Mental Illness in The Books Store

Since the DSM-IV® was published in 1994, we’ve seen many advances in our knowledge of psychiatric illness. This Text Revision incorporates information culled from a comprehensive literature review of research about mental disorders published since DSM-IV® was completed in 1994. Updated information is included about the associated features, culture, age, and gender features, prevalence, course, and familial pattern of mental disorders.

The DSM-IV® brings this essential diagnostic tool up-to-date, to promote effective diagnosis, treatment, and quality of care. Now you can get all the essential diagnostic information you rely on from the DSM-IV® along with important updates not found in the 1994 edition.

Stay current with important updates to the DSM-IV®:

• Benefit from new research into Schizophrenia, Asperger’s Disorder, and other conditions

• Utilize additional information about the epidemiology and other facets of DSM conditions

• Update ICD-9-CM codes implemented since 1994 (including Conduct Disorder, Dementia, Somatoform Disorders)

The Desk Reference to the Diagnostic Criteria From DSM-IV-TR® is a concise, affordable companion to the ultimate psychiatric reference, DSM-IV-TR®. It includes all the diagnostic criteria from DSM-IV-TR® in an easy-to-use, spiralbound format. It includes a pull-out chart of the DSM-IV-TR Classification.

Who is the devil you know?

Is it your lying, cheating ex-husband?
Your sadistic high school gym teacher?
Your boss who loves to humiliate people in meetings?
The colleague who stole your idea and passed it off as her own?

In the pages of The Sociopath Next Door, you will realize that your ex was not just misunderstood. He’s a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be sociopaths too.

We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.

How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They’re more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others’ suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win.

The fact is, we all almost certainly know at least one or more sociopaths already. Part of the urgency in reading The Sociopath Next Door is the moment when we suddenly recognize that someone we know—someone we worked for, or were involved with, or voted for—is a sociopath. But what do we do with that knowledge? To arm us against the sociopath, Dr. Stout teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game.

It is the ruthless versus the rest of us, and The Sociopath Next Door will show you how to recognize and defeat the devil you know.

• The new medications and their effectiveness
• The effects of ADD on human sexuality
• The differences between male and female ADD -- including falling estrogen levels and its impact on cognitive function
• The power of meditation
• How to move forward with coaching

And the book still includes advice about:

• Achieving balance by analyzing one's strengths and weaknesses
• Getting along in groups, at work and in intimate and family relationships -- including how to decrease discord and chaos
• Learning the mechanics and methods for getting organized and improving memory
• Seeking professional help, including therapy and medication

An estimated 1.5 million American women have narcissistic personality disorder, which makes them so insecure and overbearing, insensitive and domineering that they can psychologically damage their daughters for life. Daughters of narcissistic mothers learn that maternal love is not unconditional, and that it is given only when they behave in accordance with their mothers' often unreasonable expectations and whims. As adults, these daughters consequently have difficulty overcoming their insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, sadness, and emotional emptiness. They may also have a terrible fear of abandonment that leads them to form unhealthy love relationships, as well as a tendency to perfectionism and unrelenting self-criticism, or to self-sabotage and frustration.

Herself the recovering daughter of a narcissistic mother, Dr. McBride includes her personal struggle, which adds a profound level of authority to her work, along with the perspectives of the hundreds of suffering daughters she's interviewed over the years. Their stories of how maternal abuse has manifested in their lives -- as well as how they have successfully overcome its effects -- show you that you're not alone and that you can take back your life and have the control you want.

Dr. McBride's step-by-step program will enable you to:

(1) Recognize your own experience with maternal narcissism and its effects on all aspects of your life
(2) Discover how you have internalized verbal and nonverbal messages from your mother and how these have translated into a strong desire to overachieve or a tendency to self-sabotage
(3) Construct a step-by-step program to reclaim your life and enhance your sense of self, a process that includes creating a psychological separation from your mother and breaking the legacy of abuse. You will also learn how not to repeat your mother's mistakes with your own daughter.