Mental Health Books

I picked up Myrna Orenstein's book knowing little about LD and nothing about undiagnosed learning disabilities (ULD). Her clear and personal writing style makes it easy for the average reader to understand some of the struggles people with ULD face.

The book becomes increasingly meaningful as Orenstein calls for better methods for teachers to identify children having academic trouble, and to give a second thought to the class clown or the disorganized and constantly late student. Orenstein's message is supported further throughout the book, as she urges parents, teachers and therapists to work together; to recognize that this disability is attatched to developmental issues inside AND outside of learning in the classroom. Attention is called to bridge the gap between LD specialists and psychotherapists, so that these smarter-than-average children can reach their potential.

Her personal experiences, reseach, and writing introduce the everyday reader to the world where people are wrongly labeled "lazy," or "unmotivated." Her focus on adults and ULD gives insight for LD specialists, therapists, and, like myself, the average reader.

SMART BUT STUCK

What if Horatio Alger had been a dyslexic?

Sure, he's only a fictional character, but his bootstrap mentality and "work hard and you'll succeed" ethics have become what America believes is reality. If he had been a real American, there would have been a one-in-five chance that he would have had some type of learning disability. If he had, his handiwork in certain areas would have only been met with frustration, shame, and the "chasm".

Dr. Myrna Orenstein, in her book "Smart but Stuck", challenges the American myth that a person's strengths and weaknesses are determined solely by intelligence, motivation, and hard work. Orenstein has learned from her own experience and the experiences of others that many extremely intelligent people are unable to learn conventionally in certain areas.

Through the stories of twenty very different and very bright Americans who grew up with undiagnosed learning disabilities (ULD), she explores the painful and trying emotional journey these individuals were forced to go on in order to come to terms with themselves and their learning disorders.

Dr. Orenstein's book compelled me to go down a difficult, but in the end wonderful, road of self-discovery. I have always been a slow reader - not to the point of being diagnosed with a learning disability, where most weekends of college have been spent solely in the library. It frustrated me to no end. Was I not trying hard enough? Could I be tugging those bootstraps a little higher? Was I just plain stupid? Who could explain why I excelled in things such as writing, painting, problem solving, and math and yet read as slow as the children I babysat for?

The first important thing Orenstein's book gave me was the realization that I was not alone. I unquestionably saw myself (my experience and emotions) within the stories and voices of her twenty case studies. The second invaluable thing I learned was that I wasn't going to be able to get rid of my slight disability, but that it was nothing that I should be ashamed of. My slow reading was a weakness within me that I was going to have to accept and learn to effectively live with. Myrna Orenstein's book inspired me to search for new ways to compensate for my reading speed.

SMART BUT STUCK invigorated me to use the people around me and my strength in creative problem solving to find solutions to compensate for my weakness.

In SMART BUT STUCK, Orenstein provides a powerful portrait of the emotional journey undergone by many American adults who have grown up with undiagnosed learning disabilities. Her book illustrates that if a person approaches their learning disability with the right attitude and the necessary support, they can learn to effectively live with it so that it in no way imprisons their intelligence, strength, and success.

Through the powerful accounts of real Americans, Orenstein makes it clear that it is possible to expand America's traditional myth of the path to success. Her book shows that, as both a culture and as individuals, we must be open at certain times to creatively approach conventional learning in order to compensate for learning disabilities. SMART BUT STUCK combines an approach that I appreciate with an in-depth manual for professionals, including therapists, counselors, and educators, to use when measuring the impact of undiagnosed learning disabilities on their clients and students.

For several years I have been searching for information related to my personal experience with LD. There are many excellent books that have helped me understand and cope with a diagnosis that came unexpectedly into my life when I was in my 40's.

I discovered "Smart but Stuck" quite by accident as I searched a database of doctoral dissertations. When I called to find out how I could get a copy of a dissertation about adult diagnosed LD, I was told it had recently been published. Immediately I came to Amazon and ordered a copy for myself.

Dr. Orenstein's book gave me an understanding that is fundamental to anyone trying to put all the pieces of their personal LD puzzle together.

Her concept of the "chasm" is an essential building block for LD's trying to understand their disability in the long view. We all cope with self-defining events from our childhood. Often these events have been pushed into the recesses of the subconscious mind because they are unpleasant reminders of how we were seen by peers and adults whose subtle and not so subtle negative reactions permanently altered our self images.

"Smart but Stuck" has had a liberating effect on me. I deal with the obvious issues related to my LD every day. Using this book, I have begun to go back and reaccess my experiences as a student in a more positive way.

