Film and Book Reviews

The most scorching inditement of racism yet in film. Warning: spoilers.

A look at therapist Esther Perel’s podcast on couples therapy, Where Should We Begin?

Since so much has already been written about the opioid epidemic, it is reasonable to wonder whether we need another book about this phenomenon? Experts make the case for why we need more information-and urgently.

Gerda Saunders, an emerita professor who was diagnosed with vascular dementia at age 60, explores the meaning of progressive cognitive impairment in relationships and life.

The typical trials of an teen working to understand sex and intimacy is compromised by an inappropriate power dynamic in this film, according to the authors.

In this novel, we join New York consultation-liaison psychiatrist Dr Millard Salter for what he intends to be his final day on earth.

In this podcast, author Mark Lukach shares his experiences as the loved one of someone with new onset symptoms of mania, depression, suicidality, and psychosis.

The release of the book described here comes amid a rising understanding that although we are 60 years into the antipsychotic era, these medications only partly help people with schizophrenia.

The game looks disarmingly simple. In fact, it’s alarmingly complex.

The sequel probes the big questions without flinging them in the viewer’s face. How does memory articulate with one’s sense of origin and purpose-and, above all, of death?

A review of the video game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and implications for psychiatry.

While ostensibly The Butterfly Effect tells the story behind the wide availability of free internet pornography, the psychiatrist listener will quickly appreciate that this is only the beginning of the story.

The media has tremendous power in delivering messages to the public about mental illness. This year, the media got it wrong.

A selection of noteworthy books to add to your reading list. Can you think of others?

An inside account of what many of our service men and women endure in order to serve their country.

King is singularly adept at capturing the vicissitudes, mores, and speech of pre-teenagers (particularly boys) throughout his writing-most notably in one of his longest novels, IT.

What one brings to the table from one’s own life may figure prominently -and poignantly -in one’s response to a film score.

A psychiatrist recounts her harrowing experiences at both Bellevue Hospital and one of the most notorious correctional systems in the United States.

In Dr. Andrew Farah’s new biography of Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway’s Brain, he details the neuropsychiatric demise of a great literary mind.

The noted Israeli author's latest book is set in a 1990s second-string comedy club.

How might a better understanding of the mind enhance someone’s life and optimize a clinical encounter?

The author's enthusiasm and love for his work shines through in every page of this new book.

We have criminalized mental health problems-a barbaric throwback to the dismal conditions before the Enlightenment.

If you haven’t seen the series or heard media coverage about it, the 13 reasons are a series of 13 audiotapes made by the character, Hannah Baker, to be listened to by the 13 people she felt in some way contributed to her decision to kill herself.

In Get Out, director/writer Justin Peele’s provocative debut, the bodies snatched are African American (mostly robust males); the cannibals of consciousness are white residents of an affluent Baltimore suburb, where the living is easy and the politics fashionably progressive.

Sometimes it just doesn't pay to fight.

People with mood disorders (and those who care about them) are likely to experience a healing reconsideration of their own experiences as they read this book.

Westworld-the HBO pitiless purgatory where everything goes worng!

Here's a review of a book about involuntary psychiatric commitment-- a major source of controversy when the public tries to understand who psychiatrists are and what we do.

As our understanding of the brain and new technologies have rapidly evolved, such an extensive text on psychiatric ethics is clearly timely.