Troubled Minds

Reflecting on the confusion, shame and grief brought on by her mother's schizophrenia, Amy Simpson provides a bracing look at the social and physical realities of mental illness. Reminding us that people with mental illness are our neighbors and our brothers and sisters in Christ, she explores new possibilities for the church to minister to this stigmatized group.

Most of us take our mental health for granted. But when confronted by mental illness in our family, our friends, or ourselves, even the most competent among us is likely to become bewildered. Understanding Troubled Minds provides a calm and authoritative guide to the full range of specific mental illnesses and available treatments. It deals with particular patterns of illness in women, children, and the elderly. It stresses the value of partnership among psychiatrists, patients, and their families. And it places this knowledge within the framework of modern psychiatry-from the history of the profession to just what it is that psychiatrists and fellow health-workers do, and how they can help. A sense of hope and optimism prevails within these pages. The authors, both eminent psychiatrists with long practical experience, stress that great strides are being made in the treatment of mental illness. But they also warn against the lure of the instant cure. Acknowledging the complexity of human nature, they weave the stories of real people and the insights of many writers throughout their text. Balanced, up-to-date, thoroughly readable, and humanistic, this book will both increase our practical knowledge and deepen our understanding of mental illness.

Mind Fixers tells the history of psychiatry’s quest to understand the biological basis of mental illness and asks where we need to go from here. In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington, author of The Cure Within, explores psychiatry’s repeatedly frustrated struggle to understand mental disorder in biomedical terms. She shows how the stalling of early twentieth century efforts in this direction allowed Freudians and social scientists to insist, with some justification, that they had better ways of analyzing and fixing minds. But when the Freudians overreached, they drove psychiatry into a state of crisis that a new “biological revolution” was meant to alleviate. Harrington shows how little that biological revolution had to do with breakthroughs in science, and why the field has fallen into a state of crisis in our own time. Mind Fixers makes clear that psychiatry’s waxing and waning biological enthusiasms have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors, including immigration, warfare, grassroots activism, and assumptions about race and gender. Government programs designed to empty the state mental hospitals, acrid rivalries between different factions in the field, industry profit mongering, consumerism, and an uncritical media have all contributed to the story as well. In focusing particularly on the search for the biological roots of schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder, Harrington underscores the high human stakes for the millions of people who have sought medical answers for their mental suffering. This is not just a story about doctors and scientists, but about countless ordinary people and their loved ones. A clear-eyed, evenhanded, and yet passionate tour de force, Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future, both for those who suffer and for those whose job it is to care for them.

‘Highly eloquent, fascinating and deeply compassionate’ Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm We cannot know how to fix a problem until we understand its causes. But even for some of the most common mental health problems, specialists argue over whether the answers lie in the person’s biology, their psychology or their circumstances. As a cognitive neuropsychiatrist, Anthony David brings together many fields of enquiry, from social and cognitive psychology to neurology. The key for each patient might be anything from a traumatic memory to a chemical imbalance, an unhealthy way of thinking or a hidden tumour. Patrick believes he is dead. Jennifer's schizophrenia medication helped with her voices but did it cause Parkinson’s? Emma is in a coma – or is she just refusing to respond? Drawing from Professor David’s career as a clinician and academic, these fascinating case studies reveal the unique complexity of the human mind, stretching the limits of our understanding.

This informative text provides an introduction to schizophrenia and a review of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) treatments being used in treating both schizophrenia and other mental diseases. Rather than focusing on how to carry out acupuncture and TCM, it examines the best way to apply treatments. Covering both the Western biomedical diagnosis and the essentials of Chinese differential diagnosis, treatment protocols are provided for each condition. A controversial text whose basic message is that TCM has much to offer for the future of psychiatric medicine.

Every society has its own definition of a normal and an abnormal human condition. For persons living with mental disorders, these concepts have a tremendous impact. This study investigates how the abnormal mind is culturally defined in Malaŵi, South-Eastern Africa. Based on anthropological techniques such as interviews, participant observation, and archive research, it explores the different social dimensions of mental disorder - e.g. its reflection in traditional dance rituals, in behavioural rules during pregnancy, or in the healing ministry of independent churches. It demonstrates how local explanations of mental disorder - be it witchcraft, an angry ancestor, or the will of God - determine the social acceptance of an affected person's condition. Recent processes of cultural change, however, strengthen the pluralism of Malaŵian religious landscape, opening the local debate to an ever wider range of interpretations.

Originally published in 1928 in the Psyche Miniatures Medical Series, this title was an attempt to bring to the attention of British psychologists and psychiatrists some aspects of the work and thought of French psychologist Charles Blondel. Well known abroad but little known in England at the time, he was professor of Psychology at the University of Strasbourg and founder of a school of ‘morbid psychology’. This book contains two papers, the first concerning the theory of the disordered mind and the second deals with the relation between disordered thought and speech. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

Collects Superior Spider-Man #6-10. An Avenger no more? In light of his recent violent actions, will the Avengers kick Spidey off the team? With a villain acting like a hero and a hero acting like a villain, one man has decided that enough is enough! The ghostly revenant of Peter Parker fights to regain control of his body, his mind, and his destiny! Is this the beginning of the end for Otto Octavius? The time has come to see who will live, who will die, and who will emerge as the one, true Superior Spider-Man! But when the Green Goblin returns, why is Spidey nowhere to be found? Plus: Jester! Screwball! Cardiac! And a new development for a Spider-Man who hasn't been seen for some time. And by "time," we mean centuries!