I would recommend this book to anyone with LD at any age or stage of their diagnosis and treatment. While it is specifically related to adults, it will add another dimension at any stage of the LD learning process.

Dr. Orenstein's book should be required reading for parents and counselors as they seek to understand and support someone with LD.

I picked up Myrna Orenstein's book knowing little about LD and nothing about undiagnosed learning disabilities (ULD). Her clear and personal writing style makes it easy for the average reader to understand some of the struggles people with ULD face.

The book becomes increasingly meaningful as Orenstein calls for better methods for teachers to identify children having academic trouble, and to give a second thought to the class clown or the disorganized and constantly late student. Orenstein's message is supported further throughout the book, as she urges parents, teachers and therapists to work together; to recognize that this disability is attatched to developmental issues inside AND outside of learning in the classroom. Attention is called to bridge the gap between LD specialists and psychotherapists, so that these smarter-than-average children can reach their potential.

Her personal experiences, reseach, and writing introduce the everyday reader to the world where people are wrongly labeled "lazy," or "unmotivated." Her focus on adults and ULD gives insight for LD specialists, therapists, and, like myself, the average reader.

I'm impressed with Hayman's ease in presenting challenging material in an integrated framework that is made remarkably easy to understand. This is an important work that challenges various assumptions you never realized you had, but that now you can't deny having made, and made without real justification. It is by provoking that kind of analysis that Hayman's work has the potential to make us all "smarter." It's rare to find a book that conveys such moral passion for a truly egalitarian society, yet argues for that society using such carefully constructed rational arguments, often citing emprirical and historical resources, while also tapping into the author's personal experiences. Highly recommended.

Professor Hayman looks at an issue in our society that is rampant with misunderstanding and rife with malaise, the basing of intelligence among our myriad cultures. His work engages the reader with common sense and personal experience as well as superb research. I can only recommend this text in the highest of glowing terms, an essential read for any individual seeking to uncover one critical reason why our society is unjust and in need of balancing.

Professor Hayman looks at an issue in our society that is rampant with misunderstanding and rife with malaise, the basing of intelligence among our myriad cultures. His work engages the reader with common sense and personal experience as well as superb research. I can only recommend this text in the highest of glowing terms, an essential read for any individual seeking to uncover one critical reason why our society is unjust and in need of balancing.

Nancy Levit *

In 1993 the Educational Testing Service renamed the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Amid controversy that the test contained racial and cultural biases, did not measure intelligence, and thus was inappropriately called an "aptitude" test, test officials changed the name of the SAT to the Scholastic Assessment Test. In 1997, the testing service again renamed its college entrance examination: the SAT became simply the SAT - initials only, no acronym, no squabbles over the meaning of aptitude, achievement, or intelligence. The same thing happens in workplaces all over the country. Employers pronounce that they make hiring decisions based on "merit" - and everyone nods.

In The Smart Culture: Society, Intelligence, and Law, law professor Robert L. Hayman, Jr., explodes the myths that everyone has come to accept about "intelligence," "merit," and "race." He then shows the ways in which law has been complicit ! in keeping these myths unexamined.

Hayman's thesis is simple and straightforward. We have bought into the very idea that there is a meritocracy, and that the meritocracy reflects a natural order. We assume that people succeed based on "merit." In actuality, those people who succeed - for reasons of race, property-ownership, and power - have been the ones who get to define "merit." Merit, as Hayman points out, is largely a definitional tautology: we identify certain characteristics we deem worthy (such as test-taking ability), and then call people who can perform those tasks laudatory labels ("smart"). We thus reward people who are worthy, based, of course, on the possession of the previously identified characteristics. Merit is not natural, Hayman says, "It is the carefully crafted product of centuries of cultural propaganda, a myth of natural inequality perpetuated by men in power - by a political, economic, and intellectual elite.&qu! ot;

Hayman makes the all-important link between race, me! rit, and intelligence. While our nation formally commits to equality under law, our culture still possesses deeply held beliefs about the natural inequalities of its citizens. From the time of its founding documents, our country promised equality. But declaring all men equal was not only a promise unfulfilled, it was a promise founded on a contradiction: the principle did not apply to women, slaves, and those without property. "A nation committed now to equality," Hayman writes, "remained fundamentally convinced that its people were, by nature, unequal."

