The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery
The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery

Author: Mary Cregan

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2019-03-19

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1324001739

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A “searingly honest and riveting” (Colm Tóibín) memoir interweaving the author’s descent into depression with a medical and cultural history of the illness. At the age of twenty-seven, Mary Cregan gives birth to her first child, a daughter she names Anna. But it’s apparent that something is terribly wrong, and two days later, Anna dies—plunging Cregan into suicidal despair. Decades later, sustained by her work, a second marriage, and a son, Cregan reflects on this pivotal experience and attempts to make sense of it. She weaves together literature and research with details from her own ordeal—and the still-visible scar of her suicide attempt—while also considering her life as part of the larger history of our understanding of depression.

Unraveling
Unraveling

Author: M. F. Alvarez

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-09

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1000982424

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Unraveling: An Autoethnography of Suicide and Renewal is an autoethnographic story that explores the intricate relationship among trauma, marginality, and mental health. It follows Mike Alvarez, a precocious gay teenager from an immigrant Filipino family, who loses his grip on reality as he succumbs to so-called mental illness. Divided into two parts, the first half of the book uses evocative storytelling and in-the-moment narration to capture the slow descent into anxiety, paranoia, depression, and suicidality, as experienced by the author during young adulthood. The second half of the book critically reflects upon the story through a series of analytic chapters. In these chapters, the author considers the role of narrative in cultivating empathy for the mentally ill, the psychiatric-industrial complex’s obstruction of that empathy, and the moral dilemmas autoethnographers face when writing about self, other, and the social world. This book will be suitable for scholars in the social sciences, communication studies, and healthcare, who study and use autoethnography in their research. It will also be of value to those interested in firsthand accounts of madness, as told by members of marginalized communities.

One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival
One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival

Author: Donald Antrim

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2021-10-12

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1324005572

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of TIME's 100 Must-Read Books of 2021 One of BuzzFeed's Best Books of 2021 One of Vulture's Best Books of 2021 Named one of the Most Anticipated of Books of 2021 by the Los Angeles Times, Literary Hub, and The Millions A searing and brave memoir that offers a new understanding of suicide as a distinct mental illness. As the sun lowered in the sky one Friday afternoon in April 2006, acclaimed author Donald Antrim found himself on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building, afraid for his life. In this moving memoir, Antrim vividly recounts what led him to the roof and what happened after he came back down: two hospitalizations, weeks of fruitless clinical trials, the terror of submitting to ECT—and the saving call from David Foster Wallace that convinced him to try it—as well as years of fitful recovery and setback. Through a clear and haunting reckoning with the author’s own story, One Friday in April confronts the limits of our understanding of suicide. Donald Antrim’s personal insights reframe suicide—whether in thought or in action—as an illness in its own right, a unique consequence of trauma and personal isolation, rather than the choice of a depressed person. A necessary companion to William Styron’s classic? Darkness Visible, this profound, insightful work sheds light on the tragedy and mystery of suicide, offering solace that may save lives.

Between Jesus and the Black Dog
Between Jesus and the Black Dog

Author: Michael Rothery

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-07-20

Total Pages: 83

ISBN-13: 1666701408

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Christians have a special worldview affecting how they experience depression, the "common cold" afflicting our emotional well-being, and that is the focus of this short book. In it, Christians and the important people in their support networks will read about the good news and the bad, the blessings and pitfalls that a Christian faith brings to the problem of managing depressions. The book is hopeful without being simplistic, and it is steadfast in its commitment to the goal of human flourishing in a problematic world.

Rescue to Recovery
Rescue to Recovery

Author: Tracey Brown

Publisher:

Published: 2020-05-20

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781734960402

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Rescue to Recovery is a Veteran's perspective of time serviced in the United States Coast Guard, the lost years after and navigating the enigma of post-traumatic stress. This is a book written by a veteran and her personal challenges while coming to terms with and understand her inability to engage in day to day activities as others did. It is a reflection of missions, trainings, and skewed understandings of post-traumatic stress. This is not just for veterans, it is for the helpers, healers, heroes and warriors of all walks. Those that feel the need to stay strong when everything feels like it is falling apart.

