The author provides ten steps which answer such fundamental questions as "What is happiness?" "What does it mean to be ethical in a world that is less than ethical?" and "How can I find the strength I need to cope with the problems of my life?"
Stevens takes readers on a harrowing descent into the mind of a mass murderer in this eerily realistic serial-killer novel. At the center of this gripping epic novel of mass murder, pursuit, and psychological terror is Thomas Bishop, a psychotic young killer who believes he is the son of Caryl Chessman, who was executed for rape in California amid intense controversy. Subjected to unmerciful physical and mental torture from an early age, Bishop kills his mother at the age of ten and is placed in an institution for the criminally insane. He grows to manhood knowing the outside world only through a television screen. At twenty-five, he succeeds in a brilliant escape and change of identity and begins to move across the country, murdering women in particularly gruesome ways. Pursued by reporters, police, and the mob, Bishop manages to elude them all, and the search for him becomes the greatest manhunt in US history.The chilling denouement will hold readers spellbound until the shattering, unforgettable conclusion.
How cultivating a healthy fear of God liberates us from our fear of others, our fear of the future, and even our fear of death itself. At times the world feels like it's losing its mind. From politics to the pandemic, we live with an ever-increasing uncertainty, and many of us have grown to fear the rapid disintegration of our society and our own lives. Recovering Our Sanity is not another self-help book about how to beat your daily fears for a better life. It's a book that will show you the gravity and glory of a God who's worthy of our fear. It’s a book that will reveal how these two biblical phrases—Fear God and Do Not Be Afraid—are not contradictory but actually one coherent message. Michael Horton—Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary—shows us that we cannot fight our fears by seeking the absence of fear altogether, but by living with a fear of God that drives out the fear of everything else. Horton will walk you through the case for the fear of God by: Developing what it means to fear God, biblically and theologically, and what this kind of fear looks like in practice. Categorizing different types of fears—from cultural anxiety to pain and hardship—and what they stem from. Focusing on how to confront our earthly fears with our hope in Christ, rooted in the gospel. Reminding us that God does not exist for us; we exist for God. Humbling, thought-provoking, and hope-igniting, Recovering Our Sanity delivers a timely message that will help you shift your focus from a human-centered obsession with self-preservation to a fixation on Christ and his salvation. Rather than clinging to false securities and promises of immediate gratification, you can gain the lasting joy of knowing the One who has given himself to save us and who says to us, "Do not be afraid."
We are becoming more and more obsessed with being thin ... as we get fatter and fatter! The craziest part is that most weight loss 'solutions' are actually part of the problem. Diet and exercise programs fail 97% of people in the long-term, resulting in short term weight loss, medium term regain, and long-term gain approximately 10 to 15% above starting weight. Scientists have known this reality for decades - the entire diet industry is based on it - yet we keep on falling for promises of fast, easy, permanent weight loss (and other fictional tales), putting ourselves through rebranded versions of the exact same thing ... and expecting different results. Some might call this insanity - weight management psychologist Glenn Mackintosh calls it Thinsanity. Glenn's book, Thinsanity, aims to transform the way we approach weight management of the body, by starting with the mind. New scientific developments are offering insights into a compassionate way to make peace with food, fall in love with physical movement, and learn to LOVE your body healthy. Glenn takes all those new scientific developments and expresses them the way he does with his clients: clearly and with lots of understanding. This book is right for anyone who wants to learn to love their body and be healthy in it.
'Destined to become a popular and important book' Jon Ronson 'Fascinating' Sunday Times In the early 1970s, Stanford professor Dr Rosenhan conducted an experiment, sending sane patients into psychiatric wards; the result of which was a damning paper about psychiatric practises. The ripple effects of this paper helped bring the field of psychiatry to its knees, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever. But what if that ground-breaking and now-famous experiment was itself deeply flawed? And what does that mean for our understanding of mental illness today? These are the questions Susannah Cahalan asks in her completely engrossing investigation into this staggering case, where nothing is quite as it seems.
