After her journey through madness Mary O'Hagan realised the mental health system and society did more harm than good. 'Madness Made Me' is a myth-busting account of madness and our customary responses to it through the lens of lived experience. O'Hagan's journey took her from the psychiatric hospital to the United Nations and many places in between as a leader in the international mad movement. Her fundamental message is that madness is profoundly disruptive but full human experience. The trouble is most people don't see it that way, from the experts who make up clever theories about brain disease to the people down the road who have irrational fears about mad axe-murderers. 'Madness Made Me' is a compelling and beautifully written book that uncovers widespread injustice. It ends with vision for a world that holds hope for people with mental distress and treats them with respect and humanity.

"The vast literature on Virginia Woolf's life, work, and marriage falls into two groups. A large majority is certain that she was mentally ill, and a small minority is equally certain that she was not mentally ill but was misdiagnosed by psychiatrists. In this daring exploration of Woolf's life and work, Thomas Szasz--famed for his radical critique of psychiatric concepts, coercions, and excuses--examines the evidence and rejects both views. Instead, he looks at how Virginia Woolf, as well as her husband Leonard, used the concept of madness and the profession of psychiatry to manage and manipulate their own and each other's lives.Do we explain achievement when we attribute it to the fictitious entity we call ""genius""? Do we explain failure when we attribute it to the fictitious entity we call ""madness""? Or do we deceive ourselves the same way that the person deceives himself when he attributes the easy ignition of hydrogen to its being ""flammable""? Szasz interprets Virginia Woolf's life and work as expressions of her character, and her character as the ""product"" of her free will. He offers this view as a corrective against the prevailing, ostensibly scientific view that attributes both her ""madness"" and her ""genius"" to biological-genetic causes. We tend to attribute exceptional achievement to genius, and exceptional failure to madness. Both, says Szasz, are fictitious entities."

This is one of the wisest books I've read in years... —New York Times Book Review No writer I know of comes close to even trying to articulate the weird magic of poetry as Ruefle does. She acknowledges and celebrates in the odd mystery and mysticism of the act—the fact that poetry must both guard and reveal, hint at and pull back... Also, and maybe most crucially, Ruefle’s work is never once stuffy or overdone: she writes this stuff with a level of seriousness-as-play that’s vital and welcome, that doesn’t make writing poetry sound anything but wild, strange, life-enlargening fun. -The Kenyon Review Profound, unpredictable, charming, and outright funny...These informal talks have far more staying power and verve than most of their kind. Readers may come away dazzled, as well as amused... —Publishers Weekly This is a book not just for poets but for anyone interested in the human heart, the inner-life, the breath exhaling a completion of an idea that will make you feel changed in some way. This is a desert island book. —Matthew Dickman The accomplished poet is humorous and self-deprecating in this collection of illuminating essays on poetry, aesthetics and literature... —San Francisco Examiner Over the course of fifteen years, Mary Ruefle delivered a lecture every six months to a group of poetry graduate students. Collected here for the first time, these lectures include "Poetry and the Moon," "Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World," and "Lectures I Will Never Give." Intellectually virtuosic, instructive, and experiential, Madness, Rack, and Honey resists definition, demanding instead an utter—and utterly pleasurable—immersion. Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. Mary Ruefle has published more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and erasures. She lives in Vermont.

A groundbreaking look at the connection between germs and mental illness, and how we can protect ourselves. Is it possible to catch autism or OCD the same way we catch the flu? Can a child's contact with cat litter lead to schizophrenia? In her eye-opening new book, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Harriet Washington reveals that we can in fact "catch" mental illness. In Infectious Madness, Washington presents the new germ theory, which posits not only that many instances of Alzheimer's, OCD, and schizophrenia are caused by viruses, prions, and bacteria, but also that with antibiotics, vaccinations, and other strategies, these cases can be easily prevented or treated. Packed with cutting-edge research and tantalizing mysteries, Infectious Madness is rich in science, characters, and practical advice on how to protect yourself and your children from exposure to infectious threats that could sabotage your mental and physical health.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CHLOË GRACE MORETZ A “captivating” (The New York Times Book Review), award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is a powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity. When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled as violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened? In an “unforgettable” (Elle), “stunningly brave” (NPR), and breathtaking narrative, Susannah tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that almost didn’t happen. “A fascinating look at the disease that…could have cost this vibrant, vital young woman her life” (People), Brain on Fire is an unforgettable exploration of memory and identity, faith and love, and a profoundly compelling tale of survival and perseverance.

