ADHD 2.0: New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—from Childhood through Adulthood
Author: Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., and John J. Ratey, M.D.
ISBN-10: ‎0399178732
ISBN-13: 978-0399178733
 
APA Style Citation
Hallowell, E & Ratey, J. (2021). ADHD 2.0: New science and essential strategies for thriving with distraction—from childhood through adulthood. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/ADHD-2-0-Essential-Strategies-Distraction/dp/0399178732
​

Book Description
Authors Edward Hallowell and John Ratey are psychiatrists who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Their personal knowledge both in the field and in life offer a valuable perspective on ADHD, a condition that occurs in at least 5 percent of the population. ADHD is often misunderstood as individuals who are lazy or disrespectful, a condition that children will grow out of, or a condition created by pharmaceutical companies. The authors hope to dispel these myths and see the strengths of this condition, while focusing on some tools for management. Hallowell and Ratey often explain ADHD with the analogy, “A person with ADHD has the power of a Ferrari engine but with bicycle-strength breaks. It’s the mismatch of engine power to breaking capability that causes the problems. Strengthening one’s brakes is the name of the game.”
 
ADHD is different for everyone, but there are some commonalities. Some of these indicators include distractibility, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. Optimism and creativity have also been associated with ADHD. Rather than a deficit of attention, there is actually an overabundance of attention that can be challenging to control. There can also be an intolerance of boredom and a need for stimulation. There is often a set of contradictory tendencies, such as a lack of focus mixed with hyperfocus or procrastination mixed with a surge of productivity. This is just a sampling of the telltale signs of ADHD. As for the cause of ADHD, there is a highly genetic component and certain environmental stressors, such as lack of oxygen at birth, early infections, or other brain functioning problems. The mother’s behavior during pregnancy can also raise the risk for ADHD. Another explanation is the modern lifestyle that has been training our brains to go faster, multi-task more frequently, and require constant stimulation. The authors introduce a new term called VAST: the variable attention stimulus trait. This term refers to individuals with ADHD symptoms, but not meeting the criteria for a diagnosis. The term is also meant to shift away from attention deficit to the variability of attention and detoxify the label of ADHD. The focus has often been on the problematic side of the condition, but there are useful tendencies associated with ADHD as well.
 
Hallowell and Ratey provide the brain basics and explain current research findings. They walk the reader through the task-positive network (TPN) and default mode network (DMN) and take care to explain the difference between a neurotypical brain and someone with ADHD. They also explain the cerebellum and vestibular system’s connection to ADHD. The cerebellum is involved in physical balance, but it has also been found to control emotional equilibrium. By working doing exercises to increase balance, it has helped control the braking power needed with ADHD. Hallowell and Ratey share a particularly powerful case study of a young boy in China who was struggling with ADHD. After his mother attended a talk done by Dr. Hallowell, the two corresponded through email to set up a treatment program. The treatment program was set up based on connection, education, a strength-based model, and balance exercises. Within a few short weeks there was great improvement for the child.
 
Several chapters are dedicated to providing a better understanding what helps with ADHD and offer tools for therapy. Not feeling understood and a lack of connection often plague individuals with ADHD. Tips are provided for creating rich social connections. Boredom is the kryptonite for those with ADHD and many problematic behaviors become present when bored. But it is the strengths that are often ignored. A strength-based model is about identifying and using those strengths while being appropriately challenged. Creating the right environment can be powerful. This includes organization and daily structure, proper nutrition and sleep, surrounding oneself with positivity, and finding the right type of help. Behavioral therapy, such as applied behavioral analysis (ABA), has been found particularly helpful to develop a new set of skills, and social learning for adjusting to social situations. Exercise has also been found to be beneficial to improve mood and motivation and maintain focus. Studies have found that after just 20 or 30 minutes of moderately paced exercise subjects have increased their focus. Using brain breaks in the classroom is encouraging movement. To enhance balance, yoga and meditation have also been found helpful. The authors also acknowledge the tool many fear, which is medication. The use of stimulants has been found effective on average 70 to 80 percent of the time. The authors encourage using a risk/benefit analysis and discussing the medication options currently available. They explain the difference between methylphenidate and amphetamine medications. Many wonder why the use of stimulants for a hyperactive brain, but that stimulants raise the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, both of which are not balanced in the ADHD brain. Hallowell and Ratey point out the stimulants stimulate the brain’s brakes, providing more control. They also discuss stimulant-like drugs, outlier drugs, and the concern of addiction and abuse.
 
ADHD is not the same for everyone. With the power of knowledge and a better understanding of the condition, hopefully individuals can learn to reframe their thoughts and actions. Rather than seeing all of the problems, there are also strengths associated with ADHD. There is amazing potential, creativity, and energy. The authors leave the reader with, “Each of us finds a different way; there is no one right way. But what a liberating message it is for all of us to know that no brain is the best, and each of us has the magnificent, lifelong chance to find our own brain’s special way.”
 
Other Related Resources
Dr. Hallowell, The Hallowell ADHD Centers
https://drhallowell.com/2020/12/18/21444/

ADHD 2.0: A Conversation with Author Ned Hallowell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7_R7EXTYNA

Distraction Podcast: ADHD 2.0 Reveals New Science and Strategies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgb7bzfE__I

WHYY PBS, "ADHD 2.0" with Dr. Edward Hallowell
https://whyy.org/episodes/adhd-2-0-with-dr-edward-hallowell/

Psychological Concepts and Figures
Ivan Pavlov
B.F. Skinner
 
Addiction
Amphetamines
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
Behaviorist movement
Cerebellum
Creativity
Dopamine
Epigenetics
GABA
Gratitude
Heritability
Longitudinal study
Meditation
Nature v. nurture
Neuroplasticity
Norepinephrine
Rumination
Sleep apnea
Social learning
Applied behavioral analysis (ABA)
Stimulants
Task-positive network (TPN)
Default mode network (DMN)
Variable attention stimulus trait (VAST)
Vestibular system

Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training
Author: Adam Stern MD
ISBN:  978-035843-4733
 
APA Style Citation
Stern, A. (2021). Committed: Dispatches from a psychiatrist in training. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, New York, N.Y.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Committed-Dispatches-Psychiatrist-Adam-Stern/dp/0358434734
​

​Book Description
Adam Stern takes the reader through his four-year clinical psychiatry residency program at Harvard Medical School. Because the field of psychiatry culminates in a medical degree, Stern must complete rotations in the pediatric and cardiac wards and work in the emergency psychiatric wards. Stern is at first concerned that he is not as qualified as his other classmates who have been admitted to the prestigious program at Harvard but quickly realizes that each of his classmates has their own areas of expertise and other areas in which their learning curve is steep. 
 
The hours and expectations for residents are exhausting, often working 20-hour shifts and sleeping for only a few hours each night. The few moments of socialization are generally spent with those in the program. Stern quickly learns the hierarchy, which generally involves first-year residency students completing the most menial tasks and far more paperwork than he ever thought possible. He describes his frustration while working on rotations, such as the cardiac and pediatric wards, feeling like he is wasting precious time on information and skills that he will not use. He is equally skeptical when he is assigned to work with a doctor providing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)to depressed patients who are not helped by medications. Stern becomes a convert when he sees the incredible progress that some of these patients make after the ECT treatment. Stern goes on to describe the terrible feeling of guilt associated with losing a patient to suicide and his feelings of usefulness when he sees the same patients returning to the psychiatric ward over and over again. He describes trying to overcome the skepticism that some people have about seeing a psychiatrist and finding the right balance between talk therapy and medication. 
 
Outside of the hospital, the residents are still enrolled in classes. Stern, at first, was skeptical about a seminar titled “becoming a psychologist,” which he labeled as a “feelings class.” This group allowed students to share their experiences, challenges, and victories. The group would remain together for the length of the program. Despite his original hesitancy, the people in this group became some of his closest friends and a group that depended on one another for practical and emotional support. This group understood the stress and emotional turmoil that came with the program and were there to support and help each other. By the end of the program, Stern and the others came to depend on their “feelings” class as a lifeline. 
 
The evolution that Stern went through in these four years was transformational. He admits he felt like an imposter in his first year with his fellow students, more experienced doctors, and patients. By his fourth year, he acknowledged that he still had much to learn but realized that he had chosen the right path and was just as capable as his other high-achieving classmates. He realized that he will not be able to “cure” every patient he sees, but he is dedicated to doing the best he can. This is an informative book for those interested in pursuing a career related to medicine or psychiatry/psychology. It provides a behind-the-scenes look at the real day-to-day life of the path of becoming a psychiatrist and how it requires full commitment. Dr. Stern goes on to practice at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and is an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Medicine. 
 
Other Related Resources
Author’s website
https://www.adamsternmd.com
 
Twitter feed
https://twitter.com/adamphilipstern
 
Interview with Adam Stern with the Boston Public Library and the State Library of Massachusetts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgeIPLWQwKo
 
Psychology Today: Finding the line between Connection and Avoidance
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stern-talk/202112/finding-the-line-between-connection-and-avoidance
 
Psychology Today: Our Mental Healthcare System is Broken, but we can fix it
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stern-talk/202106/our-mental-healthcare-apparatus-is-broken-we-can-fix-it
 
Good Therapy: Psychiatry 101: How to Become a Psychiatrist
https://www.goodtherapy.org/for-professionals/personal-development/become-a-therapist/article/psychiatry-101-how-to-become-psychiatrist
 
Become with lantern: How to Become a Psychiatrist
https://www.learnhowtobecome.org/psychiatrist/
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Erik Erikson
Sigmund Freud
 
Autonomy v. shame and doubt
Anxiety
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
Depression
ECT therapy
Intimacy v. isolation
Neurology
Paranoia
Psychiatry
Psychology
Psychopharmacology
Psychotherapy
Schizophrenia
Social anxiety
Suicide
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
 
 

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
Author: Ethan Kross
ISBN-10: ‎0525575235
ISBN-13: 978-0525575238
 
APA Style Citation
Kross, E. (2021). Chatter: The voice in our head, why it matters, and how to harness it. New York, NY: Crown.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Chatter-Voice-Head-Matters-Harness/dp/0525575235
​

Book Description
Do you ever want that inner voice that plays in your head to stop? While introspective thoughts can be beneficial, the inner critic can quickly rear its ugly head when the thoughts turn to chatter, which consists of cyclical negative thoughts and emotions. Ethan Kross, author of Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, studies how those internal conversations can be used to improve your life. He compares his job to being a mind mechanic. When internal thoughts turn negative, individuals need to recognize when they become problematic and have the proper tools to quiet the chatter.
 
Talking to oneself is a normal part of life, but it also has its downfalls. Language lets us identify our emotions and discover how to handle a situation. As humans, it allows us the powerful ability to mentally travel in time. It also allows us to control ourselves and our emotions. So how does talking to oneself go wrong? Anyone who has become skilled at a learned task can fall victim to chatter. Kross shares stories of athletes that have fallen victim to that inner critic. The internal conversation influences attention and causes what was once an involuntary action to become the focus of our attention, which can then lead to overanalysis. When we ruminate, we end up focusing our attention on that negative inner voice AND what we are doing. The author points out how challenging it is to read after getting into a fight. It doesn’t seem to work well for anyone! We also want to talk to others about our negative experiences. The more intense the emotion, the more we want to talk about it. Unless in involves shame, then we want to keep in confidential. But it is sharing those negative experiences that pushes sympathetic listeners away because we tend to miss the warning signs of how annoying we are. The chatter can lead to talking too much, which can then alienate those we confide in the most.  Social media provides a positive experience, but can also become problematic for several reasons. In real life we can manage emotions with the passage of time. However, when we are at the peak of frustration, our connectivity allows us to share those negative experiences in the moment before we have a moment to calm down. It is also human nature to compare ourselves to others. As we passively scroll through others’ filtered versions of themselves posted online, we can start to become envious and negative emotions take over. This emotional pain registers the same way in our brain as physical pain.
 
Perspective taking is key to quieting our inner voice. Kross uses the analogy of your mind being a lens and the inner voice being a button that can zoom either in or out. He explains how when we get stressed or the inner voice starts to ruminate, we lose the ability to zoom out. By adding some distance to our thoughts, we can then change those thoughts. The author shared Walter Mischel’s famous marshmallow research, where waiting for two marshmallows led to positive results rather than having a lack of impulse control and immediately eating the marshmallow. This research led to the understanding that people have tools to control themselves. Kross also mentioned Aaron Beck’s therapy technique known as “distancing” where individuals are taught to scrutinize their thoughts. While some people have negatively associated this with avoidance, the key is to actively explore the thought from a distance. The recommendation is to imaginatively visualize oneself from afar. Research has explored the impact of immersion versus distancing. Immersers who viewed an event from the first-person perspective got stuck in their emotions. While, distancers who viewed an event from a broad perspective, had more positive feelings and were better able to control their stress response. By teaching people to see the big picture, it reduced their chatter. Mental distancing also led to increased wisdom regardless of age. Even journaling for a 15-minute time period about a negative experience was helpful. While narrating the story, the author created distance. The point of view is also key to quieting chatter. Using the first-person singular pronouns signaled negative emotions. Instead using third person or saying your name can force you to step back and refocus more objectively. Examples of LeBron James or Malala talking in third person during interviews helped provide distance from the event. Even shifting to the generic or universal second-person “you” can help provide the necessary psychological distance.
 
