A Mental Health Book Club!

Greetings, Trauma Community,

I am returning from a self-care break and was thinking it would be great to provide a forum thread where we can compile and review our favorite mental health books. Reading has been one of my favorite coping skills and has opened me up to a world of healing in the face of diagnoses that can often leave one feeling completely isolated. Books remind me that I am so far from alone. I hope with time this thread will continue to grow and I look forward to reading all of your recommendations. 📖

I'll go first! 💡

NOTE: I am offering a trigger-warning due to the very nature of these topics.

"Tina was my first child patient, just seven years old when I met her..."

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The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce Perry, M.D., Ph.D.

BACK OF THE BOOK

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, he tells their stories of trauma and transformation. Dr. Perry clearly explains what happens to the brain when children are exposed to extreme stress. He reveals his innovative methods for helping to ease their pain, allowing them to become healthy adults. This deeply informed and moving book dramatically demonstrates that only when we understand the science of the mind can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child.

PRAISE FOR THE BOY WHO WAS RAISED AS A DOG

"I have never encountered a child advocate with a better mind, a bigger heart, or a more generous spirit than Bruce Perry. This book captures the essence of his insights and the heroism of his actions on behalf of children who have encountered the dark side of human experience."

-James Garbarino, Ph.D., author of Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them

"For many years, Bruce Perry's work has been deserving of our highest praise. This book is his crowning achievement, the ultimate combination of science and humanity."

-Joel A. Dvoskin, Ph.D., ABPP, University of Arizona College of Medicine, and President, American Psychology-Law Society

FINAL THOUGHTS

Whether you're a traumatized child, a psychology student, or simply curious about brain science there is much to be gained by picking up this book.

"I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. Like all the drugs put together-the lithium, the Prozac, the desipramine, and Desyrel that I take to sleep at night-can no longer combat whatever it is that was wrong with me in the first place. I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out *** and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out. But that was so long ago..."

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Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel

Prozac Nation (1994) takes us into the mind of the demented and depressed. Feathered and unfiltered, Elizabeth Wurtzel shares her story of hard-earned triumph over a disease that disables and kills countless American's each year. While this work is far from the top of my favorites list, it has an immense pop culture quality that certainly aided in its envied climb as a New York Times Bestseller. A memoirist at best, Wurtzel provides a safe place to land when we can't get out of bed in the morning. Prozac Nation can also be seen as a major motion picture (2001).

RAVES FOR PROZAC NATION

"Wrenching and comical, self-indulgent and self-aware, Prozac Nation possesses the raw candor of Joan Didion's essay's, the irritating emotional exhibitionism of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and the wry, dark humor of a Bob Dylan song."

-The New York Times

"A very important book, particularly to the countless number of people who aren't sure what's wrong with them but are suffering from the negative thinking, erratic behavior, and dark moods associated with clinical depression. A powerful self-portrait...well worth reading."

-San Francisco Bay Guardian

"Wurtzel portrays, from the inside out, an emotional life perpetually spent outrunning the relentless pursuit of what she describes as a black wave, often sacrificing her likability on the altar of her truth."

-Vanity Fair

FINAL THOUGHTS

Wurtzel's story is important because it highlights the highly controversial topic of the over-medicated public in the face of big pharma drug trends and symptomatic treatment for valid and significant mental illness. Having read this book twice myself, I feel Prozac Nation is a mainstream necessity for every psychology enthusiast. In many ways it returns us to the vastly misunderstood experience known as depression. Despite its often-ugly truths that will leave you wanting to look away, this book bridges the gap where a lack of language lies.

"Just knowing there's an out makes the pain almost bearable for one more day..."

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Manic by Terri Cheney

While I consider myself well read on the topic of manic depression, known today as Bipolar Disorder, I have never seen it presented this way. Her words sit up straight and lean boldly in from the very first page and is not intended for the faint of heart. Having read this work upwards of four times - with such heart and complete lack of grace - I found her literary voice disquieting, daunting even. Cheney is a shining example of life gone wrong. She reminds us that even the working upper-class is not somehow exempt from a cranial invasion.

BACK OF THE BOOK

An attractive, highly successful Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer, Terri Cheney had been battling debilitating bipolar disorder for the better part of her life-and concealing a pharmacy's worth of prescription drugs meant to stabilize her moods and make her "normal". In explosive bursts of prose that mirror the devastating mania and extreme despair of her illness, Cheney describes her roller-coaster existence with shocking honesty, giving brilliant voice to the previously unarticulated madness she endured. Brave, electrifying, poignant, and disturbing, Manic does not simply explain bipolar disorder-it takes us into its grasp and does not let go.

RAVE REVIEWS FOR MANIC

"Manic is filled with gorgeous writing, and we have never heard mania or depression described in such a visceral way. Terri Cheney's ability to find humor in what should be terrifying situations makes this difficult illness never off-putting, and in fact, fascinating. Echoes of William Styron abound."

-Demitri F. Papolos, M.D., and Janice Papolos, authors of The Bipolar Child

"Cheney brilliantly brings us along one her haunting and riveting journey of bipolar disorder. I was scared to go back, but it's a place that people need to see to better understand this insidious and invisible illness that is still so stigmatized. Manic is extremely powerful, and at the same time, Cheney really manages to make you laugh!"

