March 3rd 2025
Check out 2 bite-sized reviews of books related to mental health.
Evolution of Mental Health Disorders: An Alternative Perspective
July 1st 2014In Angst: Origins of Anxiety and Depression, Dr Jeffrey Kahn offers an alternative perspective on the evolution of common mental health disorders by considering the adaptive nature of symptoms that modern clinicians deem pathological.
Hitler's Children, Other Children, Myself, Ourselves: Legacies of Psychological Trauma
April 22nd 2014Those who have experienced extreme trauma and their descendents have taught us much about resilience, renewal, and redemption-outcomes that are all recalled in this period of the Jewish Passover, Christian Easter, and Holocaust Memorial Week.
Reset Your Inner Clock: The Drug-Free Way to Your Best-Ever Sleep, Mood, and Energy
January 9th 2014A book that may help doctors, as well as their patients, better understand how they tick, literally, in our 24/7 society, and find a balance between difficult temporal demands and somatic and mental health.
Film Review: The Last Interview of Thomas Szasz
October 22nd 2013A documentary film review that compels one to wonder if Szasz’s alleged suicide should be seen as a courageous adherence to the principles by which he lived or a symptom of a pathological avoidance of helplessness. Dr Szasz might reply that either way, it was his choice.
Sports Psychiatry and the Super Bowl Champs
February 9th 2013The team psychiatrist for Super Bowl Champs, the Baltimore Ravens, draws on his own professional career of working with athletes of all ages and levels and provides a comprehensive presentation of the literature in the emerging field of sports psychiatry.
Brain on Fire: An Interview With Susannah Cahalan on Anti–NMDA Receptor Autoimmune Encephalitis
January 24th 2013Both positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia combined with those of a mood disorder led to a psychiatric diagnosis; later, a neurological diagnosis of anti–NMDA receptor autoimmune encephalitis was made.
Silver Linings Sometimes Come in Pill Bottles
November 30th 2012Although a romantic comedy, Silver Linings Playbook does not romanticize mental illness for the patient or for the family. What the film does display though is that a life with mental illness effectively treated can be filled with meaning, happiness, and love.
How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character
October 23rd 2012This book is “essential” reading for psychiatrists to familiarize themselves with this work because the author demonstrates that the application of our principal treatments offers the best hope for the education of our nation’s children.
Eliciting the Phenomenon of Schizophrenia From an Autobiographical Narrative
August 28th 2012In spite of a chronic mental illness (schizophrenia)and a psyche that increasingly blurred the boundaries between fantasy and reality, this lawyer and professor graduated from Vanderbilt with a perfect academic record.
Dr Charlie Maher on the Major League Mind
April 27th 2012Here, a psychiatrist interviews Charlie Maher, PsyD, CC-AASP, author of The Complete Mental Game of Baseball: Taking Charge of the Process On and Off the Field. A licensed psychologist, Dr. Maher is Professor Emeritus of Applied Psychology at Rutgers University, and serves as the Director of Psychological Services for the Cleveland Indians.
Shrink Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work
March 19th 2012Structured around fictional case vignettes, this book presents the different pathways through which one enters the mental health system. Patients can better judge whether they are being offered the optimal treatment modality and can more effectively assess the stylistic match between themselves and their therapist.
History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life
February 10th 2012Mostly prose with effective inclusion of poetry, author Jill Bialosky adds an important survivor’s perspective in her book of her sister's suicide. To clinicians in particular, the book may serve as a window into the psychic lives of those left behind following a tragic end.