Those around you can influence chatter as well. Sharing emotions can often hurt more than it helps. Research has found that talking to others about negative experiences doesn’t help us recover in any meaningful way. Co-rumination can quickly change from support to inciting the inner voice. Advice at the wrong time from others can propel inner talk and undermine self-efficacy. Instead, Kross recommends invisible support. Rather than making someone feel like they can’t cope on their own, providing invisible support could be doing housework to ease their stress or offering broadening advice that is not explicitly directed at the person experiencing the negative thoughts. This invisible support is especially helpful when the person with negative thoughts is under evaluation or preparing to be.  Affectionate touch or comforting objects can be beneficial as well.
 
It is not just the people that surround you, but also the physical environment that influences chatter. Kross references trees and grass as mental vitamins that help manage our stressors. Research has found attention improved after taking a walk with nature as opposed to an urban landscape. And it doesn’t matter the time of year! If access to nature is problematic, photos and videos work too. One study even found that nature sounds helped enhance attention. Uplifting emotional awe occurs when we come across something powerful that we can’t really explain. It has been linked to physical and psychological benefits. Another interesting finding involves how order in our physical environment can quiet the chatter even though there is no direct connection between creating an organized world and the cause of the inner chaotic thoughts. Just reading about the world described as an orderly place has been found to reduce anxiety.
 
The mind is a powerful thing. Placebos help with chatter. Even nondeceptive placebos have worked for allergy symptoms, lower back pain, ADHD, and depression. Superstitions and rituals also help quiet the chatter. Rituals can come from culture, but can also be personalized. To become a ritual there needs to be a rigid sequence of behaviors that are performed in the same order. They appear to work because they divert attention, provide a sense of order and control. Rituals also make us feel connected, provide us with awe, and activate the placebo effect. Many engage in rituals without even knowing.
 
Kross makes it clear that he is not advocating for an avoidance of negative states. They just can’t consume you. Not all introspection is bad, but individuals need to recognize when they become problematic and have the proper tools to quiet the chatter. He points out that chatter is a part of our culture. Parents provide children with chatter support and create the culture they are immersed in at home. He also recognizes the need to teach these tools to children, after a college student pointed out learning them in college seems a little too late. Kross has created a toolbox for middle school and high school curriculum, but leaves the reader with their own toolbox that can be used right away to quiet the chatter.
 
Other Related Resources
Author's Website
https://www.ethankross.com/chatter/

Center for Positive Organizations- Michigan Ross. Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters, and How to Harness It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V33_f3yVn8

​ISR Insights Speaker Series: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jleW_eTWVHA

​Next Big Idea Club
https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/chatter-voice-head-matters-harness-bookbite/26713/

Psychological Concepts and Figures
Aristotle
Aaron Beck
Joseph Breuer
Sigmund Freud
William James
Daniel Kahneman
Franz Anton Mesmer
Walter Mischel
Lev Vygotsky
 
Active listening
Adrenaline
Animal magnetism
Anxiety
Associative connections
Attention
Attention restoration therapy
Catharsis
Contact
Cortisol
Dreams
EEG
Empathy
Evolution
Free association
Frequency illusion
Gene expression
Hippocampus
Hypothalamus
Hysteria
Identity
Inner speech
Introspection
Loss aversion
Magic number
MRI
Neurons
Neuroscience
OCD
Oxytocin
Parkinson’s disease
Placebo
Polygraph
Prefrontal brain
Reciprocity
Rumination
Self-control
Self-efficacy
Stress
Temporal distancing
Tend and befriend
Wisdom
Working memory

​Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History’s Greatest Personalities
Author: Claudie Kalb
ISBN: 978-1-4262-1466-0
 
APA Style Citation
Kalb, C. (2016). Andy Warhol was a hoarder: Inside the minds of history’s greatest personalities. Washington D.C., National Geographic.
 
Buy This Book 
https://www.amazon.com/Andy-Warhol-Was-Hoarder-Personalities/dp/1426214669
 

​Book Description
Celebrities are often idolized, through their lives on the screen and in social media celebrities portray lives of beauty and perfection, but Claudia Kalb, shares that many well-known individuals. These celebrities experienced diagnoseable disorders in some cases these disorders interfered with relationships such as the purported borderline personality disorder which Marilyn Monroe experienced. In other cases, like that of musician George Gershwin, his ADHD caused him to get into trouble as a young boy, but also likely contributed to his single-minded focus on his music once he found his passion. 
 
The book features twelve case studies that include some well-known individuals like Abraham Lincoln (depression) or Charles Darwin (anxiety) as well as those who are less well-known for the disorders they experienced, such as Frank Lloyd Wright (narcissism)or Betty Ford (alcoholism). Each chapter is organized by first explaining the individual’s early life, then explaining how their disorder impacted their life, and finally explaining the featured disorder by providing other examples and the general characteristics associated with the disorder. Kalb ends each chapter with different techniques to treat the disorder described in the chapter. 
 
Kalb shares the details of Marilyn Monroe’s traumatic childhood, from her movement through the foster care system to her complicated relationship with her mother.  These traumatic events in Monroe’s early life may have advanced or even triggered what Kalb describes as Monroe’s volatile relationship with her husbands, and the dramatic onset behavior during the filming of her films. Monroe was diagnosed with schizophrenia but Kalb contends that this diagnosis was incorrect. Monroe displayed the manipulation and cutting of her arms and wrists in a cry for attention, she abused drugs and alcohol, which Kalb proposes was about soothing her erratic emotions. Better ways in which to deal with these emotions are to engage in deep breathing activities, relying on friends for support or engaging on cognitive behavioral therapies. The title of the book depicts Andy Warhol’s hoarding tendencies, keeping everything from food to underwear in an endless number of boxes which are now housed in the Andy Warhol Museum in Pennsylvania. Warhol considered these time capsules. He lived in apartments nearly too cluttered to live and could not discard even the most useless of belongings. The other case studies go on to detail the impact of these disorders on the lives of these well-known individuals.
 
This book is one that would make a good student book club read because of the ability of students to choose particular case studies that align with their interests. It is important to note that in many cases these individuals were not officially diagnosed with the illnesses Kalb has associated, but this is still a useful exercise in learning about the disorders described. 
 
Other Related Resources
Author’s website
http://claudiakalb.com/book
 
C-Span interview with Claudia Kalb
https://www.c-span.org/video/?415966-1/claudia-kalb-discusses-andy-warhol-hoarder
 
NPR review of Andy Warhol was a Hoarder
https://www.npr.org/2016/01/31/464869809/book-diagnoses-darwin-with-anxiety-and-warhol-as-a-hoarder
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Alcoholism
Anorexia nervosa
Anxiety
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
Borderline personality disorder
Bulimia nervosa
Depression
Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)
Gambling 
Gender dysphoria
Hoarding
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Narcissism
Schizophrenia
Substance use disorder
Suicide
Transgender
 

​Darius the Great is Not Okay 
Author: Adib Khorram
ISBN:978-0-5255-5297-0
 
APA Style Citation
Khorram, A. K. (2018).  Darius the Great is not okay. Penguin Random House.
 
Buy This Book 
https://www.amazon.com/Darius-Great-Okay-Adib-Khorram/dp/0525552960
 

​Book Description 
Darius the Great is Not Okay is a young adult fictional novel that depicts the life of Darius (Darioush) Kellner. Darioush is half Persian and is named after the Persian King Darius the Great, although he feels the name is a clear case of misidentification. Darius lives in Portland, Oregon, and loves Persian tea, his little sister Laleh, and watching Star Wars with his father. None of these make for the perfect combination of popularity in high school. Darius is often on the receiving end of pranks and verbal ridicule from many of his classmates despite his school’s zero-tolerance policy on bullying. To add to his anxiety, Darius is targeted because he looks different than many of his classmates. He has thick curly hair and is overweight as a result of his love for pizza and spaghetti. Darius also suffers from clinical depression, as does his father, Stephen Kellner. Darius has one friend at school who shares his Persian background and a supportive family. Yet, he cannot help but think he is always disappointing people, especially his father, who Darius describes as the perfect Aryan. His father, Stephen Keller, is tall and muscular with blond hair and blue eyes. He is a successful architect who drives his beloved Audi, and Darius feels like he can never live up to his father’s expectations for him to fit in or play sports. Instead, he enjoys working at a tea shop and speaking in Klingon.
 
This book is a good read for high school students who can likely relate to many of Darius’s challenges. He is always concerned about fitting in and what other people think about him, and he worries about his future and his grades. Perhaps more importantly, however, the book allows the reader to peek into Darius’s brain to see how his depression distorts his thoughts and, as a result, his day-to-day interactions. The book is told from Darius’s perspective, and it eventually becomes clear that he is distorting his interactions to make them worse than they actually are. Darius is a sweet and caring boy, and he wants to make his parents proud, but he interprets any recommendation as a suggestion that he has done something wrong. Even when his classmates are trying to be kind, he interprets their words as mocking or threatening. 
 
Darius’s grandfather is gravely ill, so the family plans a trip to Iran, where Darius and Lelah will meet their grandparents face-to-face for the first time. Darius’s mother was worried about returning since she has married an American and had not seen her parents for 18 years. Darius worries about what he will say to his grandparents and what it will be like to meet them rather than talk to them on a computer screen. He knows he should love them, but he wonders if he will. Right after arriving, Darius meets Sorhab, a neighbor who helps Darius’s grandfather around the house. Darius and Sorhab bond over their outsider status. Sorhab is Baha’i, which is a religion that some people in Iran look down upon in Iran. Sorhab and Darius quickly become friends, visiting the sites around Yazd, where Sorhab and Darius’s grandparents live, enjoying Persian treats, and mostly playing soccer. Darius feels like he can be himself around Sorhab and even shares the worries and negative thoughts that he never tells other people about. Sorhab does not judge Darius even if he cannot quite understand how Darius’s mind works. Darius gradually comes to understand that he has not been a disappointment to his family. They want him to be happy and accepted and worry for him. He understands that his father’s need to be away from Darius does not mean he does not love Darius, but it often means he needs to cope with his own depressive symptoms. The trip to Iran helps him understand that even though his younger sister speaks perfect Farsi, it does not mean he is a failure. His parents just realized that this would be a priority with their second child.  
 
When the family returns from their trip, Darius accepts the compliments of his physical education coach, who encourages him to try out for the soccer team, which he makes. He realizes that some of the boys who he thought were making fun of him were really trying to be friendly. He also realizes that his depression and challenging his irrational thinking is something that he will have to live with for the rest of his life, but that many tools can help while he still remains the quirky and interesting Darius that he has always been.
 
Other Related Resources
Talk by author Adib Khorram
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmuX3yqn5Us
 
Discussion questions for Darius the Great Is Not Okay
https://www.penguin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DariusGreat_DiscussionGuide_Web.pdf
 
Asian Pacific Library Association (APALA) Interview with Adib Khorram
https://www.apalaweb.org/apala-author-interview-adib-khorram/
 
Interview with Adib Khorram from Ya Sh3lf
https://www.yash3lf.com/interview-with-adib-khorram-author-of-darius-the-great-is-not-okay/
 
10 Reasons you should read Darius the Great is Not Okay
https://www.yash3lf.com/10-reasons-why-you-should-read-darius-the-great-is-not-okay/
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Anxiety
Bullying
Depression
Internalized thoughts
Irrational thinking
Pessimistic explanatory style
Stigma
 
  

Facts and Fictions in Mental Health
Authors: Hal Arkowitz and Scott Lilienfeld
ISBN-13: 978-1118311295
ISBN-10: 1118311299
 
APA Style Citation
Arkowitz, H., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2017). Facts and fictions in mental health. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell.

Buy This Book 

​Book Description
Facts and Fictions in Mental Health is comprised of a series of chapters organized by section categories that each focus on a specific myth related to mental illness, treatment, or mental health. Each chapter addresses the myth, provides examples from clinical practice, pop culture, or events in the news, followed by evidence from recent scientific inquiry on the topic. The source for most of the chapters is “Facts and Fictions” articles previously published in Scientific American Mind, although six additional entries were created for this book.
 
Each of the first seven sections corresponds roughly to a diagnostic category: Anxiety-Related Disorders, Mood Disorders, Child and Adolescent Disorders, Addictions, Personality Disorders, and Shattered Selves:  Schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder.  The remaining three sections address Popular Myths About the Brain and Behavior, Psychotherapy and Other Approaches to Change, and Other Myths. Each section opens with an engaging introduction to the broader category within psychology, followed by bite-sized chapters of three to five pages that briefly address the myth and provide the scientific evidence which dispels the myth.  Each chapter also ends with several sources for additional information on that topic.
 
The book provides an excellent tool for teachers of psychology because it addresses head-on many of the incorrect beliefs held by students surrounding issues related to mental illness. The book also addresses some of students’ most frequent questions about mental illness and treatment. There are also chapters related to other popular myths about human behavior and mental processes.

• What are the causes and most effective treatment methods for hoarding?
• Is mindfulness good medicine for anxiety and depression?
• Are bipolar disorders linked to creativity?
• Four myths about suicide, including the myth that talking about suicide increases suicidal tendencies.
• Is electroconvulsive treatment effective?
• Is there an autism epidemic?
• Do all Tourette’s patients swear?
• Are all psychopaths psychotic?
• Is schizophrenia the same or similar to dissociative identity disorder?
• Are people with dissociative identity disorder faking?
• How violent are people with mental illness?
• Are individuals either left- or right-brained?
• Is hypnosis a distinct state of consciousness?
• Are all psychotherapies equally effective?
• Why do some people resist changing when they know that doing so would improve their lives?
• What stereotypes exist in the media regarding therapy?
• Are most disorders we see in Western and European countries the same as those in the rest of the world?
• Does the presence of a full mood trigger strange behaviors?
• Is eyewitness testimony accurate?
• Is the insanity defense frequently used in criminal trials?