-Andy Behrman, author of Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania

"In florid mania the roiling surf both seduces and destroys, crushing will and reason. All too often for those who suffer, flung repeatedly against the rocks of prejudice and misunderstanding, the story ends in tragedy. Terri Cheney's gritty, vibrant memoir brings this chaotic frenzy to life, tumbling the reader through disaster and despair, to end in hope. Manic is an extraordinary achievement that captures the real experience."

-Peter C. Whybrow, M.D., Director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience, Psychiatry, and Biobehavior at UCLA and author of A Mood Apart

FINAL THOUGHTS

Truly visceral, Cheney's Manic is painfully authentic and worthy of multiple reads leaving something new to be had each time. As someone living with manic depression, I can attest to her truth and find comfort in our shared pain. Somehow, the sentiment that we are so very far from isolated in our suffering provides compassion in a maddening hour. The matter, it seems, is simply finding a way to convey the language in order to reach others. Ultimately, with great vulnerability and strength of character, Cheney has achieved this.

"Sybil Isabel Dorsett knew that she had to get back to New York while she was still herself..."

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Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber

PREFACE EXCERPT

Sybil's true story provides a rare glimpse into the unconscious mind and opens doorways to a new understanding. A reflection of abnormal psychology and of an extraordinary developmental pattern, the case of Sybil Dorsett supplies new insight into the normal. It affords not only a new observation of the uncanny power of the unconscious mind in motivating human behavior but also a new look into the dynamics of destructive family relationships, the crippling effects of a narrow, bigoted religious background, a woman's identification with the males in her family, and the denial of self-realization. In terms of what not to do, Sybil's story is a cogent lesson in childcare. Implicit in this account, too, are issues relevant to such questions as: What is maturity? What is a whole person?

Sybil's life story also illuminates the role of the unconscious mind in creativity; the subtle interrelationships of remembering and forgetting, of the coexistence of the past with the present; and the significance of the primal scene in spawning psychoneurosis. There are also certain philosophical questions implicit here, namely, the subtle relationships between reality and unreality and the meaning of "I".

Medically this account throws light on the genesis of mental illness in terms of heredity and environment and the difference between schizophrenia, which some doctors and the public alike tend to use as a catch-all for a multitude of diverse symptoms, and Grande Hysterie, the little-understood illness with which Sybil was afflicted.

Most important of all perhaps, is the expansion of consciousness that the reader experiences as he or she falls under the spell of Sybil's internal adventures.

-Flora Rheta Schreiber, New York City, January 1973

Sybil (1973), the closely examined best-seller by Flora Rheta Schreiber, is an infamous classic case history in psych-literature involving what was formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. The individual with this disorder copes with an often violent and obscene reality by dissociating - or "splitting"- into alternate selves, each with different traits and memory systems. Often times the alters are unaware of one another. The true self often experiences fugue states in which she is unable to recall memories or details during the time she is "underneath." These are only a few basic features of an often compelling and overwhelming illness. Treatment approaches are controversial and generally phase oriented. The goal is ultimately reconnecting the identities of disparate alters into a single functioning identity with all its memories and experiences intact supported by an emphasis on acceptance or integration. In this book, Sybil Dorsett claims host to sixteen distinguishable personalities, better known today as dissociative identity disorder, or DID, and remains the first ever with this condition to undergo psychoanalysis. Her story brings to the forefront the horrors of one of the most debilitating cases of child abuse and mental illnesses in history.

THE REAL SYBIL

After her death, Sybil's records were released in 1998 and her many truths were revealed due to carefully documented medical records. Shirley Ardell Mason was born January 20th, 1923, in Dodge Center, Minnesota. She was the only child of convicted Seventh Day Adventists. This fundamental fact often resulted in the twisted logic of her most prominent abuser - her mother, Mattie, who was thought to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia herself. Perhaps less well-known, Shirley was an artist. Her work provides an invaluable reflection of her unique mind and can be seen by searching The Hidden Paintings of Shirley A. Mason.

Faced with much controversy, Schreiber's work has been the subject of skepticism in terms of severity and accuracy. While her story remains a pop culture icon, you can examine the reported embellishments for yourself in the 2011 release of Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case by Debbie Nathan.

While Mason herself admits that the facts involving the dynamics of her multiple identities were inaccurate - which may lead the public to question its label as a non-fiction genre release - Schreiber's story remains unequivocally paramount in developing the early dialogue of trauma related mental health in the American 1970s. During this time, layman and physicians alike held the very notion that this condition even existed with great cynicism. Sybil (1976) can also be seen as an Emmy award winning major motion picture starring Sally Field.

PRAISE FOR SYBIL

"Spellbinding!" -TIME

"A moving human narrative." -New York Review of Books

"Astonishing...it forces you to look at yourself and the people around you in a new way." -Doris Lessing

"Illuminating...fascinating!" -Chicago Tribune

FINAL THOUGHTS

After eleven years of daunting psychoanalysis, Sybil Dorsett breaks apart, swims through repressed trauma, and eventually achieves a liberating recovery. It is a journey to be had, one that completely assaults the human condition and, perhaps, creates more questions than answers. I found myself laughing, crying, and unable to put it down while simultaneously nauseous and dissuaded. Regardless, I find this (and its counterpart) to be an essential read within the most basic realm of psychiatry. Both of these books grace my bookshelf providing excellent insight involving ethical psychology with the ever-present reminder that we must be stewards of our own well-rounded research before accepting information as absolute truth.

Happy Reading! 📚