Environmental illness is a concept of growing concern to all health professionals. Patients with problems presumably caused by sick buildings, electromagnetic fields and hypersensitivity to chemicals--to name a few--are often referred to psychologists, psychiatrists, and other counselors. The battery worker with fatigue, headaches, abdominal pain and an elevated lead level...the assembly worker with pain and numbness in her hand and delayed median nerve conduction...the patient who develops typical contact dermatitis after working with epoxies..., these are straightforward cases. But they are in the minority. In many cases, needy, demanding, and difficult patients present complex and challenging psychological issues. Practitioners often lack the training or wisdom to handle these issues effectively. We know that exposure to lead, mercury, and PCBs affect psychological development and behavior; we know much less about the effects of thousands of other chemicals in the environment. In addition, global climate change, social disruption, and the spread of infections will--in the near future--expose people to novel environmental threats. Symptoms caused by toxins can overlap those caused by fear, stress, and depression, and the clinical picture can mimic a variety of other mental disorders. On the other hand, the natural environment can also be a healer. Research shows that hospital stays are shortened and the need for pain medication reduced for patients exposed to nature, even in images, or to the company of animals. Nursing home patients live longer if allowed to keep pets, and one controlled study shows that caring for animals reduces disruptive behavior in even the most difficult ADD children. This book offers the first overview of the many ways the environment can affect mental health and illness. It will prove to be an important and valuable resource for physicians in psychiatry, public health, and environmental medicine; for clinical and counseling psychologists and social workers; and for environmental researchers and advocates worldwide.
This book is a comprehensive overview of the main current concepts in brain cognitive activities at the global, collective (or network) level, with a focus on transitions between normal neurophysiology and brain pathological states. It provides a unique approach of linking molecular and cellular aspects of normal and pathological brain functioning with their corresponding network, collective and dynamical manifestations that are subsequently extended to behavioral manifestations of healthy and diseased brains. This book introduces a high-level perspective, searching for simplification amongst the structural and functional complexity of nervous systems by consideration of the distributed interactions that underlie the collective behavior of the system. The authors hope that this approach could promote a global comprehensive understanding of high-level laws behind the elementary biological processes in the neuroscientific community, while, perhaps, introducing elements of biological complexities to the mathematical/computational readership. The title of the book refers to the main point of the monograph: that there is a smooth continuum between distinct brain activities resulting in different behaviors, and that, due to the plastic nature of the brain, the behavior can also alter the brain function, thus rendering artificial the boundaries between the brain and its behavior.
An exposé on Big Pharma and the American healthcare system’s zeal for excessive medical testing, from a nationally recognized expert More screening doesn’t lead to better health—but can turn healthy people into patients. Going against the conventional wisdom reinforced by the medical establishment and Big Pharma that more screening is the best preventative medicine, Dr. Gilbert Welch builds a compelling counterargument that what we need are fewer, not more, diagnoses. Documenting the excesses of American medical practice that labels far too many of us as sick, Welch examines the social, ethical, and economic ramifications of a health-care system that unnecessarily diagnoses and treats patients, most of whom will not benefit from treatment, might be harmed by it, and would arguably be better off without screening. Drawing on 25 years of medical practice and research on the effects of medical testing, Welch explains in a straightforward, jargon-free style how the cutoffs for treating a person with “abnormal” test results have been drastically lowered just when technological advances have allowed us to see more and more “abnormalities,” many of which will pose fewer health complications than the procedures that ostensibly cure them. Citing studies that show that 10% of 2,000 healthy people were found to have had silent strokes, and that well over half of men over age sixty have traces of prostate cancer but no impairment, Welch reveals overdiagnosis to be rampant for numerous conditions and diseases, including diabetes, high cholesterol, osteoporosis, gallstones, abdominal aortic aneuryisms, blood clots, as well as skin, prostate, breast, and lung cancers. With genetic and prenatal screening now common, patients are being diagnosed not with disease but with “pre-disease” or for being at “high risk” of developing disease. Revealing the economic and medical forces that contribute to overdiagnosis, Welch makes a reasoned call for change that would save us from countless unneeded surgeries, excessive worry, and exorbitant costs, all while maintaining a balanced view of both the potential benefits and harms of diagnosis. Drawing on data, clinical studies, and anecdotes from his own practice, Welch builds a solid, accessible case against the belief that more screening always improves health care.