 
The book concludes with an interesting postscript that addresses some of the reasons behind the persistence of these myths. For example, the availability heuristic, which is a problem-solving shortcut in which we base decisions base on what is most likely to be fresh in our minds.  Arkowitz and Lilienfeld discuss how the availability heuristic contributes to the myth that divorce is almost always harmful to children.  Because it is more likely that we will hear about times when children struggle during a divorce than when they are resilient or when the change has lead to am improvement for the entire family.  The availability heuristic creates the impression children struggle after divorce because this is what they expect as the likely outcome. The research indicates that although divorce is difficult for children, long-term negative consequences are not inevitable. Another logic error post hoc causes individuals to make causal conclusions about events that might happen close in time. This has led many to believe that Autism is caused by vaccinations despite evidence from numerous, large empirical studies that have shown this link to be false. Many myths, according to the authors, persist because they are partially accurate, leading to the error of the grain-of-truth hypothesis. For example, the fact that because animals can provide temporary relief from emotional pain does not mean that animal-assisted therapy can treat the primary symptoms of serious conditions such as schizophrenia and anorexia nervosa. Finally, the authors address the problem of how information is presented and by whom can also create or perpetuate myths.  The authors discuss the problem of self-help books in chapter 39, “3,500 self-help books appear every year, but few are based on research or subjected to scientific scrutiny.”  There are also numerous psychology websites that contain misleading and inaccurate information about mental health, and mainstream media outlets can create misconceptions due to inaccurate or misleading interpretations of scientific findings. The authors also point out that individuals frequently do not read articles and rely on headlines alone for information on research studies that might be quite complex.  As a result, this can lead to misinformation about the findings of the study. For example, the headline, “Fear of Fluoride in Drinking Water,” in an article that emphasized the safety of fluoride in water spread misinformation unintentionally.
 
Facts and Fictions in Mental Health is a great tool for providing students with opportunities to dispel misconceptions and build critical thinking skills. The short chapters can be used for enrichment during units on clinical psychology, as well as cognitive psychology topics related to problem-solving and cognitive biases.
 
 
Other Related Resources
 
National Alliance on Mental Illness - NAMI
https://nami.org/Home
The NAMI organization provides numerous resources for building understanding and reducing the stigma associated with mental illness.  The website contains educational materials, information for requesting guest speakers, and advocacy opportunities. The site also has a series of effective videos that can be used to supplement instruction.
 
Time to Change – UK
https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/
Time to Change is an organization devoted to reducing stigma related to mental illness in the UK, and their website provides a variety of inspirational stories and educational materials for use in the classroom and the workplace.
 
Avoid Misleading Terminology
Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01100/full
This link is to an interesting article by author Lilienfeld and others that list and explain misleading terminology used in psychology that causes misinformation and confusion.
This article can be used as a source for a discussion related to the critical evaluation of scientific claims.  For each misleading term or phrase, the article explains why it poses a problem, provides examples of its misuse, and, if possible, provides a preferable term. Examples include a gene for, brain region “X” lights up, hard-wired, lie-detector test, truth-serum, and neural signature. Interestingly – the article addresses the problems with terminology frequently used in psychology class such as operational definition, objective personality test, and reliable and valid. The article also includes terms that are frequently misused or that are misleading overall.
 
Confusing Pairs
50 Differences That Make a Difference: A Compendium of Frequently Confused Term Pairs in Psychology
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2017.00037/full
This link is to an interesting article by author Lilienfeld and others that list and explain confusing pairs of terms in psychology. 
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Agoraphobia
Alzheimer’s disease
Animal-assisted therapy
Anxiety and anxiety disorders
Availability heuristic
Behavioral therapy
Bipolar disorder
Client-centered therapy
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
Depression
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)
Dissociative disorders
Electroconvulsive therapy
Feeding and eating disorders
Hoarding disorder
Insanity defense
Mindfulness
Mood disorders
Neurodevelopmental disorders
Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders
Personality disorders
Post hoc error
Psychotropic medications
Schizophrenia
Short-term psychodynamic therapy
Substance use and abuse disorders
Trauma- and stressor related disorders
 

​Hidden Valley Road:  Inside the Mind of an American Family
Author:  Richard Kolker
ISBN:  978-03855-43774
 
APA Style Citation
Kolker, R. (2020.) Hidden valley road. Inside the Mind of an American family.  New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Valley-Road-Inside-American/dp/038554376X
 

​Book Description
Hidden Valley Road, named after the street the family lived on, is the tragic story of the Galvin family.  The non-fictional account follows the growing family from the time in which the young, recently married Donald and Mimi Galvin moved to Colorado Springs through the twelve children that eventually made up the Galvin family (10 boys and 2 girls).  Eventually, six of the boys would develop schizophrenia. The book addresses many facets related to mental illness, including the issues of genetic and environmental factors, the stigma around mental illness, and the difficulty in managing and finding good care for those experiencing different levels of schizophrenia.
 
Since Swiss Psychologist Eugen Bleuler initially coined the term schizophrenia, which comes from the Latin word -schizo- meaning a split in mental functioning, he had suspected that there was an underlying physical component to the disorder. The degree to which the physical components drive the illness is still one that is fascinating and much debated. Examining a family in which six of the boys developed the disease provides the opportunity to learn more about the underlying genetic components that may be associated with schizophrenia. Freud was the first but certainly not the last to place the blame of development of schizophrenia decidedly at least partially at the feet of the mother, a point not lost on Mimi as her son’s disappeared into the illness. Today, estimations are that one in one hundred individuals may experience schizophrenia at some point in their lives, but with an identical twin, chances increase to roughly 50%.  In one other famous case of schizophrenia from the 1950s, the Genain quadruplets all developed schizophrenia by age 25 and were studied by the National Institute of Mental Health.
 
Don Galvin Sr. was a professor at the Air Force Academy after having spent time in the Navy.  He had experienced in his early military career “a case of the nerves” and was hospitalized at Walter Reed hospital, this event was not much discussed in the family, and his career and family developed quickly. The eldest son Don Jr. played football, got decent grades, and wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps.  By his teenage years, however, he was smashing dishes and ruthlessly beating up his younger brothers. Mimi and Donald were frequently traveling for work and left the boys to their own devices, which could be brutal as they formed camps against one another. By sophomore year in college, Donald was experiencing full-blown psychotic episodes, believing in one case that he had murdered a professor and in another fantasizing about murdering someone at a football game.  He also killed a cat that had lived with him for a few days after it scratched him. This behavior was at first attributed to a break up with a longtime girlfriend. When he was forced to return home, he believed people were shooting at him and once removed all of the furniture from the house in a paranoid episode. Don and Mimi opted for a psychoanalytic treatment before eventually resorting to the use of Thorazine to reduce Donald’s aggressive outbursts. Because of the stigma attached to the illness, Donald Sr. and Mimi tried to manage Donald’s illness while he lived at home because admitting him to a mental institution would be to admit defeat and publicly acknowledge what was happening. With Donald Sr. frequently away for work, it was up to Mimi to manage Donald along with the ten other children still living at home, most of whom became terrified of Donald. The Thorazine caused Donald to gain weight and sleep often, but it never eliminated his delusions of having superior powers or being controlled by God. Donald eventually developed tardive dyskinesia experiencing constant jerking movement from the years on Thorazine, but he attributed it to his father, making him “stand at attention as a child.”
 
The middle group of boys threw themselves into hockey to get out of the house, and Margaret, the second youngest, was sent to live with some wealthy family friends. Mary (who now goes by Lindsay), the youngest, often locked herself in her room when home alone with her brother because she was terrified he would fly into one of his rages. 
 
Shortly after Jim, the second oldest, got married, he started hearing voices, he believed people were spying on him, and he stopped sleeping, often acting violently towards himself. He had a tumultuous marriage even prior to the diagnosis and eventually killed his wife and was sent to prison. Brian and Michael were the next to experience symptoms. Brian played in a band and had a total disregard for authority, some believed that his symptoms might have been brought on by drug use. After a weeklong stay in Denver’s psychiatric ward, he decided it was time for him to leave and he never fully accepted his diagnosis. Michael could often go for long stretches without symptoms, and it seems that although he experienced symptoms of schizophrenia, they were far less severe than his eldest brother Donald Jr. The youngest of the ten boys, Peter, was always oppositional, but after witnessing his father’s stroke in 9th grade he experienced more frequent oppositional episodes and he eventually had to be hospitalized and restrained.  Mimi now had to take care of the older boys, her husband, who was recovering from a stroke and try to find a place that was appropriate for Peter’s young age and symptoms. Peter was eventually diagnosed with acute schizophrenia with paranoid ideation.  Matt, who was another one of the hockey-playing brothers and who later fought in the Vietnam war, came to believe the government was out to get him but resisted the label of schizophrenia. He became homeless and often sold his medications for money or food but never believed that he actually had schizophrenia. He eventually went through many rounds of ECT therapy.
 
With so many cases of schizophrenia in a single family it is likely that there was some genetic factor driving the illness. It was later discovered that many of the boys who later developed the illness were molested by a priest who has been a family friend and often spent time with the boys. The lack of acknowledgment, especially with Donald Jr, may have also been an environmental factor that exacerbated the illness.  Growing up with an older brother who was schizophrenic created a chaotic and violent home environment and may also have served as environmental triggers for some of the younger boys.  
Psychologists like Irving Gottesman and James Shield began to examine the genetic influence of the disease by proposing the diathesis-stress model in which certain disorders could be predisposed for some individuals but activated by environmental factors.  In the late 1970s, Richard Wyatt found enlarged ventricles in some schizophrenic patients leading to a stronger belief in the physical attributes of the disorder. In the early 1980s, Irving Feinberg proposed that problems in neural pruning during adolescence might be the main cause of the disorder. The 1990s brought the discovery that the hippocampi in some schizophrenics were smaller than in control patients. MRI scans also found problems with activity in the frontal lobe.  Through this all, Lynn Delisi was attempting to find specific genetic markers to identify the disorders. Studying families would be the key to discovering the genetic links to the disorder.  In the 1990s, the Human Genome Project began to solve problems such as this and with $3 billion in funding.  The Galvin brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews who were willing donated their DNA to be analyzed for clues to the genetic components of the illness.  It was determined that a mutation on the C4A gene might provide some answers to the disorders. There is now the possibility of genetic testing in utero, and there may be a way to fix flaws in genes in the womb or early in life. Ironically, one of the Galvin grandchildren is working on the project that contains her family’s DNA to try to ensure that families in the future will not have to endure the chaos his own family experienced.
 
Other Related Resources
Book Trib:  Question and Answers with Robert Kolker
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/books/review/hidden-valley-road-robert-kolker.html
 
NPR:  Hidden Valley Road
Inside the Mind of an American Family
https://www.npr.org/books/titles/826844537/hidden-valley-road-inside-the-mind-of-an-american-family
 
The Gazette:  Interview with two of the Galvin Brothers
https://gazette.com/health/schizophrenic-brother-from-hidden-valley-road-struggles-to-find-long-term-care-in-colorado-springs/article_e69bec18-a4f6-11ea-b464-3fe45116d2c9.html
 
New York Time Book Review:  Good Looks ran in the Family, and so did Schizophrenia
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/books/review/hidden-valley-road-robert-kolker.html
 
Apple Podcasts:  Robert Kolker discusses Hidden Valley Road
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/robert-kolker-discusses-hidden-valley-road/id120315179?i=1000471100099
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Eugene Blueler
Sigmund Freud
Carl Jung
Emil Kraepelin
David Rosenthal
Thomas Szasz
 
Chlorpromazine
Clozapine
CT scans
Delusions
Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM)
Dopamine receptors
Hallucinations
Electroshock treatment 
Insulin shock therapy
Lithium
Lobotomies
MRI studies
Neurons
Paranoid schizophrenia
Psychopaths
Schizophrenia
Somatization disorders
Stockholm syndrome
Tardive dyskinesia
Thorazine
 
 

Upside:  The New Science of Post-Traumatic Growth
Author: Jim Rendon
ISBN-10: 1476761639
ISBN-13: 978-1476761633
 
APA Style Citation
Rendon. (2015). Upside: The new science of Post-Traumatic Growth. New York, NY: Touchstone.
 
Buy This Book
www.amazon.com/Upside-New-Science-Post-Traumatic-Growth/dp/1476761639

​Book Description
 
As teachers of psychology, we often devote considerable time and attention to mental illness and treatment while spending significantly less time on positive psychology or the scientific study of strengths and the potential to grow from negative experiences. 
According to the DSM-5, individuals may receive a diagnosis of Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from exposure to three types of traumatic events: 

1. The event happened to them personally
2. They learn that a traumatic event happened to a family member or a close friend
3. They experienced repeated exposure to a traumatic event (e.g., first responders, caretakers).

The most common PTSD symptoms are:

• Intrusion (e.g., involuntary distressing memories, flashbacks, nightmares)
• Avoidance (e.g., hiding from distressing memories, dodging reminders of the event)
• Negative changes in thoughts and mood (e.g., negative beliefs about oneself, numbness, detachment from others)
• Increased arousal and reactivity (e.g., exaggerated startle response, irritability, problems concentrating, sleep difficulties)

 
After an extremely dangerous or life-threatening event, most individuals have initial symptoms, and in most cases, those symptoms go away on their own.  For some, the symptoms continue, and PTSD may be diagnosed. There is, however, research related to how these same events ultimately lead to post-traumatic growth (PTG), which is the subject of the book, Upside.  While it is critical to teach and build an understanding of PTSD, it is equally important to illustrate that the types of experiences that lead to PTSD do not always result in the condition. In reality, most individuals who experience a traumatic event do not develop PTSD.
 