This idea of natural differences between the races was promoted not only by Southern congressmen in the Reconstruction debates, but by the Western European "race scientists" of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the American eugenicists of the early 1900s, and the Aryan supremacists in 1930s Germany. It is a debate that has been resurrected in late twentieth century Americ! a by The Bell Curve.

The Smart Culture is a political history of the concept of intelligence. Hayman traces various projects of classifying human intelligence, demonstrating that the equation of intelligence and merit has little scientific validity, but enormous cultural appeal. Given the popularly accepted assumption that intelligence differences are a naturally occurring phenomenon, Hayman argues that racial equality will not occur until the myths surrounding intelligence are dismantled.

The Smart Culture is also a cultural history of the construction of race. This new racism, which is tied to our concepts of intelligence, and defended by arguments about "merit," is, as Hayman explains, really the old racism. The modern, righteously indignant and seemingly egalitarian calls for a color-blind society ignore the history and tradition of our treatment of race in America.

Despite evidence that the biological, genetic, and anthropological significance of raci! al classifications is modest, in America what we have chose! n to make count are the visible characteristics of race, such as skin color. For the Supreme Court, race is an immutable characteristic because of descent, ancestry, morphology, and physiognomy. Race, for the Court, and for most of America - white America, that is - is not a matter of culture, politics, economic enfranchisement, or lived experiences. "Racism," Hayman argues, "thus embraces not only the continued tendency to make of race what it is not - something biological, immutable, and inferior; racism embraces as well the refusal to recognize what race is - a powerfully significant social and political reality."

This review must come with a disclaimer, or perhaps a warning label. Reviews are supposed to be evaluations of merit. Having read what has gone before, you can probably sense the irony that is coming. Let me compound the irony of assessing the worth of Hayman's book with a confession: Bob Hayman and I have co-authored articles together! in the past. So for those of you who suspect that bias might infect this review, you may wish to stop reading before the descriptive project lapses explicitly into laudation.

Hayman's original research brings to life the actual debates of the Reconstruction Congress on slavery and racial differences, and he amasses the anthropological and genetic research regarding race and intelligence, but he drives his point home with stories. Hayman uses narratives to offer readers a glimpse into the formation of meritocracies. Each of the chapters in The Smart Culture contains a story, and in his stories you may recognize your childhood. The stories of Stephen and the Binky Fairy, Louis and the Jewish boy at the lunch table, Mrs. Sweeney's "retards," and Buddy, the impossibly stupid dog, all share a theme: the people in power are the ones who make the rules, who create insiders and outsiders, who name certain qualities or attributes and thereby make them important. The st! ories - sweet, wistful retrospectives, at times painfully s! elf-deprecating - are not to be missed, rivaling those from the great raconteurs of literature: Mark Twain meets Camus on the courthouse steps. In Hayman's stories, and his careful tracing of the political, scientific, and legal naturalization of race, are much broader implications than simply issues of racial inferiority. Systems of merit are everywhere, says Hayman. He describes how the territorial imperative of second graders at the school lunch table is learned, from aunts and uncles, from moms and dads. Hayman tells a story of schoolboys arguing whether the Phillies will take the pennant, and in the background, the girls in the class are a Greek chorus: "yea." Mini-meritocracies operate in sports (soccer games, football, sandlot games, Wall Ball), in school cliques, in gendered speech patterns, and in cocktail party conversations. They are manufactured. They are dangerous and destructive. And we make them.

The Smart Culture is more than a deconstruction! of the concept of intelligence. It is more than a painstakingly researched scientific, psychological, socio-cultural, and constitutional history of race. The Smart Culture is one of our generation's most powerful indictments of insidious racism and meritocracies - the kind in which we all participate, everyday.

* Nancy Levit is a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the author of The Gender Line: Men, Women, and the Law (New York University Press 1998).

Sorrow's Web -- the book I've needed to read for decades. Ms. Sheffield deals with the subject of growing up with a depressive mother in such an insightful, intelligent, and honest way! I found recognition, understanding and comfort from her combination of the personal and the more "scientific" information. I urge mothers, daughters, sons -- and, yes -- fathers, to read this book. It has the potential profoundly affect your life and the life of those you love most.

This balanced, frank, and insightful account will make a difference in a lot of lives. Thoroughly explores and illustrates the many aspects and consequences of maternal depression in detail, is packed with valuable observations and information - no wasted words here. Devoted to straight talk. Sheffield offers knowledgeable support to her reader, does not flinch from using her own experiences to illustrate her points, and provides clear, practical advice on therapy choices with no waffling on any of the challenges we will meet in seeking the right treatment for ourselves or others close to us. Provides lists of resources for information, newsletters, local support groups. An illuminating and much needed book.

