What happens when your first memories of life and conscious awareness centered around death and mental illness? You end up with a mental illness or illnesses. This book is an autobiography/documentary about Peter Vox, a retired school teacher and professional musician from Long Island, NY who has spent his life battling anxiety, depression and existential sadness. This book chronicles Peter's childhood, the origins of his mental illnesses, history with medications, decades spent in therapy, marriage, careers, journals written from psychiatric hospitals and theories on how to handle your own mental illness. Furthermore, it's also a book about learning from past mistakes, accepting your flaws, focusing on your positive attributes, accepting help from others and realizing that there are opportunities to start over in life if you are open minded and willing to make small changes. Along with chronicles of Peter's struggles are highly amusing anecdotes about Peter's life that show the happy go lucky person that lives somewhere in all of us.

I know it's no excuse but I am just a 20 year old trying to wipe the tears of the 8 year old that died inside of me, so forgive me if it feels like I am just not here with you... I have journeyed into the past trying to convince that little girl to set me free but she sits at the bottom of my heart telling me I can't abandon her like everyone else so forgive me when I seem distant today, I am just trying to be there for that little girl that died inside of me while you assumed she grew up - M.R.S Welcome to the thoughts of a girl who was admitted into the psych ward after writing the first few pages of this book. Join her in her journey to the psych ward and her journey in the psych ward.

Master of razor-edged literary humor Binnie Kirshenbaum returns with her first novel in a decade, a devastating, laugh-out-loud funny story of a writer’s slide into depression and institutionalization. It’s New Year’s Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun, and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Kirshenbaum’s protagonist—an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer—fully unravels. Her breakdown lands her in the psych ward of a prestigious New York hospital, where she refuses all modes of recommended treatment. Instead, she passes the time chronicling the lives of her fellow “lunatics” and writing a novel about what brought her there. Her story is a brilliant and brutally funny dive into the disordered mind of a woman who sees the world all too clearly. Propelled by razor-sharp comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw. Rabbits for Food shows how art can lead us out of—or into—the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief. A bravura literary performance from one of our most indispensable writers.

The riveting true story of an aspiring psychiatrist's year of discovery, frustration, and triumph, this shockingly candid memoir is a real-life One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Emotionally charged --Kirkus.

"borderline personality disorder" is the most deafening diagnosis i have ever received

Mark and Giulia's life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well-adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that she was the devil and that her loved ones were not safe. All she wanted was to die. Eventually, Giulia fully recovered, and the couple had a son. But, soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended. A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Breathtaking in its candor, radiant with compassion, and written with dazzling lyricism, Lukach's is an intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife's mental illness, anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers' faith in the power of love.

An unforgettable coming of age novel for fans of 13 Reasons Why, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Fifteen-year-old Jeff wakes up on New Year’s Day to find himself in the hospital—specifically, in the psychiatric ward. Despite the bandages on his wrists, he’s positive this is all some huge mistake. Jeff is perfectly fine, perfectly normal; not like the other kids in the hospital with him. But over the course of the next forty-five days, Jeff begins to understand why he ended up here—and realizes he has more in common with the other kids than he thought. “With a sprinkling of dark humor and a full measure of humanness, Suicide Notes is quirky, surprising, and a riveting read.” —Ellen Hopkins, author of The You I’ve Never Known and Love Lies Beneath “Like the very best teen novels, Suicide Notes is both classic and edgy, timeless and provocative.” —Brent Hartinger, author of Geography Club “Makes a powerful emotional impact.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Jeff’s wit and self-discovery are refreshing, poignant, and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.” —School Library Journal

30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and heartbreaking story" (The New York Times Book Review). WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR The ward for teenage girls in the McLean psychiatric hospital was as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.

Unlike any other text that discusses day hospital programming, A Guide to Creative Group Programming in the Psychiatric Day Hospital contains protocols for the invention of new groups, saving you the time and effort needed to create one yourself. Intended for social workers, psychologists, and occupational therapists, this book introduces new and unique methods on how to invent or manage groups for a day hospital program, inpatient unit, or intensive outpatient program. The text also includes exercises that address the topics of motivation, self-esteem, shifting cognitive distortions, and risk-taking in relationships. Because the protocols were created with different types of patient groups in mind, this book contains ideas not offered in typical treatment settings. A Guide to Creative Group Programming in the Psychiatric Day Hospital is designed to help clinicians capture the interest of patients and to promote the discourse of important treatment issues by providing: 50 protocols for operating existing day hospital, inpatient or outpatient groups advice, professional opinions, and notes from the author to the clinician on all protocols exercises to help patients strengthen their abilities to handle the activities of daily living and socialization several hypothetical exercises, complete with a list of preparations, a description of the activity, and progress notes from observations with patient assessments numerous examples that use parts of popular movies to create new groups and stimulate discussion comprehensive, easy-to-follow instructions for both clinicians and patients The protocols in A Guide to Creative Group Programming in the Psychiatric Day Hospital contain detailed example activities complete with worksheets, skits, sample discussions, and hypothetical patient reactions to certain topics. Many exercises request that the patient set goals for himself or herself before starting a new topic. In addition, there is suggested homework for the patient to complete after a topic has been discussed, allowing you to monitor what your patients have learned and how they have improved after the exercise. After reading A Guide to Creative Group Programming in the Psychiatric Day Hospital, you’ll be ready to treat your patients using easy, effective methods that will lead to successful group discussions and lessen the chance of patient relapse.

In CRAZY ALL THE TIME, Frederick L. Covan, Ph.D., chief psychologist at Bellevue Hospital, takes you behind the gates and into the psych ward of one of the world's most famous mental institutions. With razor-sharp insight and great compassion, Covan follows the lives of a group of young interns and the unforgettable patients they are committed to serve, including Brenda, a paranoid schizophrenic who claims she has slept with six presidents; Matthew, a silent, tormented young man who cut off his own penis with a pair of pinking shears; and Gloria, a severely depressed dermatologist with a panic reaction to the sight of skin. Balancing the delicate line between normalcy and pathology, theory and reality, CRAZY ALL THE TIME explores the dark moods and outrageous behaviors of both doctors and patients in a place where madness reigns and disorder is the order of the day. "A wonderful book . . . Superbly written . . . Nothing short of perfect." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review