The book Upside, traces the development of research into the potential positive benefits of trauma that began in the 1980’s.  Two psychology professors from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun built the initial research on individuals who had been devastated by losses including accidents and illness.  Another early study conducted by a psychiatrist and professor at the Yale School of Medicine named William Sledge covered what would become post-traumatic growth in aviators who were POWs during the Vietnam War, which was published in 1980.  Interest in the field grew slowly as more research funding was devoted to PTSD.  While examples of post-traumatic growth have been documented for thousands of years, it was not a focus of scientific inquiry until the 1980’s. Tedeschi and Calhoun continued their research and found that individuals who experienced positive outcomes post-trauma experienced changes in one or more of the following areas:

• Greater inner strength
• An openness to new life possibilities
• Closer and deeper relationships with friends and family
• An enhanced appreciation for life
• A stronger sense of spirituality

Tedeschi and Calhoun named the phenomenon – post-traumatic growth and published research based on the questionnaire they created called the perceived benefits scale and published their work on the Post-traumatic Growth Inventory in 1996. The inventory consisted of questions directly linked to the five growth areas. According to their study, half or more of trauma survivors reported some positive effects post-trauma.  This contrasts with the negative outcomes related to PTSD that researchers believe will impact about eight percent of Americans during their lives and potentially as much as thirty percent of certain cohorts such as Vietnam or other veterans. According to research by psychologist George A. Bonanno of Columbia University, only 5-10% of individuals experience PTSD after traumatic events.  That rate does increase if stressors are extreme or occur over a long period, but they rarely rise above 30%. PTSD is not inevitable.  Post-traumatic growth is more likely than PTSD.
 
Research indicates that PTSD is not inevitable after trauma, but that it is less likely than PTG.  More individuals develop growth as opposed to PTSD post-trauma.  Since the first book on PTG was published by Tedeschi and Calhoun, researchers around the world have been further documenting the incidence of posttraumatic growth. On their website, Tedeschi and Calhoun make some key clarifications about post-traumatic growth research (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2014):

• Most of us, when we face very difficult losses or great suffering, will have a variety of highly distressing psychological reactions. Just because individuals experience growth does not mean that they will not suffer. Distress is typical when we face traumatic events.
• We most definitely are not implying that traumatic events are good – they are not. But for many of us, life crises are inevitable, and we are not given the choice between suffering and growth on the one hand, and no suffering and no change, on the other.
• Post-traumatic growth is not universal. It is not uncommon, but neither does everybody who faces a traumatic event experience growth.
• Our hope is that you never face a major loss or crisis, but most of us eventually do, and perhaps you may also experience an encounter with post-traumatic growth.

The book is packed with case studies that illustrate one or more of the five areas of post-traumatic growth, including individuals who have lost loved ones, wealth, physical mobility, limbs, and careers.  The book also details the scientific research exploring the post-traumatic growth experiences. Chapter Two, "The Psychiatrist in the Death Camp," explores the story of Viktor Frankl and his influential book Man's Search for Meaning from the lens of post-traumatic growth research. Frankl's book, with more than twelve million copies in print, is a must-read for psychology teachers and students.  What follows are detailed accounts of many case studies in post-traumatic growth and how this research can improve therapy methods for individuals with PTSD or who are dealing with trauma and loss.  Psychologists working in the field of PTG began by studying individuals who experienced positive change after trauma independently but are working to develop therapy methods based on the growth experiences of the individuals they studied to help others. Upside is packed with research and inspiring examples that help students understand the complexity of trauma and growth. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Other Related Resources
 
Author Jim Rendon
Author website:  https://www.jimrendon.com/
Author contact information
Follow on Twitter:  @RendonJim
 
Posttraumatic Growth Research Group
https://ptgi.uncc.edu/ptg-research-group/
 
Remarkable Resiliency: George Bonanno, Ph.D. on PTSD, Grief, and Depression
George A. Bonanno presentation at the Association for Psychological Science (2020)
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/bonanno
 
National Institute of Mental Health information on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml#part_145371
 
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl's influential book which tells his Holocaust survival story and how it inspired the
treatment method he developed, logotherapy.
 
Frankl, V. E., Lasch, I., Kushner, H. S., & Winslade, W. J. (2019). Man's search for meaning.  
Boston: Beacon Press.
 
1972 video of Viktor Frankl speaking
          https://www.ted.com/talks/viktor_frankl_why_believe_in_others
 
Posttraumatic Growth Article
American Psychological Association article from the Monitor on Psychology about posttraumatic growth
 
http://www.apamonitor-digital.org/apamonitor/201611?pg=1#pg1
Collier, L. (2016, November). Growth after trauma: Why are some people more resilient
than others—and can it be taught? Monitor on Psychology, 47(10), 48-51.
doi:https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/11/growth-trauma
 
Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky discussion of posttraumatic growth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PG71LHinQc
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
 
Viktor Frankl
Joseph  LeDoux
Jean Piaget
Martin Seligman
 
Accommodation
Amygdala
Assimilation
Cerebellum
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
Creativity
Deliberate rumination
Diagnostic and Statistical Model, 5th Edition
Dual-pathway of fear
Expressive writing therapy
Fight-or-flight response
Flow
Gratitude
Just-world phenomenon
Individualistic culture
Logotherapy
Openness to experience
Optimism
Positive psychology
Prefrontal cortex
Post-traumatic growth (PTG)
Post-traumatic growth inventory
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Thalamus
Traumatic brain injury (TBI)

​Insane:  America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness
Author:  Alisa Roth
ISBN-13:  978-0-465-09419-6
 
APA Style Citation
Roth, A.  (2018).  Insane:  America’s criminal treatment of mental illness.  New York, NY: Basic Books.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074M6FZXQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
 

​Book Description
Roth estimates that as many as 50% of all people in the criminal justice system suffer from some type of mental illness.  Some are there because of a crime committed while others are there because of a severe shortage of beds available in mental health care facilities.  These statistics are startling, and Roth describes the personal stories of individuals with mental illness, making the real-life implications of this hit home. Instead of accessing treatment through the mental health care system, often, those who are mentally ill face extended prison time for the behavior associated with their illness.  Many of the mentally ill are initially arrested on minor infractions such as Bryan Sanderson, who was arrested for riding a hotel elevator naked after voices told him to leave his room immediately.  Unfortunately, these minor infractions often lead to long prison terms because of violations of prison rules due to their illness.  If someone is experiencing auditory hallucinations, for example, these voices may take precedent over a direct order coming from a correctional officer.  Sanderson ultimately was placed in solitary confinement for a time because his illness prevented him from following simple prison protocols.  In addition, his hallucinations and delusions caused him to lash out at others, and he was considered a danger on the prison ward.  The incident in the elevator should have led to an straight-forward overnight stint in jail as nobody was harmed, but Sanderson’s voices ultimately told him to blind himself while he was held in solitary because his illness was not being managed.  After he blinded himself, he was taken to a regular hospital, but after he was healed, it was determined that he could be sent back to prison.  He was finally released after years in prison. Today, he lives alone but is entirely dependent on the help of family and friends to bring him groceries and other necessities, and he cannot work.
 
Roth addresses the shrinking number of beds in mental health care facilities.  The reduction in beds started to occur about the time that antipsychotic medication allowed many schizophrenic patients to live relatively normal lives in which institutionalization was no longer necessary.  With no place to go, many of the mentally ill wind up incarcerated. The sad reality is that most prisons are not well equipped or trained to deal with a population of those who are mentally ill. 
 
By sheer necessity, prison systems operate by strict rules and adherence to stringent routine.  The loud, chaotic environment of prisons can be terribly disturbing for those who may already be dealing with auditory or visual hallucinations.  Those who are mentally ill often do not fare well in this environment, and their condition often deteriorates.  Some prison facilities offer a mental health wing, but there are a limited number of cells. The waiting lists are often long, and it is frustrating to get into these units if they even exist.  
 
Treatment on mental health wards is often severely lacking, and most prisoners are chained to a seat while they receive their therapy sessions with a psychologist.  Other times treatment is canceled because there is a shortage of clinicians or if the prison is in lockdown mode, the sessions are canceled because all of the prison staff is needed to maintain the safety of the entire prison population.  In most places such as the Los Angeles prison system Roth describes time with mental health professionals as “medication management,” not treatment.  
 
The prison staff who may have the best of intentions are often not properly trained to deal with individuals who are mentally ill and showing signs of severe mental illness is often deemed as disobedient.  Those who thought they were going into a career of law enforcement now find themselves on the front line of treating mental illness without the proper training.  Obviously, the prison staff need to keep themselves safe, but law enforcement training escalates a situation, whereas a person with mental illness needs de-escalation of the situation. 
 
Without proper treatment and in an environment in which people feel threatened, those with mental illness may lash out in anger and frustration, which furthers the cycle of punishment in prison.  The mentally ill who eventually leave prison facilities are often worse off than when they entered and have few resources to help them get back to a normal daily life.  In large part, this impacts male African Americans in higher numbers than other groups.
 
Prisoners can be forced to take medication, and while they do not have to attend treatment sessions if they are offered, the incentive to attend is high in the prison population because of the nature of the prison environment in which prisoners are expected to comply.  In the worst cases, those who are victims of the system take their own lives in prison or like Bryan Sanderson cause themselves severe bodily harm.  Many people spend extended time in prison waiting for a trial to determine if they are competent. Spending more time in prison often makes the individual less likely to qualify for competency, leaving many lingering in prisons for weeks or months just to determine if they are fit to stand trial.  These inmates are coached by lawyer and then often sent back to prison during the case without any treatment at all.
 
Roth ends on a more positive note as she describes how many states have increased mental illness training for law enforcement.  This helps responding officers in understanding and may keep some people out of prison in the first place.  Still, the training has a long way to go.  Facilities and funding of prisons must increase, and treatment must be more consistent.  The treatment should also take place with the same person so that a relationship can develop between therapist and inmate.  Decreasing the number of people incarcerated for minor infractions and creating better facilities in which to treat individuals who might otherwise lead productive and fruitful lives should be a priority.
 
 
Other Related Resources
NPR:  Fresh Air
Behind Bars, Mentally Ill Inmates Are Often Punished for Their Symptoms
Interview with Alisa Roth
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/07/10/627519801/behind-bars-mentally-ill-inmates-are-often-punished-for-their-symptoms
 
APA Monitor:  March 2019
Improving Mental Health for Inmate
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/mental-heath-inmates
 
National Commission on Correctional Health Care
Basic Mental Health Care Services
https://www.ncchc.org/spotlight-on-the-standards-24-3
 
Mental Health America
Position Statement 56:  Mental Health Treatment in Correctional Facilities
https://www.mhanational.org/issues/position-statement-56-mental-health-treatment-correctional-facilities
 
National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI)
Jailing People with Mental Illness
https://www.nami.org/Advocacy/Policy-Priorities/Divert-from-Justice-Involvement/Jailing-People-with-Mental-Illness
 
Oregon Humanities Center
Alisa Roth: “America’s Hidden Mental Health Crisis”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA-S39TuMF8
 
Treatment Advocacy Center
Serious Mental Illness Prevalence in Jails and Prisons
https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/evidence-and-research/learn-more-about/3695
 
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
 
Dorthea Dix
 
Bipolar disorder
Criminally insane
Delusions
Hallucinations
Psychiatrists
Schizophrenia
 

​Maybe You Should Talk to Someone:  A Therapist, HER Therapist and Our Lives Revealed
Author:  Lori Gottlieb
ISBN:  978-1328663047
 
APA Style Citation
Gottlieb, L. (2019).  Maybe You Should Talk to Someone:  A therapist, HER Therapist and our Lives RevealedNew York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Maybe-You-Should-Talk-Someone-ebook/dp/B07BZ4F75T
 

​Book Description
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls. Who looks inside, awakes.”
                                                            -Carl Jung
 
Lori Gottlieb’s long-term relationship ends abruptly when her boyfriend tells her that he cannot live in the same house as a child, since Lori has an 8-year old son, there is no changing the outcome of his decision.  Gottlieb finds herself, angry, confused and uncertain about her future.  She uses her network as a psychologist to get a recommendation from a colleague believing that she just needs to talk to someone for a few weeks until she can sort out how to move on from the relationship.  Gottlieb shares her own experiences with her therapist and explains how she moved from hurt and anger (and some internet stalking of her ex-boyfriend) to picturing a future without him.  
Gottlieb also introduces the reader to some of her own clients (she changes their names and combines some of their complaints to abide by issues of confidentiality).  Gottlieb discusses a narcissistic movie producer who initially comes to discuss all of the “idiots” around him to determine how he can better deal with them but, ultimately needs to work through the aftermath of his young son’s death.  Gottlieb also describes working with a young newlywed who is dying of cancer.  Gottlieb knows this when she takes her on as a client and the story of her impending death is at turns laugh out loud funny, horribly depressing and always thoughtful.  Another client is a young twenty-something that keeps sleeping with the wrong guys and who has a complicated relationship with her own parents as well as some self-esteem issues.  Through reading each of these scenarios, we come to care about her clients even when they are self-centered and irritating and hope that they find peace and contentment in their lives.
Gottlieb describes how she tries to see the good in each of her clients.  She describes therapy as an exploration in how to change.  For some, this can mean changing how their past influences their present and future, for others it may mean changing how they see themselves or how they interact with others.  Each person who goes to therapy has their own reasons but Gottlieb believes that the presenting problem (the reason a person provides for starting therapy) often represents deeper seated issues the person is experiencing.  
Gottlieb’s relationship with her own therapist lasts far longer than the few weeks she initially intended.  She comes to appreciate his style of therapy even though it is quite different than her own and to recognize that one need not be fashionable or good looking to be a great therapist.  She is a tough client because she is initially not sure what she wants.  Her therapist eventually asked her if she wants advice (counseling) or self-understanding (therapy)?  He is not willing to simply validate her feelings of anger towards her ex-boyfriend, but instead makes her do the hard work to realize how she could have been so blinded by the break-up and further to plan a future without him.  Eventually she finds herself strong enough to move on and end her sessions with him.  
Gottlieb’s stories of therapy demonstrate that there are many people who can benefit from therapy, an objective outsider can often provide insight that we cannot see ourselves and that our friends and family are too kind to point out.  Gottlieb shares the personal development and self-understanding that therapy can provide and in doing so, breaks down some of the stigma that still exists around seeking treatment.
 
