Book Reviews Articles

Listed by most recent articles first.

• Manage Your Depression Through Exercise
  Starting any exercise program can be a tough task.  However, for those suffering from depression, it can be close to impossible.  Just getting out of bed is a struggle for some; how are they to ...
• Triggered: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
  Fletcher Wortmann obviously knows his subject.  "Triggered: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder" is for anyone who is or knows someone who is suffering from mental illness of any type.  While Wortmann wrestles with OCD, he ...
• The 11 Laws of Likability: Relationship Networking
  Sometimes self-help authors can’t help but fall into the trap of being overly positive. But not Michelle Tillis Lederman -- she knows how to remain balanced.  In her book, The 11 Laws of Likability: Relationship ...
• Paranormality: Why We See What Isn’t There
  Author and professor Richard Wiseman has spent his career investigating and debunking everything from ghosts to psychics to séances to prophets.  While he now has a PhD in psychology with an emphasis in parapsychology, he ...
• Healing Painful Sex: A Woman’s Guide to Confronting, Diagnosing and Treating Sexual Pain
  In Healing Painful Sex: A Woman’s Guide to Confronting, Diagnosing, and Treating Sexual Pain, physician Deborah Coady, MD, and psychotherapist Nancy Fish, MSW, MPH, combine their medical and psychological expertise to write a book about ...
• The Gentle Self: How to Overcome Your Difficulties with Depression, Anxiety, Shyness, and Low Self-Esteem
  I think everyone’s a little narcissistic.  We all have moments when we wish everyone would be more like us—when we get upset that no one seems to care about what we are feeling.  We also ...
• What’s My Zip Code?
  When I first saw this book "What's My Zip Code?" by David Stringer, it was in download format and I wondered what exactly it would be about because it seemed like an odd title to ...
• The Intuitive Compass: Why the Best Decisions Balance Reason and Instinct
  Among the definitions of the noun compass, one from Merriam-Webster is "any of various nonmagnetic devices that indicate direction."  This is the type of compass you will discover in Francis P. Cholle's first book, The ...
• Apocalypse Not: Everything You Know About 2012, Nostradamus and the Rapture is Wrong
  Back in 2010, students at the high school where I taught began telling me, without the least bit of skepticism, that the world was going to end in 2012.  I’d reply, “No, it isn’t” and ...
• Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World
  Jon Kabat-Zinn writes the foreword and does a lovely job of setting the stage for Mark Williams and Danny Penman’s Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World.  In the foreword, as ...
• The Lonely Screams: Understanding the Complex World of the Lonely
  Loneliness is certainly a common human experience; even if you’ve been lucky enough to feel it only briefly, or rarely, you know the misery of it, the actual physical pain of it. Arising from a ...
• The Memory Palace: A Memoir
  We children of schizophrenics are the great secret-keepers, the ones who don’t want you to think anything is wrong (p. 5). Author Mira Bartok has encapsulated in this statement her life as the daughter of mentally ...
• The Alzheimer’s Family: Helping Caregivers Cope
  If you were asked to name a terminal illness, it is likely that Alzheimer's would not be your first choice.  However, from my own perspective, when you consider that there is no cure for this ...
• Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia
  From the first sentence, Blake Butler’s poetic voice is clear. He writes: “Into the version of the sky above my house one afternoon when I was twelve, the nearby high school released a flood of ...
• After Schizophrenia
  I was not sure what to expect when I first opened Margaret Hawkins’ After Schizophrenia. Memoirs about people suffering from mental illness are quite common these days and I was interested to see if the ...
• What a Life Can Be
  In “What a Life Can Be: One Therapist’s Take on Schizo-Affective Disorder,” Carolyn Dobbins, PhD offers an insightful look into the evolution of a successful mental health professional with a challenging diagnosis:  schizo-affective disorder.  In an ...
• Find the Upside of the Down Times
  Some people have all the bad luck, and by any measure Rob Pennington, author of Find the Upside of the Down Times, has had more than his fair share. He was shot in the chest, ...
• Sexual Trauma: A Challenge Not Insanity
  Dr. K. Elan Jung’s Sexual Trauma: A Challenge Not Insanity is a strong reference, written for a wide audience including physicians, therapists, victims and the general layperson.  Dr. Jung is a practicing psychiatrist who has ...
• Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia
  Between three and six percent of all teens struggle with some type of eating disorder, be it bulimia, binge eating, or anorexia. Because these illnesses involve eating, they seem to take a blow at family ...
• 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done
  In 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, Peter Bregman doesn’t offer a slew of strategies to accomplish all your activities per day. What he does offer is an ...
• Childhood Psychological Disorders: Current Controversies
  Childhood Psychological Disorders: Current Controversies by Alberto M. Bursztyn is the latest edition to the “Making Sense of Psychology” series. This series concerns itself with the psychological problems and challenges in the lives of today’s ...
• House and Psychology: Humanity is Overrated
  When I was a psychology major, part of our lab work involved observing people through a one-way mirror.  In House and Psychology: Humanity is Overrated, edited by Drs. Ted Cascio and Leonard Martin, the one-way ...
• The Natural Medicine Guide to Bipolar Disorder
  Having a special interest in how diet & physical activity help ease the symptoms of mood disorders, I was excited to review Stephanie Marohn’s book The Natural Medicine Guide to Bipolar Disorder.  This review covers ...
• A Cluttered Life: Searching for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys
  A Cluttered Life: Searching for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys is written for anyone who has felt the pull between the chaos of everyday living and the longing for a rich spiritual life.  Pesi ...
• Transform Your Life Now
  If you Google the phrase "transform your life," you get results showing you how to do just that in 5 easy ways, in less than 30 minutes, with 10 technologies, by 10 truths, or in ...