This is an extraordinary book -- sensitive, revealing and READABLE. I only wish I had it thirty years ago!

Sheffield's biggest contribution may offering an answer to those who have struggled with chronic depression: "Why have I always felt so strange? Where did this all come from?" In other words, the fallout from living with a mother who is depressed -- even someone who has never been identified as "depressed" -- can have lifelong consequences. The book will probably convince those who have been reluctant to get treatment to do so. Much of the rest is a standard round-up of recent literature and the usual advice on what to do when you are depressed --take medication, find a therapist - maybe. Despite its failings and its occasionally cutesy writing, it's probably the book about depression that has been the most personally helpful. I'd give this five stars for the idea and three for the execution.

I have read many books about spirituality, but "Spiritual Fitness" stands apart. Turner approaches the sensitive topic with respect and open-mindedness. Her book is divided into bite-sized pieces, which makes it easy-to-read and understand. Combining the best of Western medicine and ancient wisdom, "Spiritual Fitness" leads you to a lifestyle of peace and health. This is the real deal!


- Jenni Schaefer, author of "Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too" (McGraw-Hill)

I loved Spiritual Fitness. I could not put this book down. Laura does a great job taking you through an easy to learn step-by-step process that helps you to get in touch with your spiritual and physical health and well-being. She shows you how to achieve a healthy balance within yourself. I think this would be a very helpful book for anyone who's trying to find balance in their life and wants to become more connected with their spiritual side.

Laura Turner's book, Spiritual Fitness is a comprehensive yet simple text that acknowledges the "whole you." Many of us (especially women) have learned to dismember ourselves into roles and parts (i.e., I'm fat, I have a big butt, I am a mommy, I'm a corporate executive, I am not good enough). This book gives the tools you need to start putting all the pieces together so you can feel energized and have long-term, stress-free, healthy habits. Tips and strategies range all the way from healthy food choices to visualization and journaling. Her exercise program includes fun things like "The Inspiration Stretch, Wheel of Life and Embracing the World." If you're ready to break free of the all or nothing, rigid, perfectionistic world of yo-yo dieting, you're ready for this book.

This is a wonderful guide to help you begin your journey to a healthy way of living, thinking and eating! If you like the works of Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay and Shakti Gawain, you will love my friend Laura Turner's book Spiritual Fitness: The 7-Steps To Living Well. She presents a wide range of disciplines in a simple, straight forward and easy to understand format. Laura provides a vast array of inspirational affirmations and insights with each of her 7 steps. She simplifies each step by first giving a motivational quote/message and an overview of what you will learn. Then she explains the important concepts needed to understand each step, and breaks them down even further with detailed FAQs. Finally, she helps you incorporate each step into your daily life with several assignments and exercises. Each step builds upon the next, increasing your awareness to yourself and your connection with the world around you. Laura covers topics that balance and enhance the mind, body and spirit, such as creative visualization, meditation, energy centers (chakras), nutrition and Qigong. She also provides a list of recommended reading for you to continue your road to spiritual well-being in greater detail. So if you want to get headed in the right direction, this is the book for you!

I think this book was written badly and is not very user friendly. My professor has agreed that this text is not the best out there. I have to make my own outlines to understand what is being said in this very dense and hard to read/comprehend text. The only reason I got it was because it was required for the class. Had I known how this text would read, I would have opted for another text.

I thought this was an outstanding intro to basic stats - it does a great job presenting the intuition behind most of the important basic concepts in stats, and I also loved the articulate and flowing style of the text. Very light on math, too, so a great text for those less quantitatively inclined souls out there who would still like to get a solid grasp of basic stats.
One great addition to the book would be a list of websites that have interactive stats demos, which I think are a great tool to help better understanding and to develop intuition. (One such site is explorelearning.com, which has pretty decent demos on several of the main concepts, but in general you can google [the concept you're looking for]+demo to get more demos (some better than others) on specific concepts). On second thought, this may be not a very realistic suggestion considering how often new websites pop up and old ones go dead, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

This is by far the best introductory text to statistics for students in the behavioral sciences I have come across.

The conceptual layout makes this textbook especially engaging. Unlike most statistics textbooks this one presents more difficult concepts in a step-by-step manner, which allows for better understanding.

The authors have done a superb job of explaining the logic behind the statistical procedures. This is important, for without this understanding one will likely misapply statistics and/or misread statistics.