 
Other Related Resources
Lori Gottlieb website
https://lorigottlieb.com/books/maybe-you-should-talk-to-someone/
 
Dear Therapist Column with Lori Gottlieb
https://lorigottlieb.com/dear-therapist/
 
ABC News Interview with Lori Gottlieb
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/GMA_Day/video/talk-author-lori-gottlieb-62275946
 
NPR Fresh Air
https://www.npr.org/books/titles/707562558/maybe-you-should-talk-to-someone-a-therapist-her-therapist-and-our-lives-reveale
 
WBUR Interview with Lori Gottlieb
https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2019/04/05/lori-gottlieb-talk-therapy-psychotherapist
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Eric Erikson
Eric Fromm
Daniel Gilbert
Carl Jung
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Carl Rogers 
Oliver Sacks
Harry Stack Sullivan
Henry Moilson
 
Attachment styles
Avoidant personality
Catastrophizing
Client-centered therapy
Collective unconscious
Confidentiality
Conversion disorder
Countertransference
Creativity
Denial
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
Displacement
Dissociative disorder
Empathy
Factitious disorder
Flow
Frontal lobes
Hysteria
Integrity vs. despair
Logotherapy
Medical student’s disease
Melatonin
Mirror neuron
Mood disorder
Narcissism
Personality disorder
Pleasure principle
Psychopharmacology
Rationalization
Reaction formation
Self-awareness
Somatic symptom disorder
Unconditional positive regard
 
 

​Author:  Carmine Gallo
ISBN: 978-1-250-04112-8

APA Style Citation
Gallo, Carmine (2014). Talk Like TED:  The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds.  New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Buy This Book
​​www.amazon.com/Talk-Like-TED-Public-Speaking-Secrets/dp/1250041120

Book Description
The TED Conference, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, has been around since 1984 but did not become well known until they began posting videos of their trademark 19-minute presentations online for free.  Author Carmine Gallo is a communications expert and the author of the bestselling book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.  Gallo examined over 500 TED presentations and added insights from research on persuasion and communication to generate a list of the critical aspects of highly engaging presentations. Talk Like TED offers nine key public-speaking tips utilized in some of the most well-known presentations.  The tips for giving great talks are organized into three broad categories:  Emotional (they touch the heart), Novel (they teach something new), and Memorable (they present ideas in a unique manner).  As teachers, we frequently deliver content to students in a presentation form, and this book can provide a variety of tools to use to increase student engagement and learning.  Each chapter describes a method used in the most successful TED talks including specific examples and insight from the speakers. One of the best aspects of this book was stopping periodically to watch the amazing TED talks discussed in the book!
 
EMOTIONAL
The first third of the book is devoted to the three tips in the category related to emotional factors that “touch the heart.”  In chapter one, “Unleash the Master Within,” the author discusses the importance of choosing topics to discuss in which you have personal passion and interest.  According to the author, “the first step to inspiring others is to make sure you are inspired yourself.”  An excellent example of a TED talk that exemplifies passion was given by University of Waterloo Economics professor Larry Smith titled, “Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career.”  Smith discusses that although college students are told to pursue their passion most will not because “You’re afraid to pursue your passion.  You’re afraid to look ridiculous.  You’re afraid to try.  You’re afraid you may fail.”
https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career
 
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor gave one of the most watched TED talks of all time (about 20 million views).  The talk illustrates how having a strong emotional connection with the material leads to increased audience engagement.  Bolte Taylor’s talk is compelling because it involves a personal connection and exceptional storytelling.  TEDster Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor offers advice for teachers and other presenters, and that is to tell a story and demonstrate your passion for the topic. According to Bolte Taylor, “When I was at Harvard, I was the one winning the awards.  I wasn't winning the awards because my science was better than anyone else’s.  I was winning because I could tell a story that was interesting and fascinating and it was mine, down to the detail.”
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight 
 
 
Chapter two discusses how to “Master the Art of Storytelling” by illustrating how effective speakers utilize narratives to make an emotional connection with the audience.  For example, TED speaker Brene Brown famously begins her topic by defending qualitative research she conducts with the statement that “Stories are data with a soul.”  Effective storytelling engages each listener individually and allows them to become emotionally attached and to the ideas being presented.  Some of the most effective TED storytellers are discussed in this chapter including Brian Stevenson’s talk, “We Need to Talk About an Injustice” which led to the longest standing ovation in TED history (see earlier Books for Psychology Class post on his book Just Mercy).  The 1,000 attendees at Stevenson’s talk collectively donated $1 million dollars to his nonprofit, the Equal Justice Institute.  Stevenson raised $55,000 for every minute he spoke that day.  This TED talk was given without the aid of a PowerPoint, visuals, or props of any kind – a testament to the power of story. 
https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice
 
Another tip for an effective persuasive presentation according to the author, is to utilize Aristotle’s three components of effective persuasion ethos, logos, and pathos in the most effective ratio. Ethos refers to the credibility and credentials of the speaker, logos is the use of logic and data to make effective arguments, and pathos is the ability to appeal to the emotions of the audience.  When the author of the book analyzed the content of Brian Stevenson’s TED talk, he found it was 10 percent ethos, 25 percent logos, and 65 percent pathos or emotional appeal. Despite being 65 percent of pathos Stevenson’s talk has been rated as one of the most persuasive of all time. One of the ways the book recommends inserting pathos or emotional appeal is by including extreme moments. Dan Ariely, a psychologist and behavioral economist at Duke, introduces his talk on how research shows that people are predictably irrational with a dramatic personal story of his recovery from an injury that left him burned over 70 percent of his body.  Ariely’s talk is an excellent addition to the research unit for illustrating the need to test beliefs that are held intuitively through careful research methods. 
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code/transcript?language=en#t-102037
 
In chapter three, the author describes how effective TED presenters can use body language and verbal delivery to engage with the audience in a manner that feels authentic and conversational instead of an impersonal lecture to a large group.  The four elements of verbal delivery addressed in this section are rate, volume, pitch, and the effective use of pauses for emphasis.  One of the examples of effective nonverbal communications is a 2012 TED talk by a former Army general and U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell on the importance of providing children with structure early in life.  His speech is broken down to illustrate how particular gestures corresponded with the words he used during his speech. 
 
Another amazing TED talk that powerfully uses gestures to strengthen an argument was given by Ernesto Sirolli titled, “Want to help someone?  Shut up and listen!” is also broken down to highlight the expert use of gestures.  Sirolli’s talk discusses how his failure to listen led to failure for his NGO project designed to help increase food production in rural Zambia.  The project involved teaching people living in southern Zambia to grow Italian tomatoes and other vegetables.  Because the local population was uninterested, the NGO paid them to grow the vegetables.  Sirolli and his team were surprised that agriculture was not being used in this fertile region with excellent weather and soil.  According to Sirolli, instead of asking the people living there why they did not grow crops, they said, "Thank God we're here." Just in the nick of time to save the Zambian people from starvation." The result was that everything grew extremely well and we were telling the Zambians, "Look how easy agriculture is." When the tomatoes were nice and ripe and red, overnight, some 200 hippos came out from the river, and they ate everything. It was then that Sirolli asked the Zambians, “My God, the hippos!" and the Zambians said, "Yes, that's why we have no agriculture here." When Sirolli asked, “Why didn't you tell us?" the Zambians replied, "You never asked."
https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen
 
NOVEL
The second section of the book explains three aspects that contribute to an effective presentation because it is new and unique.  Kevin Allocca, who studies YouTube trends, stated this perfectly when he pointed out that in an era when two days’ worth of video is uploaded every two minutes, it is only the truly unique and original ideas that capture the attention of the online audience. 
 
The topic of chapter four, “Teach Me Something New,” describes how the best TED talks find a way to introduce new ideas or perspectives.  The author suggests that the titles of some of the most frequently viewed TED talks promise to teach something new such as “Schools Kill Creativity” (Sir Ken Robinson), “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” (Simon Sinek), “The Surprising Science of Happiness” (Dan Gilbert), “The Power of Introverts” (Susan Cain), “8 Secrets of Success” (Richard St. John), and “How to Live Before You Die” (Steve Jobs).  Martha Burns, a professor at Northwestern, teaches how to use neuroscience to be a better educator and highlights the biology behind the “buzz” we experience when learning something in her powerful TEDx talk.  One of the best examples of teaching something novel is Hans Rosling's talk that makes statistics and correlations exciting and meaningful.  Rosling, an expert on global health, animates correlational data regarding health and wealth in a powerful demonstration.  You can view his entire talk at ted.com or view the abbreviated version titled:  200 countries, 200 years, 4minutes.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo
 
Novel presentations, according to chapter five, “Deliver Jaw-Dropping Moments,” in which presenters capture the attention and imagination of their audiences by using dramatic demonstrations or surprises.  Some of the most dramatic moments or “hooks” at TED talks have included Bill Gates releasing mosquitos and Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor who opens her talk by holding a human brain that is still attached to the spinal cord.  “Wow” moments can also come from a single shocking statistic.

• “This country is very different today than it was 40 years ago. In 1972 there were 300,000 people in jails and prisons. Today there are 2.3 million.  The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.”

Bryan Stevenson
 

• “Why are we ignoring the oceans?  If you compare NASA’s annual budget to explore the heavens, that one-year budget would fund NOAA’s budget to explore the world's oceans for 1,600 years.” 

Robert Ballard
 

• “One in a hundred regular people is a psychopath.  So there are 1,500 people in this room. Fifteen of you are psychopaths.”

Jon Ronson
 
Successful TED talks also hook new viewers by creating memorable headlines, which turn into sound bites that are often spread across social media.  TED even has a Twitter handle devoted to the catchy, memorable quotes that are likely to generate public attention (@TEDQuote). 
 

• “There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

Susan Cain
 

• “Don’t fake it till you make it.  Fake it till you become it.”

Amy Cuddy
 

• “Numbers are the musical notes with which the symphony of the universe is written.”

Adam Spencer
 
Chapter six highlights how the ability to “Lighten Up” by using appropriate and genuine humor can increase audience engagement.  The book provides numerous tips for adding humor to presentations, including quotes, short video clips, and anecdotes.
 
MEMORABLE
The final third of the book is dedicated to various ways to make your ideas and your presentation memorable.  Chapter seven, “Stick to the 18-Minute Rule,” explains why all TED talks are limited to 18 minutes.  This key rule was established because it allows enough time for thoughtful analysis, yet short it is enough to maintain audience engagement.  Research shows that information is remembered better if it is organized into related chunks, this has led TED to recommend that presentations be centered around three main areas or points that support one large overarching idea.  This concept can be applied to classroom presentations as well by limiting direct instruction to shorter chunks broken up with time for reflection and formative practice.  The 18-minute rule forces researchers to create a focused message that maintains attention levels, and that does not create what researchers call “cognitive backlog” or the problem in which too much information prevents the successful transfer of ideas.  There are also numerous other TED rules of three such as the Three A’s of Awesome:  Attitude, Awareness, and Authenticity which were shared by award-winning blogger and author of the Book of Awesome, Neil Pasricha in a TEDx talk.  https://www.ted.com/talks/neil_pasricha_the_3_a_s_of_awesome 
Kevin Allocca, a YouTube trends manager studies why some videos go viral, and others do not.  According to Allocca, 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, yet only a few will have millions of views.  In Allocca’s TED talk, he explains the three factors that contribute to the success of a video:  tastemakers, communities of participation, and unexpectedness.  Of course, there is also the three-minute TED talk titled “TED in 3 Minutes,” which has been given by individuals such as Arianna Huffington and New York Times tech columnist David Pogue.  The original three-minute talk was given by Terry Moore who showed the audience a better way to tie their shoes, which has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.  The rule of three suggests

1. Creating a Twitter-friendly headline
2. Support the headline with three key messages
3. Reinforce the three messages with stories, statistics, and examples

 
Chapter eight describes how effective speakers can “Paint a Mental Picture with Multisensory Experiences” and engage as many of the senses of audience members as possible.   For example, the best TED talks use memorable images, not excessive text on slides.  One of the major tips is for creating better more effective PowerPoint presentations by avoiding too much text and instead relying more on memorable images and other visuals.  One of the worst ways to present is PowerPoint karaoke in which the speaker reads text aloud off of the screen. The chapter includes several examples of successful TED talks that show the words being used by the presenter alongside a description of the images being displayed to audience members.  A powerful example of how words are delivered alongside dramatic images is Lisa Kristine’s TED talk about the hardships of indigenous peoples and the reality of the 27 million individuals living in modern-day slavery. https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_kristine_glimpses_of_modern_day_slavery
 
The final tip for making your presentation memorable, “Stay in Your Lane,” is outlined in chapter nine. Staying in your lane means that your presentations need to be authentic and honest and speak from the heart.  One of the tips offered for “staying in your lane” is to practice by giving your presentation to a friend or family member first because when you have a close relationship with someone, you are more likely to show who you are. 
 
