Back To Normal

A veteran clinical psychologist exposes why doctors, teachers, and parents incorrectly diagnose healthy American children with serious psychiatric conditions. In recent years there has been an alarming rise in the number of American children and youth assigned a mental health diagnosis. Current data from the Centers for Disease Control reveal a 41 percent increase in rates of ADHD diagnoses over the past decade and a forty-fold spike in bipolar disorder diagnoses. Similarly, diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, once considered, has increased by 78 percent since 2002. Dr. Enrico Gnaulati, a clinical psychologist specializing in childhood and adolescent therapy and assessment, has witnessed firsthand the push to diagnose these disorders in youngsters. Drawing both on his own clinical experience and on cutting-edge research, with Back to Normal he has written the definitive account of why our kids are being dramatically overdiagnosed—and how parents and professionals can distinguish between true psychiatric disorders and normal childhood reactions to stressful life situations. Gnaulati begins with the complex web of factors that have led to our current crisis. These include questionable education and training practices that cloud mental health professionals’ ability to distinguish normal from abnormal behavior in children, monetary incentives favoring prescriptions, check-list diagnosing, and high-stakes testing in schools. We’ve also developed an increasingly casual attitude about labeling kids and putting them on psychiatric drugs. So how do we differentiate between a child with, say, Asperger’s syndrome and a child who is simply introverted, brainy, and single-minded? As Gnaulati notes, many of the symptoms associated with these disorders are similar to everyday childhood behaviors. In the second half of the book Gnaulati tells detailed stories of wrongly diagnosed kids, providing parents and others with information about the developmental, temperamental, and environmentally driven symptoms that to a casual or untrained eye can mimic a psychiatric disorder. These stories also reveal how nonmedical interventions, whether in the therapist’s office or through changes made at home, can help children. Back to Normal reminds us of the normalcy of children’s seemingly abnormal behavior. It will give parents of struggling children hope, perspective, and direction. And it will make everyone who deals with children question the changes in our society that have contributed to the astonishing increase in childhood psychiatric diagnoses.

This book will instruct your mind, stir your heart, and challenge your will regarding faith for revival. Learn what revival is and the biblical responsibility we have in seeking revival. If your heart burns with a passion for revival, Back to Normal will fan that flame.

If you have lost a loved one, this is the book to read.

3rd updated edition. Pages 154. Illustrated with 30 freely reproducible mini-posters On January 27, the European Center for Disease Control defined the risk that Covid-19 could reach Europe as "moderate". Today, two months later, the virus has practically invaded all continents. In the new edition this book has been heavily updated, but the initial premise remains valid. There is a big need for information. Only the knowledge of a danger can help to overcome it. Often, however, information reaches us fragmented, full of incomprehensible technical terminologies or distorted by the disinformers who infest the web. Discrepancies in opinions among scientists increase confusion. This book was written to be understood. The author is an expert communicator in scientific subjects. He clearly presents a great deal of advice and recommendations relating to prevention along the lines of the WHO and ECDC. Furthermore, the book clarifies many controversial aspects such as the possibility of contagion from objects, and the possibility of infecting or being infected by pets. Considering the spread of the virus, the book proposes new topics of great relevance. When will this pandemic end? But above all, "after" what will happen? What will be the consequences in terms of social relationships? What will the economic consequences be? There is one question that includes all the others. When will we go back to normal? There is only one possible answer. We will never go back to normal. When the tsunami has passed, nothing will be as before. We are experiencing the prelude to a new social organization.

BACK TO NORMAL, set in the Eastern Sierra, introduces the reader to Sue Beauchamp whose lie of twenty years is exposed the night her daughter, Michelle, is injured in an accident. To save Michelles life, Sue contacts the biological father, John Sadek, a neighbor, for a transfusion. With her secret exposed, Sues life unravels. Her husband, Chris, leaves and takes his sons with him. John wants a relationship with a child hes never been allowed to know, and when Michelle discovers the truth, she runs away. As Sue attempts to save her own life, BACK TO NORMAL becomes a meditation on truth and lies and the gray area of a love lived in between.

A piercing and scientifically grounded look at the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic and how it will change the way we live—"excellent and timely." (The New Yorker) Apollo's Arrow offers a riveting account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic as it swept through American society in 2020, and of how the recovery will unfold in the coming years. Drawing on momentous (yet dimly remembered) historical epidemics, contemporary analyses, and cutting-edge research from a range of scientific disciplines, bestselling author, physician, sociologist, and public health expert Nicholas A. Christakis explores what it means to live in a time of plague—an experience that is paradoxically uncommon to the vast majority of humans who are alive, yet deeply fundamental to our species. Unleashing new divisions in our society as well as opportunities for cooperation, this 21st-century pandemic has upended our lives in ways that will test, but not vanquish, our already frayed collective culture. Featuring new, provocative arguments and vivid examples ranging across medicine, history, sociology, epidemiology, data science, and genetics, Apollo's Arrow envisions what happens when the great force of a deadly germ meets the enduring reality of our evolved social nature.

Life is looking up for Xavier. Things are good with Jennie, his baseball coach believes in him, he's earned the role of closer, and his dad's coming home after serving ten years. But making up for lost time with his dad doesn't go as Xavier had hoped. It seems his dad's always angry with him. Or drinking. Or out. Or lecturing Xavier on what it means to be a man. When the tension at home builds, Xavier's own hot temper flares, threatening to send him down the same path as his father. Xavier is determined to make a different life. Can he figure out how to control his actions to keep his baseball dreams alive?

Newly illustrated and available for the first time in years, a haunting novella from the uncannily imaginative author of the national bestsellers Swamplandia! and Orange World: the story of a deadly insomnia epidemic and the lengths one woman will go to to fight it. Trish Edgewater is the Slumber Corps' top recruiter. On the phone, at a specially organized Sleep Drive, even in a supermarket parking lot: Trish can get even the most reluctant healthy dreamer to donate sleep to an insomniac in crisis--one of hundreds of thousands of people who have totally lost the ability to sleep. Trish cries, she shakes, she shows potential donors a picture of her deceased sister, Dori: one of the first victims of the lethal insomnia plague that has swept the globe. Run by the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers, the Slumber Corps is at the forefront of the fight against this deadly new disease. But when Trish is confronted by "Baby A," the first universal sleep donor, and the mysterious "Donor Y," whose horrific infectious nightmares are threatening to sweep through the precious sleep supply, her faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter. Fully illustrated with dreamy evocations of Russell's singular imagination and featuring a brand-new "Nightmare Appendix," Sleep Donation will keep readers up long into the night and long after haunt their dreams.