In short, here one finds not only an introduction to descriptive and inferential statistics for behavioral scientists, but also a text that will give the reader a firm grounding in the logic behind statistics.

As I read this book three things became apparent: one, the authors know their subject inside and out; second, they understand their beginning audience; last and most importantly they know how to teach. I strongly recommend this well written book to anyone needing to learn stats.

I purchased two copies of Dr. Carter's book, one for each of two friends who were recently diagnosed with lung cancer. Both of these individuals told me that, even though it was not the only book that they received, it was by far the most helpful, compassionate, and the one they return to most often. One recipient told me that the accompanying audio CD is one of her best tools for getting through the day. This book is a wonderful gift of ammunition for those who are fighting cancer; it lets them know that you are with them in their fight.

As a psychologist and two-time cancer survivor, I found Dr. Carter's book to be of tremendous help. It is a well written comprehensive road map of the cancer journey. The CD was so unseful before, during and after surgery and was a calming aid during follow-up treatment. My thanks to Dr. Carter for informing the reader not only of the facts of cancer but of the emotions also. This book will continue to be of great assistance to me as well as to my patients. Dorothy Sasmor, Ph.D.

By Holly W. Schwartztol, PhD
When patients receive the diagnosis of cancer, they are often overwhelmed by fear and confusion. Dr. Stephanie Carter has written a manual that clearly and sensitively addresses the quandary that patients face. It's as if Stephanie takes each person by the hand and gently guides them through the process of managing their emotions as they navigate the medical regime. Dr. Carter combines compassionate narrative with easy, stellar exercises that patients can do on their own.

The accompanying CD, Fighting Cancer, combines Dr. Carter's calming voice with soothing music. Through guided imagery and suggestions for healing, patients will find the tools to empower their immune systems to triumph over cancer cells. Dr. Carter's inclusion of specific imagery examples for overcoming disease allows the listener to more fully appreciate the process of developing their own, unique images. I enthusiastically recommend this workbook/CD combination to my psychotherapy patients and to friends who have cancer.

Perhaps, you or someone you know hs cancer. Stephanie's workbook/CD make an excellent gift and is helpful for caretakers as well as patients.

Dr. Carter has written an extremely user-friendly book on cancer with many useful coping strategies. This book is innovative and smart: it puts the element of control back into the hands of the cancer sufferer. And the audio is a terrific complement. I recommend it highly to anyone who is fighting cancer.

I have enjoyed this textbook because it gives a lot more information about the theorist and their theory develpment than many other Psychology textbooks. It is interesting to read about their lives, and understand more of the reasoning behind the development of their theories.

I would have to say that this textbook is very well written and is easy to follow. Schultzs made the book very interesting with great examples and photographs.

Schultz & Schultz's *Theories of Personality* is incredibly well written, concise, and a pleasure to read. The information is presented in a way that is both in-depth and easy to understand. This text provides background information on theorists, their theoretical contributions, and loads of current research on aspects of each theory. A+ for Schultz & Schultz! Highly recommended for all students of psychology, and all professors of personality!

I really thought this book was helpful. I bought this book to complement another book I had trouble understanding. I finished this book in a couple of days in time to complete a research paper. You can't find many easy reading books like this one.

I found this book an answer and relief of many emotional problems and personal conflicts. Thank you, Christopher Hansaard, for sharing your spiritual adventures and providing formulas that enhance living. It's kept nearby for constant reference.

Buddhism has been an interest of mine for a long time. Lot of the core ideas are slowly molded into a Westernized body of thoughts. From this angle it was interesting to read a book about a system of beliefs that was slowly molded by Buddhism into a system that contains Buddhist thoughts but is more tangible. The book deals with Traditional Bon medicine, which is a complex system of ideas, thoughts, and interpretations of the physical world. Having not read more about Bon, I cannot evaluate the correctness of the descriptions offered by the author, but I assume that they are faithful to the original teachings.

Now, what is the "Tibetan Art of Positive Thinking"? It is simply skillful thinking about life and living. I walked away with two insights after reading this book.
1. Life is hard, but simple.
2. Finding solutions to problems demands focus, attention, and commitment.

As a self-help book it is decent and above the average. Since I take a very dim view of the industrial production of erudite and packaged snippets of marginally intelligent insights, I cannot rate this book higher than three stars. I must commend, however, the author for being very forthright and honest. I never sensed condecension or empty cheerleading throughtout the book.

But since it is an interesting read - apart from the self-help aspect of this book - I give it four stars.