Talk Like TED is an excellent guide full of practical ideas for making your presentations, activities, and demos more engaging and effective.  The book is also an opportunity to learn about some amazing TED talks you may not have heard of before.  TED talks can be shown in class, assigned as homework to facilitate class discussions or offered as opportunities for students who want to expand their understanding of a particular area of psychology.  Another interesting way to use TED talks is to execute the demos or activities presented by a particular TED talk in class, and then after hooking students on the content, let your students know how to access the entire TED talk. Because many TED presenters are also authors, TED talks can be used to stimulate interest for students to read books related to their favorite TED talks or pursue research projects in areas related to what they watched. 
 
Other Related Resources
 
Author’s Website
Carmine Gallo’s website offers articles, videos, and links to other books.
http://gallocommunications.com/books/talk-like-ted-2/
 
The Top 20 TED Talks of All Time
http://www.ted.com/playlists/171/the_most_popular_talks_of_all?gclid=CjwKEAjwtNbABRCsqO7J0_uJxWYSJAAiVo5LuME8Z7o2-Ki6OahJAA2Liq3mJcpOAdNcrtYR4zRz0RoCKgPw_wcB
 
How to Sound Smart in Your TED Talk
Comedian Will Stephen’s take on how to give a TED talk and impress your audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Dan Ariely
Aristotle
Paul Bloom
Jill Bolte-Taylor
Lera Boroditsky
Susan Cain
James Flynn
Daniel Gilbert
Malcolm Gladwell
Sydney Jensen
George Miller
Daniel Pink
Hans Rosling
 
10,000 Hour Rule
Altruism
Amygdala
Analogies
Dopamine
Dual-Coding Theory
Flashbulb Memory
Flynn Effect
Genius
Hippocampus
Imagery
Introversion
Linguistic Determinism
Linguistic Relativity
Magic Number 7 Plus or Minus 2
Multitasking
Neuroplasticity
Nonverbal Communication
Persuasion
Positive Emotion
Self-Esteem
Statistics 

Buy This Book
​www.amazon.com/Animal-Madness-Inside-Their-Minds/dp/1451627017

​

Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry
Authors:  Jeffrey A. Lieberman and Ogi Ogas
ISBN-10: 031627898X
ISBN-13: 978-0316278980

APA Style Citation
Lieberman, J. A. (2015).  Shrinks: The untold story of psychiatry. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Shrinks-Untold-Psychiatry-Jeffrey-Lieberman/dp/031627898

Book Description
 
Psychiatry was coined in 1808 by German physician Johann Christian Reil and means “medical treatment of the soul.” Despite its origin over 100 years ago, major discoveries have only recently happened in the last few decades. The author of Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry is Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, the Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons; Director, New York State Psychiatric Institute; and Psychiatrist-in-Chief, Columbia University Medical Center of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He was a member of the DSM-5 oversight committee and president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) during the publication of the DSM-5. Dr. Lieberman believes he became the president of the APA at a historical turning point in the profession, when psychiatry finally assumed its rightful place in the medical community. New research, technologies, and insights have allowed the field to come out of the shadows of its dark history. He believes to move forward the field needs to own up to its history of mistakes and how they overcame their problematic past. He shares this controversial history in three main sections: the story of diagnosis, the story of treatment, and psychiatry reborn.
 
Psychology is not the only field with fake treatments, but it does have more illegitimate treatments than any other one. In order to understand the methods for diagnosis and treatment, Dr. Lieberman takes the reader on a journey through the history of diagnosis. The field of psychiatry has been historically split into two camps. There are the neurologists who work with visible damage to the brain, such as dementia, strokes, tumors, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. Then there are psychiatrists who work with mysterious conditions, such as psychoses, manias, phobias, melancholia, obsessions, and hysteria. The field has swung from psychodynamic psychiatry that views mental illness as a result of inner psychic processes to biological psychiatry that supports mental illness as an identifiable physical abnormality in the brain. This dichotomy exits to this day, while most psychiatrists have settled on a pluralistic psychology that accepts both views. Next, the reader is taken on a journey through the early asylums, the movement of alienists, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, the WWII shift in psychoanalysis from Europe to the U.S., the foundation of American psychiatry, and the formation of the term “shrinks.” In the 1960s, American Psychoanalysts took the U.S. by storm and gained power by influencing universities. With this newfound power they wanted to fix the world and got swept up in America’s social activism. The 1970s was faced with the Rosenhan study, homosexuality controversy, and the antipsychiatry movement. The final part of the story takes the reader through the development of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and its modern day influence.
 
Psychiatry is often given a black eye for its early start consisting of the harsh treatment of its patients. The unfortunate lack of adequate budgets and overcrowded facilities led to intolerable conditions in the early asylums. Out of desperation physicians tried techniques that sound barbaric by today’s standards. Dr. Lieberman takes the reader on the story of treatment in the field of psychiatry. The American story starts with Dorthea Dix, pyrotherapy (creating an artificial fever), insulin-shock therapy, transorbital lobotomy, convulsive therapy, and electroconvulsive therapy. Next, came the use of psychiatric drugs to pacify disruptive patients. These included morphine, chloral, and sodium bromide. In the 1950s, the first psychopharmaceutical drug was born to relieve anxiety, known as Miltown. But the beginning of the end of asylums didn’t come until the introduction of Thorazine, the first antipsychotic. Soon after came antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and MAOIs. According to Dr. Lieberman, the three flagship illnesses had a solution that took them from “wholly untreatable” to “largely manageable.” The world of psychiatry was changing.
 
Since the history of diagnosis and treatment, the field of psychiatry has witnessed a rebirth with the study of the brain. Phrenology, the study of bumps on the skull, started in 1809, but it wasn’t until the late 1900s that scientists were able to study the brain inside the skull while their patient was still alive. In the 1980s, brain imaging opened the door in the brain wide open for exploration. The PET scan, which measures the brain’s chemistry and metabolism, was nicknamed the “head-shrinker.” The 1990s became the Decade of the Brain. Eric Kandel was studying memory in the brain and Aaron Beck developed cognitive-behavioral therapy. Thanks to the Human Genome Project and the ROMA technique psychiatrists were able to explore genetics in a way that was never done before. Meanwhile the diagnosis of PTSD was evolving and the DSM was facing revisions in the digital age.  In 2006, the DSM-5 Task Force faced a daunting task of updating the DSM while public complaints were expressed on the Internet. Leaders of previous DSMs began to question the process publically. Shrouded in confidentiality agreements and behind closed doors, the revision process put the APA back in the public spotlight. From 2008 to 2013, the media fueled the fire and kept the DSM in the public eye. The APA appointed an oversight committee that recognized a serious problem and then implemented two post hoc review committees to squelch internal conflict. The DSM-5 was confirmed by vote in 2013 and quickly attacked by the National Institute of Mental Health who proposed they would make their own diagnostic system based on neural definitions of psychopathology. This criticism quickly faded after recognizing the size of the task and since then criticism and news involving the DSM has fallen quiet. 
 
The story of psychiatry has taken many turns in recent history, but the future has many more hurdles ahead. Once there were no effective diagnostic criteria or treatments, whereas now the social stigma associated with mental illness prevails as the main hurdle ahead. Hollywood has taken on the issue and has start to put a dent in the problem, but there is a ways to go before society accepts mental illness in the same way as physical illness. The future also offers promising areas of research in genetics and diagnostic testing. Thanks to technology, research, and the use of mobile devices more improvements are on the way.  The story of psychiatry is long from coming to a close and it is an exciting time in the field with many advances right around the corner.  
 
Other Related Resources
Colombia University
https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/profile/jeffrey-lieberman-md
 
Personal Website (Book, Podcasts, Media)
https://www.jeffreyliebermanmd.com/
 
Twitter
https://twitter.com/DrJlieberman?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
 
New York Times article
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/books/review/shrinks-by-jeffrey-a-lieberman-with-ogi-ogas.html
 
Editorial
Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry, by Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D. ...
aapdp.org/documents/uploads/pdps.Friedman_Critique_of_Lieberman.pdf
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts 
 
Aaron Beck
Abraham Maslow
Albert Einstein
Alfred Adler
Anna O
Antonio Egas Moniz
B.F. Skinner
Carl Gustav Jung
Charles Darwin
David Rosenhan
Dorthea Dix
Emil Kraepelin
Eric Kandel
Franz Mesmer
G. Stanley Hall
Hermann von Ebbinghaus
Ivan Pavlov
Paul Broca
Philippe Pinel
Sigmund Freud
Walter Freeman
Wilhelm Wundt
William James
 
ADHD
Agoraphobia
Alzheimer’s disease
American Psychiatric Association (APA)
American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA)
American Psychological Association (APA)
Amygdala
Animal magnetism
Antidepressant
Antipsychotic
Anxiety
Anxiolytics
Apgar score
Archetypes
Asylums
Autism
Autonomic nervous system
Aversion therapy
Barbiturates
Blindsight
Case studies
Castration anxiety
Catharsis
Classification system
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
Cohort
Collective unconscious
Confidentiality
Conversion reaction
Crisis of reliability
CT scan
Deep brain stimulation (DBS)
Defense mechanisms
Deinstitutionalization
Delusions
Dementia
Denial
Dreams
DSM (I-5)
ECT
EEG
Empiricism
Evidence-based psychotherapy
Flashbulb memories
Flat affect
fMRI
Free-association
Freudian slips
Frontal lobe
Gestalt theory
Glutamate
Heritability
Hippocampus
Homosexuality
Hypnosis
Id, ego, superego
Implicit memory
Informed consent
Insanity
Intellectual disability
Interpersonal psychotherapy
Labels
Leucotomy
Lithium
LSD
Malingering
Mania
Meditation
Monozygotic/dizygotic twins
MRI
Narcissistic
Neural network
Neurologists
Neuroplasticity
Neurosis
OCD
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
Oedipus/Electra complex
Opiates
Panic disorder
Paranoia
Parkinson’s disease
Penis envy
PET scan
Phenylketonuria (PHU)
Phobias
Phrenology
Prefrontal cortex
Priming
Prozac
Pseudoscientists
Psychiatrist
Psychoanalytic vs Psychodynamic
Psychosexual development
PTSD
Replication
Resistance
Retrograde amnesia
Schizophrenia
Simple reflexes
SSRI
Stigma
Sublimation
Substance abuse
Suicide
Synapses
Transference
Xanax

​A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine
Author:  Mike Jay
ISBN:  978-1-58394-717-3
 
APA Style Citation
Kay, M. (2014).  A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California.
 
Buy this book
https://www.amazon.com/Visionary-Madness-Matthews-Influencing-Machine/dp/1583947175
 

​Book Description
“They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.”
                                    -Nathaniel Lee, admitted to Bedlam in 1684
 
James Tilly Matthews is often cited as the most widely early reported case of schizophrenia.  Authorities stated that Matthews was delusional and paranoid, believing that the British government was out to get him.  Matthews also believed that there was an “influencing machine,” which he described as an “air loom,” which was a kind of primitive machine that could control people`s thoughts and actions.  The machine was operated by a team of men, and Matthews produced many detailed drawings and thousands of words of descriptions regarding the workings of the  “machine.”  The impetus for Matthew`s diagnosis and eventual confinement occurred after he attended a session of the House of Commons and then loudly accused the Prime Minister of treason.  He was removed and taken immediately to Bethlem asylum.  Once admitted to Bethlem, Matthews refused to associate with the other patients, claiming they were not lunatics, but rather spies placed there by the government to keep an eye on him.  He also refused to drink the water believing that it could be poisoned.  
 
Dr. James Haslam served as the resident apothecary (an early term for a psychiatrist) at Bethlem and was responsible for the care of Matthews during his stay.  Careers in “mad doctoring” were not highly sought out at the time, and Dr. Haslam received little recognition despite his hard work.  Dr. Haslam was one of the first to advocate that “madness” was not a spiritual problem, but rather an organic brain disorder.  He acknowledged that one could suffer from a mental illness and still retain a high level of intelligence.  Dr. Haslam completed post-mortem analysis of patient`s brains to determine if he could find the source of the problem.  He did find increased ventricles in some patients which today has been confirmed in the brains of some individuals with schizophrenia. 
 
If that were the full case of James Tilly Matthew`s insanity, we would not likely know of him today.  It is possible that Matthews was not insane at all but rather the patsy in a government cover-up.  Matthews had worked as a spy for the British government. He acted as an intermediary between French and British forces just after the French Revolution.  He and a colleague worked through intermediaries on behalf of William Pitt (a prominent statesman) to find a way to keep peace between England and France.  He accompanied David Williams to Paris to work with the committee drafting the new constitution.  They had received the invitation via a French agent in London and were traveling undercover on enemy soil.  Matthews had been well-funded and supported by the British government, however, once talks fell apart Pitt refused to meet with Matthews and eventually he found himself a prisoner in France.  After his imprisonment, the British government seemed to want to distance themselves from their previous involvement in his covert actions. Matthews went from an esteemed agent for the state to a pauper.  
 
Matthews had a brilliant mind, when Bethlem needed to be reconstructed because the old building was sinking and falling apart, Matthews provided a set of ingenious plans with a visionary plan with modernized heating, ventilation, and beautifully designed architecture.  Matthew`s family and a number of his associates remained steadfast in their claims that he was perfectly sane.  Initially, Matthew`s stay at Bethlem was paid for by his local parish as was customary at the time.  For reasons unknown, however, and without the Parish of Camberwell (the parish providing payment) ever being informed, Matthew`s was designated as a state prisoner, this seems suspicious and supports the idea that the state may have been behind the internment from the start.  
 
