Psychology: Booklist

The author describes his life after being diagnosed with ADHD at the age of five.

"How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?" the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner. " Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did," came the answer. "So I took them seriously." Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness, and who - thanks to the selflessness of a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community - emerged after decades of ghostlike existence to win a Nobel Prize for triggering the game theory revolution. The inspiration for an Academy Award-winnng movie, Sylvia Nasar's now classic biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over adversity, and the healing power of love. -

At the age of thirteen Michele Rosenthal contracted a rare life-threatening disease called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. Healing from the disease left Michele scared and vulnerable. As Michele grew into a young woman she decided to reclaim her life and discover who she really is becoming a talk show host and a post-trauma coach.

Told from the perspective of a 1988 world champion, a behind-the-scenes account of the personal toll of Olympics competitiveness reveals how her stage parents, abusive coaches, and manipulative sponsors pushed her to the limits of her physical and mental health.

Called in as a consultant for a possible child-abuse case, child psychologist Alex Delaware begins to suspect that the hospital has come under the sway of Chuck Jones, the financial whiz administrator who seems overly interested in profits.

When Shields welcomed her newborn daughter into the world, something unexpected followed--a crippling depression. Now, for the first time ever, she talks about the trials, tribulations, and finally the triumphs that occurred before, during, and after the birth of her daughter. Shields shares how she, too, battled this debilitating condition that is widely misunderstood, despite the fact that it affects many new mothers. She discusses the illness in the context of her life, including her struggle to get pregnant, the high expectations she had for herself and that others placed on her as a new mom, and the role of her husband, friends, and family as she struggled to attain her maternal footing. Ultimately, she shares how she found a way out through talk therapy, medication, and time.

Reiland's memoir reveals what mental illness feels like and looks like from the inside, and how healing from such a devastating disease is possible through intensive therapy and the support of loved ones.

On a cold February day two months after his 20th birthday, Henry Cockburn waded into the Newhaven estuary outside Brighton and tried to swim across, almost drowning in the process. The trees, he said, had told him to do it. Narrated by both Henry Cockburn and his father Patrick, this is the extraordinary story of the eight years since Henry's descent into schizophrenia, years he has spent almost entirely in hospitals, and his family's struggle to help him recover.

A frank, funny, no-holds-barred memoir, "Here's the Deal" reveals Mandel's ongoing struggle with OCD and ADHD--and tells how it has shaped his life and career. As heartfelt as it is hilarious, this is the story of one man's effort to draw comic inspiration out of his most vulnerable places.--From publisher description.

A hidden madness tells the story of an accomplished individual who has reached the pinnacle of his profession despite suffering for over thirty years from the severe mental illness bipolar disorder. He has done so mostl in silence because of fear of stigma. Extreme childhood bullying helped cause his condition, which has seen him hospitalized five times in psychiatric facilities for periods as long as six months.

From the day he was born, Nick Traina was his mother's joy. By nineteen, he was dead. This is Danielle Steel's powerful, personal story of the son she lost and the lessons she learned during his courageous battle against darkness. Sharing tender, painful memories and Nick's remarkable journals, Steel brings us a haunting duet between a singular young man and the mother who loved him—and a harrowing portrait of a masked killer called manic depression, which afflicts between two and three million Americans.

A teenager with Asperger's syndrome--smart, quirky, with a passion for crime scene analysis--winds up on trial for murder.

Chronicles the three-year battle of a mentally ill, but perceptive, teenage girl against a world of her own creation, emphasizing her relationship with the doctor who gave her the ammunition of self-understanding with which to destroy that world of fantasy.

Barbara Gordonhas it all, or thinks she does--a career as an Emmy-award-winning documentary producer, a man she loves, a world of friends, and a beautiful apartment in Manhattan. But beneath the facade, Barbara's life is spinning out of control. In spite of the pills prescribed by her doctor, a nameless terror disrupting her daily life intensifies until she is besieged by crippling anxiety attacks. A formerly strong, independent, successful woman, Barbara's life becomes a nightmare of paralysis and fear.

Olympic medalist, Amanda Beard, experienced clinical depression and expressed her emotions through self-destructive behavior. In her late teens and twenties, she became bulimic, abused drugs and alcohol, and started cutting herself.

This raw, darkly comic series of astonishing vignettes is Emily Colas' achingly honest chronicle of her twisted journey through the obsessive-compulsive disorder that come to dominate her world. In the beginning it was germs and food - to her mind, anything ground-up hypodermic needles to disease-tainted blood could be on her restaurant plate. By the time she face the fact that she was really "losing it," Colas had become a slave to her own "hobbies," from the frenetic daily hair trims she gave herself to the incessant inspections of her children's clothes for bloodstains, the carpet for dangerous debris, packaged goods for possible tampering. Soon there was no interval in Colas' life when she was not just checking.

In a searingly candid memoir, Grammy Award-winning pop icon Springfield pulls back the curtain on his image as a bright, shiny, happy performer to share the startling story of his rise and fall and rise again in music, film, and television, and his lifelong battle with depression.

"On the outside, Terri Cheney was a successful, attractive Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer. But behind her seemingly flawless façade lay a dangerous secret--for most of her life Cheney had been battling bipolar disorder and concealing a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions meant to make her "normal." Cheney describes her roller-coaster life with shocking honesty--from glamorous parties to a night in jail; from flying fourteen kites off the edge of a cliff in a thunderstorm to crying beneath her office desk; from electroshock therapy to a suicide attempt fueled by tequila and prescription painkillers. The events unfold episodically, from mood to mood, the way she lived and remembers life. In this way the reader is able to viscerally experience the incredible speeding highs of mania and the crushing blows of depression. This book does not simply explain bipolar disorder--it takes us in its grasp and does not let go--From publisher description."

"The Hemingways, one of America's most famous families, is also a family with a legacy of mental illness, suicide, addiction, and depression. Mariel Hemingway writes about how she grew up with this tragic reality, struggled to escape its legacy, and with compassion, education, and understanding found a way out of the darkness."

The author describes her battle with depression, including her breakdowns, suicide attempts, hospitalizations, and experiences with medications, and also discusses her feelings about depression in 1990s America.

A collection of short stories with characters exhibiting behaviors associated with diagnosis of abnormal psychology.

"Why would someone adopt a badly abused, non-speaking, six-year-old from foster care?" So, the author was asked at the outset of his adoption-as-a-first-resort adventure. Part love story, part political manifesto about "living with conviction in a cynical time," the memoir traces the development of DJ, a boy written off as profoundly retarded and now, six years later, earning all "A"s at a regular school. Neither a typical saga of autism nor simply a challenge to expert opinion, Reasonable People illuminates the belated emergence of a self in language. And it does so using DJ's own words expressed through the once discredited but now resurgent technique of facilitated communication (FC).

A memoir that tells the story of a person who changed genders chronicles the life of James, a critically acclaimed novelist, who eventually became Jenny, a happy and successful English professor.

Recounts the author's experiences as a marine sergeant in the Iraq War and his battles with alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder after returning to the United States.

The actress recounts the years she spent secretly suffering from anorexia and bulimia and trying to hide her sexuality, all under the glare of Hollywood's bright lights.

Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness; she has also experienced it firsthand. For even while she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients, as her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide. Here Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication. An Unquiet Mind is a memoir of enormous candor, vividness, and wisdom a deeply powerful book that has both transformed and save lives.