In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.

In this updated second edition, available only as an audiobook, Randye Kaye tells listeners, in the introduction and epilogue, about what happened in the decade after the initial release of Ben Behind His Voices. Yes, Ben is still here, still living real-life "Chutes and Ladders". When we first meet Ben, he's a sweet, intelligent, seemingly well-adjusted youngster. Fast forward to his teenage years and Ben's life has spun out of control. He's swept along by an illness over which he has no control—one that results in homelessness, hospitalizations, and finally a diagnosis.

Since publication in 1983, Surviving Schizophrenia has become the standard reference book on the disease and has helped thousands of patients, their families, and mental health professionals. In clear language, this much-praised and important book describes the nature, causes, symptoms, treatment, and course of schizophrenia and also explores living with it from both the patient's and the family's point of view. This new, completely updated sixth edition includes the latest research findings on what causes the disease, as well as information about the newest drugs for treatment.

Dr. Amador's research on poor insight was inspired by his success helping his brother Henry, who had schizophrenia, accept treatment. Like tens of millions of others diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and addictions, Henry did not believe he was ill. In this latest edition, all chapters have been updated with new research on anosognosia (lack of insight) and much more detail on LEAP. Listeners will find expanded guidance on how to learn and use LEAP.

Schizophrenia has become a recognized psychotic disorder in modern day psychology and research has shown that one in 100 people suffer from this disease in some proportion or degree. It is a dreaded disease and comes as a near death blow to those who are diagnosed with this condition. This fear does not necessarily arise from the scary disease it actually is, but various misconceptions, myths, and misunderstanding that surround it. This disorder has been very thoroughly misunderstood and misrepresented.

Pete Earley had no idea. He'd been a journalist for over 30 years, and the author of several award-winning, even best-selling, nonfiction books about crime and punishment and society. Yet he'd always been on the outside looking in. He had no idea what it was like to be on the inside looking out until his son, Mike, was declared mentally ill, and Earley was thrown headlong into the maze of contradictions, disparities, and catch-22s that is America's mental health system.

This “incredibly captivating” (Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies) portrait of schizophrenia, the most malignant and mysterious mental illness, by renowned psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman, interweaves cultural and scientific history with dramatic patient profiles and clinical experiences to impart a revolutionary message of hope. For the first time in history, we can effectively treat schizophrenia, limiting its disabling effects—and we’re on the verge of being able to prevent the disease’s onset entirely.

New York Times-best-selling author Ron Powers offers a searching, richly researched narrative of the social history of mental illness in America paired with the deeply personal story of his two sons' battles with schizophrenia. From the centuries of torture of "lunatiks" at Bedlam Asylum to the infamous eugenics era to the follies of the anti-psychiatry movement to the current landscape in which too many families struggle alone to manage afflicted love ones, Powers limns our fears and myths about mental illness and the fractured public policies that have resulted.

Do you spend too much time and energy worrying about things that never even happen? Too antsy for long meditations and worry you’re “doing it wrong”? Do negative thoughts intrude on your happiest moments? Would you rather share a good laugh than complete another gratitude list? Then this book is for you. Let professional speaker and mental health advocate Randye Kaye introduce you to a method of harnessing the power of words—shortcuts your brain already knows well—to be happier right away. Why not start living happier today?

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

An intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness, The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esmé Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the “collected schizophrenias” but to those who wish to understand it as well.

Millions of people in the United States are affected by mental illness every year. The COVID-19 pandemic not only caused new or aggravated symptoms in people, but further exposed the shortcomings of the American mental health system. Too many of us are confused, afraid, and overwhelmed. Families and friends are often left in the dark about how best to help their loved ones, how to deal with financial and logistical issues, and how to handle the emotional challenges of loving someone who is suffering. You Are Not Alone is here to offer help.

Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.

Talking about death and dying is considered taboo in polite company, and even in the medical field. Our ideas about dying are confusing at best: Will our memories flash before our eyes? Regrets consume our thoughts? Does a bright light appear at the end of a tunnel? For most people, it will be a slower process, one eased with preparedness, good humor, and a bit of faith. At the forefront of changing attitudes around palliative care is hospice nurse Hadley Vlahos, who shows that end-of-life care can teach us just as much about how to live as it does about how we die.

Vince Granata remembers standing in front of his suburban home in Connecticut the day his mother and father returned from the hospital with his three new siblings in tow. He had just finished scrawling their names in orange chalk on the driveway: Christopher, Timothy, and Elizabeth. Twenty-three years later, Vince was a thousand miles away when he received the news that would change his life - his younger brother, Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia, had killed their mother in their childhood home.