Mental

When Kay Parley suffered her first mental breakdown in 1948, she thought it was the end of her life. It turned out to be the beginning.

Become your own mental health expert Mental illness is too often portrayed with a sense of despair, as if it’s a life sentence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Virtually everyone improves with help, and most of the help is relatively easy to access. How do we define mental illness? What does a diagnosis mean? What should you ask your doctor before you begin treatment? Are there alternatives to medication? What does the research show actually works? Practitioner and professor of psychiatry Dr Steve Ellen and popular comedian Catherine Deveny combine forces to demystify the world of mental health. Sharing their personal experiences of mental illness and an insider perspective on psychiatry, they unpack the current knowledge about conditions and treatments. Punctuated with anecdotes and real-life stories, Mental covers everything from depression and anxiety to schizophrenia, personality disorders and substance abuse. This updated edition includes a new chapter on coping with the challenges of the covid-19 pandemic, as well as updates on new drugs and therapies. Whether you have a mental illness or support someone who does, Mental offers clear practical help, empowering you with an arsenal of tips and techniques to help build your resilience Dr Steve Ellen is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Melbourne and the Director of Psychosocial Oncology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. He is a broadcaster on 3RRR, a weekly regular on ABC Melbourne and has written for medical journals, textbooks and print media. Catherine Deveny is a writer, commentator and comedian. She is the author of eight books, including Use Your Words, The Happiness Show, Free to a Good Home, Say When and It’s Not My Fault They Print Them.

Bringing together treatment and referral advice from existing guidelines, this text aims to improve access to services and recognition of common mental health disorders in adults and provide advice on the principles that need to be adopted to develop appropriate referral and local care pathways.

A riveting memoir and a fascinating investigation of the history, uses, and controversies behind lithium, an essential medication for millions of people struggling with bipolar disorder. It began in Los Angeles in 1993, when Jaime Lowe was just sixteen. She stopped sleeping and eating, and began to hallucinate—demonically cackling Muppets, faces lurking in windows, Michael Jackson delivering messages from the Neverland Underground. Lowe wrote manifestos and math equations in her diary, and drew infographics on her bedroom wall. Eventu­ally, hospitalized and diagnosed as bipolar, she was prescribed a medication that came in the form of three pink pills—lithium. In Mental, Lowe shares and investigates her story of episodic madness, as well as the stabil­ity she found while on lithium. She interviews scientists, psychiatrists, and patients to examine how effective lithium really is and how its side effects can be dangerous for long-term users—including Lowe, who after twenty years on the medication suffers from severe kidney damage. Mental is eye-opening and powerful, tackling an illness and drug that has touched millions of lives and yet remains shrouded in social stigma. Now, while she adjusts to a new drug, her pur­suit of a stable life continues as does her curiosity about the history and science of the mysterious element that shaped the way she sees the world and allowed her decades of sanity. Lowe travels to the Bolivian salt flats that hold more than half of the world’s lithium reserves, rural America where lithium is mined for batteries, and tolithium spas that are still touted as a tonic to cure all ills. With unflinching honesty and humor, Lowe allows a clear-eyed view into her life, and an arresting inquiry into one of mankind’s oldest medical mysteries.

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

"A comprehensive overview of the many genetic, neurological, social, and psychological factors that affect mental health, also describing the impact of mental health on the individual and society and illustrating the factors that aid positive mental health. Provides fully up-to-date descriptions of the neurological, social, genetic, and psychological factors that affect the individual and society. Contains more than 240 articles written by domain experts in the field. Written in an accessible style using terms that an educated layperson can understand. Of interest to public as well as research libraries with coverage of many important topics, including marital health, divorce, couples therapy, fathers, child custody, day care and day care providers, extended families, and family therapy"--Publisher's website.