The Burn Journals
The Burn Journals

Author: Brent Runyon

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2005-10-11

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0307276953

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Fans of Thirteen Reasons Why, Running with Scissors, and Girl, Interrupted will be entranced by this remarkable true story of teenage despair and recovery. “[The Burn Journals] describes a particular kind of youthful male desolation better than it has ever been described before, by anyone.” —Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon In 1991, fourteen-year-old Brent Runyon came home from school, doused his bathrobe in gasoline, put it on, and lit a match. He suffered third-degree burns over 85% of his body and spent the next year recovering in hospitals and rehab facilities. During that year of physical recovery, Runyon began to question what he’d done, undertaking the complicated journey from near-death back to high school, and from suicide back to the emotional mainstream of life.

The Body Keeps the Score
The Body Keeps the Score

Author: Bessel A. Van der Kolk

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published: 2015-09-08

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0143127748

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.

It's Kind of a Funny Story
It's Kind of a Funny Story

Author: Ned Vizzini

Publisher: Disney Electronic Content

Published: 2010-09-25

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 1423141083

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan's Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life—which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job—Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That's when things start to get crazy. At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he's just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away.

Little Panic
Little Panic

Author: Amanda Stern

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2018-06-19

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 1538711915

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the vein of bestselling memoirs about mental illness like Andrew Solomon's Noonday Demon, Sarah Hepola's Blackout, and Daniel Smith's Monkey Mind comes a gorgeously immersive, immediately relatable, and brilliantly funny memoir about living life on the razor's edge of panic. The world never made any sense to Amanda Stern--how could she trust time to keep flowing, the sun to rise, gravity to hold her feet to the ground, or even her own body to work the way it was supposed to? Deep down, she knows that there's something horribly wrong with her, some defect that her siblings and friends don't have to cope with. Growing up in the 1970s and 80s in New York, Amanda experiences the magic and madness of life through the filter of unrelenting panic. Plagued with fear that her friends and family will be taken from her if she's not watching-that her mother will die, or forget she has children and just move away-Amanda treats every parting as her last. Shuttled between a barefoot bohemian life with her mother in Greenwich Village, and a sanitized, stricter world of affluence uptown with her father, Amanda has little she can depend on. And when Etan Patz disappears down the block from their MacDougal Street home, she can't help but believe that all her worst fears are about to come true. Tenderly delivered and expertly structured, Amanda Stern's memoir is a document of the transformation of New York City and a deep, personal, and comedic account of the trials and errors of seeing life through a very unusual lens.

Scars Like Wings
Scars Like Wings

Author: Erin Stewart

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Published: 2019-10-01

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1984848844

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Relatable, heartbreaking, and real, this is a story of resilience--the perfect novel for readers of powerful contemporary fiction like Girl in Pieces and Every Last Word. Before, I was a million things. Now I'm only one. The Burned Girl. Ava Lee has lost everything there is to lose: Her parents. Her best friend. Her home. Even her face. She doesn't need a mirror to know what she looks like--she can see her reflection in the eyes of everyone around her. A year after the fire that destroyed her world, her aunt and uncle have decided she should go back to high school. Be "normal" again. Whatever that is. Ava knows better. There is no normal for someone like her. And forget making friends--no one wants to be seen with the Burned Girl, now or ever. But when Ava meets a fellow survivor named Piper, she begins to feel like maybe she doesn't have to face the nightmare alone. Sarcastic and blunt, Piper isn't afraid to push Ava out of her comfort zone. Piper introduces Ava to Asad, a boy who loves theater just as much as she does, and slowly, Ava tries to create a life again. Yet Piper is fighting her own battle, and soon Ava must decide if she's going to fade back into her scars . . . or let the people by her side help her fly. "A heartfelt and unflinching look at the reality of being a burn survivor and at the scars we all carry. This book is for everyone, burned or not, who has ever searched for a light in the darkness." --Stephanie Nielson, New York Times bestselling author of Heaven Is Here and a burn survivor