Kategoria BISAC: Psychology >> Mental Health

Being sane has long been defined simply as that bland and nebulous state of not being mentally ill. While writings on madness fill entire libraries, until now no one has thought to engage exclusively with the idea of sanity.

In a society governed by indulgence and excess, madness is the state of mind we identify with most keenly. Though ultimately destructive, it is often credited as the wellspring of genius, individuality, and self-expression. Sanity, on the other hand, confounds us. One of the world's most respected psychoanalysts and original thinkers, Adam Phillips redresses this...

How psychopharmacology has usurped the role of psychotherapy in our society, to the great detriment of the patients involved.

William Glasser describes in Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health the sea change that has taken place in the treatment of mental health in the last few years. Millions of patients are now routinely being given prescriptions for a wide range of drugs including Ritalin, Prosac, Zoloft and related drugs which can be harmful to the brain. A previous generation of patients would have had a course of psychotherapy...

Identifies the major ideas that college and university students will encounter in a basic psychology course and explores connections with Christian belief.

Religion and Psychoanalysis in India questions the assumptions of an established scientific, evidence-based global mental health paradigm by examining the practices of faith-based healing. It proposes that human beings demonstrate a dual loyalty: to science as faith and faith as science, both of which get reconfigured in the process. In this particular context, science and faith are deployed in ways that are not only different but at times contrary to mainstream discourses of science and religion, and faith healing becomes a point where these two discourses collide head-on in negotiating...

For the first time the history of the psychological and psychiatric evaluation of astronaut and cosmonaut candidates is detailed. The general public and many professionals assume that psychological issues have been and will be extremely important factors in successful space exploration. This book, however, documents how NASA underutilized, downplayed, then ultimately ignored psychiatric and psychological characteristics in selecting astronauts, until very recently.

Migration nowadays is a universal phenomenon often instigating extreme changes in the entire life cycle of the immigrants. Occasionally, immigration is liable to impose a certain degree of change also on the life of the absorbing society at large or of substantial sectors of it. Professor Ben-Sira, a world figure in medical sociology, advances the understanding of the factors that promote or impede readjustment of immigrants and of members of the absorbing society who may feel affected by that immigration. The author surveyed 500 new immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union, as...

Rejecting behavior as the proper topic of study in psychology, Walters defines the subject matter for psychology as the human organism's interaction with the internal and external environments. In offering an overarching theoretical model based on 12 different theoretical traditions, Walters runs counter to the currently popular practice in psychology of constructing conceptual mini-models that restrict themselves to highly circumscribed areas of psychological inquiry. In Walters' view, the proliferation of mini-models has given the field a fragmented appearance.

A major tenant of the...

The often misunderstood modern person syndrome is a disorder linked to the conditions of living in our contemporary society. The author argues that the conditions of modernity have introduced new processes, forces, and cultural motivations that have major implications for all aspects of mental health and social well being. While modernity offers unprecedented opportunities for personal enhancement and creative expression, there is mounting evidence of a mental health crisis that demands the immediate attention of mental health professionals. In order to address the new challenges that have...

Lyons provides a fresh and thought-provoking understanding of the children's public mental health system, as well as the need to foster its evolution and improvement. He presents the history of child mental health systems, including the U.S. system's roots and the early 19th-century case of the Wild Boy of Aveyron, which demonstrated the potentially therapeutic effects of environment. He shows us why modern leaders and presidents have issued calls for improvements to the U.S. child mental health system, and what barriers have slowed or even halted this evolution. Such barriers, Lyons...

Color-coded terrorism alerts are issued, then lifted with no explanation. False alarms can, like crying wolf, desensitize people to a real need to be on alert. And that psychic numbing is just one effect discussed in this book by fifteen psychologists teamed up to take a critical look at the U.S. war on terrorism. These experts are led by the Chairman of an American Psychological Association task force charged with pinpointing the effect of our anti-terrorism efforts on American mental health. Together, they present the most up-to-date and intriguing picture we have of the fallout on our...

All of us, writes psychologist Michael Rousell, are subject to Spontaneous Influence Events, (SIEs), when seemingly minor moments have truly life-changing effects. Rousell, who has studied such events across decades, shows us how SIEs--which occur when we are emotionally charged--trigger an intense response and activate a mental state of extreme suggestibility. He explains how SIEs disarm our instinctive defense mechanisms and rational thinking processes, leaving us open to instant adoption of new beliefs. In this unique book, he looks at the neurobiology of this spontaneous change. He...