This book is a powerhouse of information. It is written in a very easy to understand manner, with clear and concise instructions. I love this book. It is simply wonderful. I can't thank the author enough for bringing such a beautiful book to fruition. This book crosses the barrier of religions and would be a wonderful read for people of any faith. I would strongly suggest this book for people who volunteer their time in prison programs as well. Everyone who needs a nudge to find bliss within should have a copy of this book.

When you read a book such as this, you are drawn into a new reality outside most of our normal experiences.

When the Bon Buddhists left Tibet having foretold the 1959 invasion, they were scattered throughout the world to places where their teaching would be effective, and where they would find people to carry the Bon tradtion of skilful thinking.

One such Master discovered the author at the age four in New Zealand and thus began 23 years of instruction.

There are many great techniques that stem from this teaching, so I am enjoying this book tremendously. There are some easy, yet empowering exercises to move negative thoughts and create an empowering reality.

This is an easy to follow blueprint for living, which I highly recommend. This book came to me highly recommended, and I highly recommend it to you.

If you were to find this review helpful, please click yes.

Dr Benson presents strong evidence for what others have called the "mind / body connection." Mainstream medical science has not yet recognized the importance belief plays in health but, Dr. Benson presents numerous studies that validate the major role belief plays in the healing process and wellness. Practitioners of complimentary therapies will find this book especially helpful in understanding how many non-drug based therapies can work. Well written and thought provoking!

I think what is amazing about this book is that Herbert Benson states without a doubt that faith in God is healthy for us. While our ancestors took it for granted that God healed them, as Dr. Benson explains, we have been taught to see healing purely in technical scientific terms. Dr. Benson explains that when we repudiated the importance of belief in healing we deprived ourselves of a powerful healing force.

Dr. Benson knows that his rational-scientific audience will be skeptical of his arguements. So, he provides us with well-reasoned arguements supported by ample evidence. He explains that we need to relax our over-stressed minds on a regular basis. We need this as an antedote to our hurried lives that stress us out and make us sick. He cites many studies (much from his own research) that daily meditation stimulates the bodies natural healing mechanisms.

Now, the radical finding of Dr. Benson's research is that belief in God makes a difference in healing. If a person meditates regularly using a spiritual phrase they are more likely to heal than those who use a secular word such as "peace". The person's religion doesn't matter. It seems that God is an equal opportunity healer.

Through many of the medical observations made by the authors, this book provides some interesting ideas about the connection between the mind and body. Even though we all know that stress (which comes from our minds) influences our health, many of us find it difficult to put the mind and body together in one equation. This book is a great attempt to begin making the bridge between the subjective and objective world. It is full of insightful ideas and inspiring anecdotes. Just excellent overall. If you'd like to read about a sound theoretical framework that explains many of these things, I strongly suggest "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato. When I read Sato's book, everything clicked so much is was unbelievable!

This is a well-written book that clearly describes the links between our thoughts and our physical health. It is written in an accessible personal style, without the "guru" overtones of works by Deepak Chopra or Wayne Dyer (good writers, just with a different style). Everyone, regardless of their view of God, can benfit from the concepts of Remembered Wellness and the Relaxation Response described in this book. A personal recomendation - couple this book, with its "unproven healing energy", with Greg Bradden's "The Divine Matrix", which describes this energy, and you will be good to go.

From Jean Johnston there is now a priceless and refreshingly sensible account on caring for mental illness.
Professor Angus Mackay, Scotland

This is the total reality of having mental illness in your family. A powerful desciption of the developing of a mental illness it is wonderfully with the constructive tools of recovery. It is full of bravery and hope.

A real good read for those who would like to understand mental illness better - sufferer, carer, familly, friend or professional - and is definitely for anyone who feel isolated by mental illness. It makes you realise that you are not alone.

To Walk on Eggshells will prove very useful to any relative, carer or friend of a mentally ill patient.

Together with the book by Mrs Johnston's daughter that describes her own experiences of mental illness 'The Naked Bird Watcher', it will prove a very useful educational tool.

It is also a jolly good read - and short enough to be read by busy people. Strongly recommended.

Two Women - One Journey of Recovery - Two Perspectives

From both the patient and her carer there is now rare and unusual insight into living with and learning to manage a mental illness.

Emotive yet practical, these books should be read by all those affected by mental illness and working in its profession.

To Walk on Eggshells by Jean Johnston, ISBN 0954809211
The Naked Bird Watcher by Suzy Johnston, ISBN 0954809203