Parallel to An Unquiet Mind and The Glass Castle, a deeply personal memoir calling for the destigmatization of mental illness

For many, madness is something read about in books or seen on TV--something scary, foreign, and impossible to understand. For Lisa Nugent and her twin sister Shell, however, madness was impossible to avoid--it was home. Growing up in Essex in the seventies and eighties, Lisa learned quickly that her family wasn't like her classmates' families--their mothers were friendly, fierce, or demure women. They had their quirks, but they didn't assault their husbands, and their frenzied screams didn't chase their children out of the house in the middle of the night. Not like her mother. Now, for the first time, Lisa relives those troubled years, recounting her development from a nervous, shy, and friendless child through to the woman she is today. Madness and Me isn't just a memoir about surviving an abusive, paranoid parent--it's about the importance of family, the pain of loss, and learning to love even when it's the hardest thing in the world to do. A work of tenderness, dignity, and humour, Madness and Me is sure to appeal to lovers of memoir and drama alike.

Terri Cheney ripped the covers off her secret battle with bipolar disorder in her New York Times bestselling memoir, Manic. Now, in this "stigma-buster" and "must-read", she blends a gripping narrative with practical advice (Elyn Saks). Cheney flips mental illness inside out, exposing the visceral story of the struggles, stigma, relationship dilemmas, treatments, and recovery techniques she and others have encountered. Sometimes humorous, sometimes harrowing, Modern Madness is the ultimate owner's manual on mental illness, breaking this complex subject down into readily understandable concepts like Instructions for Use, Troubleshooting, Maintenance, and Warranties. Whether you have a diagnosis, love or work with someone who does, or are just trying to understand this emerging phenomenon of our times, Modern Madness is a courageous clarion call for acceptance, both personal and public. With her candid and riveting writing, Cheney delivers more than heartbreak; she promises hope.

New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh welcomes you to a remote town on the edge of the world where even the blinding brightness of the sun can’t mask the darkness that lies deep within a killer.… On the rugged West Coast of New Zealand, Golden Cove is more than just a town where people live. The adults are more than neighbors; the children, more than schoolmates. That is until one fateful summer—and several vanished bodies—shatters the trust holding Golden Cove together. All that’s left are whispers behind closed doors, broken friendships, and a silent agreement to not look back. But they can’t run from the past forever. Eight years later, a beautiful young woman disappears without a trace, and the residents of Golden Cove wonder if their home shelters something far more dangerous than an unforgiving landscape. It’s not long before the dark past collides with the haunting present and deadly secrets come to light.

This book shows how an understanding of the nature and role of insanity in Hegel's writing provides intriguing new points of access to many of the central themes of his larger philosophic project. Berthold-Bond situates Hegel's theory of madness within the history of psychiatric practice during the great reform period at the turn of the eighteenth century, and shows how Hegel developed a middle path between the stridently opposed camps of "empirical" and "romantic" medicine, and of "somatic" and "psychical" practitioners. A key point of the book is to show that Hegel does not conceive of madness and health as strictly opposing states, but as kindred phenomena sharing many of the same underlying mental structures and strategies, so that the ontologies of insanity and rationality involve a mutually illuminating, mirroring relation. Hegel's theory is tested against the critiques of the institution of psychiatry and the very concept of madness by such influential twentieth-century authors as Michel Foucault and Thomas Szasz, and defended as offering a genuinely reconciling position in the contemporary debate between the "social labeling" and "medical" models of mental illness.