Matthew`s family claimed they would take full responsibility for him upon his release which would lighten the burden on the state significantly and Matthews did not seem to pose a physical threat to anyone which was the typical concern upon release in cases such as these.  While the head of Bethlem, Thomas Munro, states that he has “never felt the smallest doubt with respect to his insanity and believes him to be a most insane and dangerous lunatic and wholly unfit to be at large.”  Munro provides no specific details to support this and spent very little time at Bethlem. Matthews had never acted overtly violent to anyone during his stay at Bethlem. In addition, the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia is generally categorized by delusions so bizarre that they are difficult to follow, Matthew`s supposed delusions were characterized by events that can be demonstrated as fact and they remained consistent over the length of his internment.  
 
The James Tilly Matthews case is not the only one in which the ambiguity of psychological labeling has been addressed.  In the 1970s, psychologist David Rosenhan and eight other mentally healthy people checked themselves into mental health care facilities claiming to hear voices saying, “thud,” “empty,” “dull.”  All participants were immediately admitted to the facilities but then acted normally.  Their normal behaviors were often interpreted as symptoms of their “illness.” It seems as if their label of schizophrenia (bipolar psychosis for one participant) had reframed all of their behaviors.  Even simple questions or not talking was identified as “disordered.”  These mentally healthy individuals were held at the mental health care facilities between 17 and 51 days and were released as having schizophrenia in remission.  
 
Did the label that was attached to James Tilly Matthews also cause his everyday activities to be labeled as “disordered?”  Did the British government simply concoct a story to make Matthews seem insane so if he revealed any of his covert actions, they would be written off as the work of a madman?  Even if he did have schizophrenia at some point, was he held in Bethlem because he was a pseudo-celebrity, because his therapist had written a book about Matthew`s insanity or because the facility wanted to capitalize off of his clear brilliance?  Dr. Haslam would not release Matthews because even though he acknowledged his sanity after a number of years of treatment, there was also the requirement that Matthews admit that at one time he was not sane, which Matthews refused to do, therefore he remained at Bethlem.  
 
Eventually, the governors of Bethlem admitted that Matthews` mental state was not the reason for his confinement, rather it was an issue of state security.  He was eventually transferred to a country house with more freedom, where the doctors who visited him found him conscious and clear.  They reported that he appeared “collected, tranquil and intelligent”. Shortly after moving to the country house, Matthews died as a result of living for years in the damp and cold environment of Bethlem.  After Matthew`s death, Dr. Haslam,  Matthew`s long-time doctor never even attempted to object to Matthews sanity when confronted with the evidence.
 
We will likely never know the full truth about the James Tilly Matthews case, but this historical case is still relevant today as we continue to struggle with the line between strange behaviors and diagnoseable illnesses.
 
Other Related Resources
Illustrations from James Tilly Matthews
https://publicdomainreview.org/2014/11/12/illustrations-of-madness-james-tilly-matthews-and-the-air-loom/
 
The Air Loom:  Mind Control
http://www.theairloom.org/mindcontrol.php
 
Video Describing the Air Loom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc1LOPoSE3A
 
Why the Rosenhan Experiment Still Matters
https://bigthink.com/rosenhan-experiment-mental-institution
 
The Washington Post:  This Secret Experiment Tricked Psychiatrists into Diagnosing Sane People as having Schizophrenia.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/an-experiment-fooled-psychiatrists-into-treating-sane-people-as-if-they-were-insane/2017/12/29/c6c9c3ea-d5f7-11e7-b62d-d9345ced896d_story.html?utm_term=.14a602f9b51f
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
 
Alfred Adler
Eugen Bleuler
Sigmund Freud
Carl Jung
John Locke
Franz Anton Mesmer
Philippe Pinel
Edward Wakefield
 
 
Bethlem
Cerebrospinal fluid 
CT scans
Delusions of reference
Denial
Double-blind tests
EEG
Electro-convulsive therapy
Flat effect
Hallucinations
Insanity defense 
Labelling
Mesmerism
Narcissism
Neurochemistry
Paranoid schizophrenia
Personality disorders
Pre-frontal lobotomy
Projection
Psychiatry
Psychoanalysis
Psychodynamic method
Psychosis
Schizophrenia
Stream of consciousness
Telepathy
Temporal lobes
Unconscious
Ventricles
 
 
 

The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought
Author: David Adam
ISBN-10: 1250083184
ISBN-13: 978-1250083180
 
APA Style Citation
Adam, D. (2016). The man who couldn't stop: OCD and the true story of a life lost in thought. New York, NY: Picador.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Couldnt-Stop-Thought/dp/1250083184/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=F7EB0H0TX69H38ZENPNE
​

Book Description
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) often does not get the attention it deserves. It is the fourth most common mental disorder after the big three of depression, substance abuse, and anxiety. OCD is referred to as a “secret disease” and a “silent epidemic,” but subclincial OCD is everywhere.  The stigma has lessened for some disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar, but there is a way to go for OCD. The book The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought shares the personal journey of the author, David Adam, a science writer from the United Kingdom who informs the reader of the science and history of OCD in hopes of reducing the stigma associated with the disorder.
 
Psychiatrists have made it clear that OCD is not an exaggerated form of everyday worries, but yet the general public often persists in thinking otherwise.  A thorough explanation of the different types of symptoms is provided for the reader. Specific attention is given to intrusive thoughts. Adam goes on to explain the Pure-O form of OCD with no overt compulsions, the just-no-right experience where behaviors come first, and the high-place phenomenon where individuals commonly report wanting to jump from a window or bridge. OCD is not a problem with memory, but rather a loss of confidence that a given behavior has been successfully carried out.  The author weaves his personal story with OCD that peaked in 1991 throughout the book. He would obsess about the ways he could catch AIDS. He describes how it took over his life and how he would call the National AIDS Helpline on a regular basis. Adam also provides the historical background to the diagnosis of OCD, taking it back to patient zero, Mademoiselle F, a French woman from the early 19th century.  He explains models of OCD throughout the text based on the knowledge at that given time.
 
Over twenty separate conditions are linked to OCD, and each of these similar disorders is carefully differentiated from OCD in the book. People with phobias can avoid what causes their anxiety, but those with OCD cannot. Adam differentiates between the commonly confused OCD and OCPD. He explains hoarding and neurological disorders, such as Tourette’s syndrome and Parkinson’s disease, and their connection to OCD. In addition, he investigates connections to impulsive disorders, such as gambling, pyromania, and kleptomania. Differentiations are also provided for trichotillomania, skin-picking, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), body integrity disorder (BII), hypochondriasis, eating disorders (anorexia or bulimia), maladaptive daydreaming, and obsessional jealousy.
 
Another section of the book is dedicated to the types of therapy that have historically been offered to treat OCD. He chronicles classic psychodynamic analysis, with specific attention to Freud’s contribution. Next, the behavioral approach in the 1960s and the era of aversion and thought-stopping therapy are addressed. In the 1990s the cognitive psychologists started to explore OCD and first looked at the connection to religion. While religion does not cause OCD, it provides an outlet for the symptoms. Research also focused on three dysfunctional beliefs important to OCD: Inflated sense of threat and personal responsibility, perfectionism and intolerance of responsibility, and over-importance of thought and the need to control them. These different types of dysfunctional beliefs could explain the range of symptoms.  
 
The first modern cognitive model of OCD was based on how one reacts to thoughts.  With great responsibility, comes great power. The responsibility of parenting can bring many intrusive thoughts. Adam goes on to explore postnatal OCD, which is almost unheard of in comparison to postnatal depression now recognized as a serious problem.  It can take an upsetting form where mothers have powerful urges to throw their baby into a fire, cook them in a microwave, etc. It is important to note that none of this happens outside of the mother’s head, they do not act on their intrusive thoughts.  The author recognizes that a substantial shift in his story happened when he found blood on his six month old’s leg. Immediately he became obsessed with the thought that he had given her AIDS. He had settled for a personal life with OCD, but never wanted to impact his family. He refused to make his daughter an accomplice and wanted his intrusive thoughts to stop with him, so he sought out therapy.
 
Another section focuses on animals and human patterns of behavior and ritual. Various animal examples are provided and the similarities to OCD are explored. Check out the book review Animal Madness:  How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves (https://booksforpsychologyclass.weebly.com/blog/category/disorderstreatment8086727c74/2). Humans like routine, whether it a sports routine, washing in the shower, or taking a path from point A to point B. The link between ritual and OCD fascinates scientists and there is a belief that ritual is useful by performing tasks with less mental effort and therefore saving energy. Other evolutionary explanations are also explained. The differences between anxiety and OCD are carefully teased apart.
 
The author turns back to the causes of OCD. Possible explanations are explored, including genes, early experiences and dysfunctional beliefs, inflated responsibility, parenting styles, and family accommodation of symptoms. Age ranges are provided, as well as risk factors for developing OCD. Rituals are normal for children, but some warning signs are provided. Lots of attention is devoted to the brain’s role in the development of OCD.  Research involving scans are described in detail, specific brain parts and neurotransmitters are identified and explained, even the connection to Pandas- Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections.
 
Treatments are addressed once again. The variety of medications to treat OCD is explained.  Before SSRIs became available in the 1980s and 1990s, patients were treated with clomipramine. The methods of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are explained. Furthermore, exposure and response prevention have also been found to be successful in treating OCD. The use of systematic desensitization is explained in detail.  In 2012, a comprehensive meta-analysis of CBT for OCD found more people improved with treatment, than chance alone. If you change the mind, then you can change the brain. The lobotomy is explored in detail. The author discusses the historical contributions of Phineas Gage, Egas Moniz, Walter Freeman, and James Watts. While the traditional method is no longer used, psychosurgery has provided a cautious green light to more selective stereotactic surgery, such as a cingulotomy where specific tissue is targeted and lesioned.
 
Politics and prejudice are also addressed. The author believes it is important to raise awareness of what OCD is and what it is not (not just about cleanliness). He explains how individuals have lost their jobs and have been separated from their families when harmless obsessions are reported. The stigma has decreased for many mental illnesses, but OCD has a long way to go. It may be due to many not viewing it as a serious disorder. Hollywood has contributed to this by treating OCD with humor and levity. 
 
In 2013, the new Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) brought attention to OCD. It was reclassified as an OCD spectrum disorder, no longer an anxiety disorder. Connections between OCD and other disorders, such as PTSD or schizophrenia are being further investigated. A short history of the DSM and Emil Kraeplin’s classification system used in Europe is explained to help the reader. Also, a critical look at the current categories approach is explored, and a dimensionality approach is offered in its replacement.
 
The author offers his final thoughts, looking back at his symptoms early in life. Currently, he is doing well, but he knows that he will continue to wrestle with his OCD throughout his life. He wants people to know that the bad news is that it won’t go away by itself. But the good news is that we are finding out more about how to diagnose and treat the condition. Sharing his story and many others helps us understand more about OCD.
 
Other Related Resources
2016 Annual OCD Conference Keynote - David Adam "The Accidental Advocate"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KccklYNpTus
 
https://iocdf.org/blog/2016/07/07/david-adam-to-bring-humor-hope-and-books-to-this-years-ocd-conference/
 
The OCD Stories Podcast- Interview with David Adam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWXIq_Ir9vA
 
http://theocdstories.com/podcast/david-adam-the-man-who-couldnt-stop/
 
Understanding the OCD Brain part 1: OCD and me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpCOAqxbfpA
 
Addiction.com ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Stop’: A Q&A with David Adam on OCDhttps://www.addiction.com/8869/the-man-who-couldnt-stop-a-qa-with-david-adam-on-ocd/
 
NPR- Why OCD Is 'Miserable': A Science Reporter's Obsession With Contracting HIVhttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/376438311/why-ocd-is-miserable-a-science-reporters-obsession-with-contracting-hiv
 
New York Times Article
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/books/review/david-adams-the-man-who-couldnt-stop.html
 
Time Article
http://time.com/4890095/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd-joke/
 
The Guardian Article
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/20/the-man-who-couldnt-stop-review-david-adam-ocd-review

 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Charles Darwin
Egas Moniz
Emil Kraeplin- category approach in DSM
Ivan Pavlov
James Watts
Konrad Lorenz
Mademoiselle F. (Patient zero of OCD)
Paul Broca
Phineas Gage
Rat Man- Ernst Lanzer (Freud Case Study)
Rosemary Kennedy
Sigmund Freud
Walter Freeman
Wilder Penfield
William James
 
Altered perception
Amphetamines
Amygdala
Anal personality
Anorexia nervosa
Anxiety hierarchy
DSM
Authoritarian
Autism
Aversion therapy
Basal ganglia
Behavioral psychologists
Bipolar
Blood-brain barrier
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD)
Body integrity disorder
Bulimia nervosa
CAT scan
Catastrophizing
Chromosomes
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
Cognitive psychologists
Cohort studies
Co-morbidity
Compulsions
Deep brain stimulation
Depression
Dimensionality vs. category approach
Disgust
Distress scale
Dopamine
Dualism
Dysfunctional beliefs
Eating disorders
ECT
Ethics
Evolutionary psychology
Extinction
Factor analysis
Fight-or-flight response
Frontal leucotomy
Genotype maps
Glutamate
Grey vs. white matter ratio
Group therapy
Hippocampus
Hoarding
Homosexuality
Huntington’s disease
Hypochondriasis
Impulse-control disorder
Insanity
Insight
Insulin overdose
Intelligence
Kleptomania
Lesions
Lie detectors
Lithium
Lobotomy
LSD
Memory
Meta-analysis
Motor cortex
MRI
Functional MRI
Nature vs. nurture
Neurologists
Neurosis vs. psychosis
Neurotransmitters
Nucleus accumbens
Obsessions
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
Obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD)
Oxytocin
Parasomnia
Parenting styles
Parkinson’s disease
Pathological gambling
PET scan
Phobias
Phrenology
Postnatal depression
Postnatal OCD
Prefrontal lobotomy
Prozac
Psychiatrists vs. psychologists
Psychoanalytic movement
Psychopath
Psychosurgery
Psychotropic medication
PTSD
Pyromania
Rational vs. irrational
Reuptake
Schizo-obsessive disorder
Schizophrenia
Self-harm
Serotonin
Skin-picking disorder
SSRIs
Stigma
Stream of consciousness
Substance abuse
Suicide
Systematic desensitization
Thalamus
Tourette’s syndrome
Trauma
Trichotillomania
Twin studies
Withdrawal symptoms
Zoloft

