In his fascinating new book, Dr. Lee Goldman presents a radical explanation: The key protective traits that once ensured our species' survival are now the leading global causes of illness and death. Our capacity to store food, for example, lures us into overeating, and a clotting system designed to protect us from bleeding to death now directly contributes to heart attacks and strokes. A deeply compelling narrative that puts a new spin on evolutionary biology, Too Much of a Good Thing also provides a roadmap for getting back in sync with the modern world.

Download or read book Twelve Ordinary Men written by John F. MacArthur and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2006-05-08 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You don't have to be perfect to do God's work. Look no further than the twelve disciples, whose many weaknesses are forever preserved throughout the pages of the New Testament. Join bestselling author John MacArthur in Twelve Ordinary Men as he draws principles from Christ's careful, hands-on training of the original disciples for today's modern disciple, you! Jesus chose ordinary men--fishermen, tax collectors, political zealots--and turned their weakness into strength, producing greatness from people who were otherwise unremarkable. The twelve disciples weren't the stained-glass saints we imagine. On the contrary, they were truly human, all too prone to mistakes, misstatements, wrong attitudes, lapses of faith, and bitter failure. Simply put, they were flawed people, just like us. But under Jesus' teaching and touch, they became a force that forever changed the world. MacArthur takes you into the inner circle of the disciples--their selection, their training, their personalities, and their incredible impact. As MacArthur took a closer look at the lives of the twelve disciples, he found himself asking difficult questions along the way, including: Why did Jesus pick each of the twelve disciples? How did Jesus teach them everything he could in just eighteen short months? Can the lessons that Jesus taught the disciples can still influence our faith today? In Twelve Ordinary Men, you'll learn that disciples are living proof that God's strength is made perfect in weakness. As you get to know the men who walked with Jesus, you'll see that if he can accomplish his purposes through them, he can do the same through you.