Crazy in America:  The Hidden Tragedy of OurCriminalized Mentally Ill
Author:  Mary Beth Pfeiffer
ISBN:  978-0-78671-745-3
 
APA Style Citation
Pfeiffer, M. (2007).  Crazy in America:  The Hidden Tragedy of OurCriminalized Mentally Ill.  Carroll and Graf Publishers, N.Y., New York.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Crazy-America-Tragedy-Criminalized-Mentally/dp/0786717459
​

​Summary of Book
Shayne Eggan was a beautiful girl with a charismatic personality who took after her dynamic and free-spirited Greek mother.  She had a normal and happy life until her mid-teens when she began to respond to the overtures of boys and older men and started to express the belief that others could “read her mind.”  Shayne was hospitalizedfor these delusions and her strange Indian themed hallucinations.  She became a ward of the state of Iowa because her parents` minimal means could not pay for her continued hospitalization and she was determined to have paranoid schizophrenic tendencies which could cause her to become violent.  Shayne believed she was an Indian princess.  She became obsessed with an older Indian man and continued to write to him and believe they would be together long after he was married and had children.  Shayne often became violent, first with her family, and then with others.  She expressed that, “I get so scared that people are going to hurt me, that I have to hurt them first.” During one such psychotic episode, the police were called,andshe lunged at a police officer with a knife because she thought he was going to hurt her.  She was arrested and thus began Shayne`s life in the criminal justice system.  Shayne had a baby in prison who was immediately removed from her care because it was claimedthat Shayne expressed a desire to kill him, which she denied.  Shayne would be releasedafter serving a term but within a few days would often wind up back in prison because her delusions caused her to break into someone`s home, or act out violently when she felt she was being threatened.  Because of her record, instead of a warning or probation, she would wind up back in prison. Once in prison, she could not abide by the strict rules of the institution which would result in an extended sentence or time in solitary confinement, which often made her delusions worse.  The local mental health care facility was not an option because the facility which had housed 1,800 people in the 1940s, housed only 95 patients in the 1990s. From 1995 to 2000, Iowa went from having 204 beds for every 100,000 people to having six.
 
Shayne needed immediateintervention and could not wait years for treatment.  She attempted to treat her delusions and hallucinations with drugs, which often exacerbated the problems.  In solitary confinement, Shayne`s delusions became so intense that she dug her owneye out, she explained that this made her feel good.  While prison officials panicked, Shayne played with her hanging eye, and was eventually handcuffed to restrict this behavior.  Later, during another stint in solitary, Shayne attempted to chew off her pinky and lost four teeth in the process.  
 
Shayne is not alone in suffering from her mental illness while incarcerated.  Of the 2.2 million people in American jails in 1999, roughly 330,000 were mentally ill. In 2005 estimates were that 34% of those in prisons were mentally ill.  By 2006, Shayne was one of the lucky ones as she was able to procure a bed at the mental health institute in Independence, Iowa.  By that time, Shayne had lost her second eye in much the same way as her first and was completely blind.  While she is not curedtoday, her symptoms seem more under control, although she still has not accepted her diagnosis. 
 
Shayne’s story is typical of hundreds of thousands of Americans dealing with a criminal justice system that does not allow for the different and often “belligerent” behavior of some individuals withmental illness.  These individuals often have no place to go and as a result of their illness wind up in prison where treatment is lacking if there is any treatment at all.  While Shayne eventually received the treatment she so desperately needed, many others are not so lucky.  
 
In another case study described in the book, Luke Ashely who suffered from debilitating anxiety and schizophrenia self-medicated with drugs.  He was initially arrestedfor possession of two pills of ecstasy.  Eventually, after begging his mother to come and get him out of prison somehow, he hanged himself in his cell as the stress and anxiety of prison was simply too much for him to take.  
 
In another tragic case depicted in the book, Alan Houseman wandered the streets of his Tampa neighborhood where he was recognizedas odd but not dangerous.  He lived with his mother, andafter her death,his paranoia became increasingly more intense.  He would eventually lose his life after being shot by a police officer who confronted him as he urinated in a public parking lot.  His paranoia of law enforcement caused him to ignore orders from the officer, andwhile he attempted to flee (because he believed she was there to take him to a mental health care facility),he was shotmultiple times.  In yet another case, Peter Nadir who was extremely autistic got into a physical altercation with his disabledmother.  Concerned neighbors called the police,andin the pursuit of Peter who would not abide by officers` request,Peter died of asphyxiation.  A police officer who was trying to get Peter under control, was kneeling on his back but also cutting off his ability to breathe.
 
Between 2000 and 2006, 24 people were killed by police officers in the Tampa Bay area alone.  Most investigations into the deaths of these individuals resulted in the exoneration of police officers, most of whom have not been trainedin dealing with the mentally ill.  In 2002, in Florida jails, 23 percent of inmates had a mentalillness, which is three times the figure from 1992.  Florida, like many other states, hasessentially replaced state psychiatric hospitals with state and local correctional institutions.  America`s prison system had the world’s highest per capitaincarceration rate in 2005; 714 per 100,000 people.  In the U.S., 60 billion dollars was spent on prisons while a fraction of that was spenton the proactive treatment of the mentally ill.  In 1980, 57% of people incarcerated in New York had gone to prison for violent offenses.  By 2002, that number was down to 29%.  Many mentally ill individuals attempt to self-medicate by using illicit drugs and because of “get tough”laws on drug crimes many of these individuals find themselves in prison and unable to manage day-to-day prison life because their illness makes it difficult to abide by the strict rules of the system.  Thisoften results in increased sentences because of misbehavior or time in solitary, which often makes the psychotic symptoms worse. While the history of treatment for the mentally ill in America has certainly been far from perfect, we appear to have moved away from a structured and helpful treatment.  
 
Proactive efforts to treat the mentally ill would allow many to lead healthy and productive lives before the symptoms get out of control.  Law enforcement agents need to be trainedon how to deal with mentally ill individuals who may feel threatened or act violently because of their illness.  Community programs are necessary to reintegrate or keep those suffering from mental illness in the community that may mean helping with simple tasks such as paying bills and supporting the individualswith empathy and understanding.  Despite some progress, mental illness still carries a stigma, andmany of those suffering are forced to live on the fringes of society.  America has done little to assist this population, andthe impact has been profound.
 
Other Related Resources
 
Stigma in a Global Context:  Mental Health Study Indiana University 
http://www.indiana.edu/~sgcmhs/
 
The Atlantic: Should the United States Bring Back Psychiatric Asylums?  
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/should-the-us-bring-back-psychiatric-asylums/384838/  
 
John Oliver Last Week Tonight on Mental Health 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGY6DqB1HX8  
 
National Bureau of Economic Research:  Mental Health Treatment and Criminal Justice Outcomes by Richard Frank and Thomas G. McGuire April 2010 
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15858.pdf
 
PEW Charitable Trusts:  Prison Health Care:  Costs and Quality:  How and Why States strive for high-performing systems October 2017
https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2017/10/sfh_prison_health_care_costs_and_quality_final.pdf
 
National Public Radio:  How the Loss of U.S. Psychiatric Hospitals led to a Mental Health Crisis
https://www.npr.org/2017/11/30/567477160/how-the-loss-of-u-s-psychiatric-hospitals-led-to-a-mental-health-crisis?t=1537124105158
 
Technology and the Future of Mental Health Treatment:  National Institute of Mental Health
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/technology-and-the-future-of-mental-health-treatment/index.shtml  
 
Five-point Plan to Improve the Nations Mental Health
https://blog.samhsa.gov/2015/02/18/five-point-plan-to-improve-the-nations-mental-health/#.W56kTS2B36A  
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts 
Anxiety Disorder
Autism
Delusion
Haldol
Paranoid Schizophrenia
Prolixin
Schizoaffective Disorder
 
 

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery
​Authors:  Barbara K. Lipska and Elaine McArdle
ISBN-10: 1328787303
ISBN-13: 978-1328787309

APA Style Citation
Lipska, B. K. & McArdle, E. (2018).  The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscientist-Who-Lost-Her-Mind/dp/1328787303

​Book Description
Dr. Barbara Lipska dedicated her life to neuroscience and ended up raging a personal battle with her own brain. As a neuroscientist her specialty was schizophrenia, but soon she experienced the very symptoms she studied. The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery follows her personal story of overcoming melanoma that metastasized to the brain. She reminds us that mental illness is a brain disease and provides a blend of brain awareness and personal anecdotes to educate the reader. According to Dr. Thomas R. Insel, former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) director, when speaking of Lipska, “You have done something so important for people with serious mental illness who do not have an observable lesion. Not only have you reminded us all that mental illnesses are brain illnesses, you have reminded us to be hopeful. People recover.” It is her expertise, desire to help reduce stigma, and optimism that leaves a lasting mark on the reader.
 
Throughout the book, Dr. Lipska divulges personal stories to build together the timeline of her amazing strength and battle with various cancers.  She began her journey in communist Poland in the 1980s where she worked on clinical trials for drugs to treat schizophrenia. Her first marriage quickly fell apart after she learned her husband had melanoma that ended up metastasizing to the brain, the very disorder she later faced. She found comfort in another man, Mirek and went on to marry him and raise her two children from her first marriage. In 1989, she was offered employment at the National Institute of Health in Maryland. Her research quickly took off and, in 1993, she published findings for the Lipska model. Then, in 2009, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy on her left breast. Again in 2011, she received the unimaginable news and learned that she had the deadliest form of skin cancer, melanoma. She went on to beat cancer for a second time. In 2013, she was named Director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the NIMH. Life seemed to be taking a turn for the better, and she started to train for a half Ironman.
 
In January 2015, her story changed once again for the worse. She was working on her computer when her right hand vanished from her lower right visual field. She did not want to admit that something was wrong, but she was well-versed in the symptoms of cancer. An MRI confirmed she had three tumors and that one was bleeding and appeared to be melanoma. She was going to battle this cancer with the “kitchen sink”, including surgery, radiation, and immunotherapy. She was given steroids to prevent swelling and needed brain surgery to remove the bleeding tumor from her occipital lobe. Fortunately, the raisin-sized tumor was in a non-life-threatening location. Next, she decided to use stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) to focus high doses of radiation onto individual tumors. Within one month of the brain surgery she was skiing, and within two months, training for a triathlon again. The family vacationed in Hawaii and spirits were high. After she returned, she received the news that she had been accepted into an immunotherapy clinical trial. Immunotherapy uses the body’s own defenses to fight the disease and has been touted as one of the most encouraging cancer treatments in decades.  Over 12 weeks, Dr. Lipska received four injections, consisting of a combination of two monoclonal antibody drugs that boosted the immune system. The drugs teach the dysfunctional T cells to recognize, attack, and kill off the cancerous cells.  She was not supposed to have any active tumors to complete the trial because the consequences were unknown. However, she learned from a second opinion that she had three new tumors.  Dr. Lipska decided to keep the news a secret and she proceeded with the trial. After the second injection, her body took a turn for the worse. She had an autoimmune reaction and suffered lymphedema from her previous mastectomy. When her lymph nodes were removed, her lymphatic system was blocked and her lymph fluid could not properly drain. This fluid buildup led to swelling in Dr. Lipska’s arm. It was at this time that her personality started to change. She became aggressive, acting like a 2-year-old having a tantrum, but did not have insight into her own behavior. She lashed out at her family, a physical therapist, and termite inspection man. She was angry, paranoid, impatient, and lacked empathy. Her frontal lobe was changing, but everyone wrote it off as stress. In June 2015, a variety of odd behaviors started to occur. She went for a run in her neighborhood with hair dye dripping everywhere and missing her prosthetic breast. She lost her car and, after finding it, damaged it as she frantically tried to escape the parking structure. After her final injection, she got sick on pizza and believed she had been poisoned by plastic hidden in the pizza. Upon her family’s advice she returned to the doctor for her first MRI since joining the immunotherapy trial. She learned that she had new tumors and the immunotherapy did not work. There was a total of 18 tumors, the largest in her frontal and parietal lobe.  She also had significant swelling and inflammation of brain tissue. Once again, she was given high amounts of steroids. This time her therapy included CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery, which used a robotic arm to shoot high-dose radiation into the tumors.
 
Dr. Lipska continued to battle her symptoms for the next two months.  She was argumentative and lost her ability to plan. She became obsessed with food and gained ten pounds. She was told to get her affairs in order, and her family began a rotation of visits. As her symptoms continued to advance, she forgot her husband’s birthday and how to do simple math, but her writing and creativity remained strong.  Dr. Lipska continued to work out, but did not understand the physical strain on her body. One specific incident included a seven-mile hike where she found chanterelle mushrooms that she wanted her husband to gather for breakfast.  After her 2.5 hour walk, she was exhausted and became overwhelmed. Her brain entered survival mode, and she blew up at her husband and family. Soon after this incident, her family noticed her short-term memory was disappearing. In addition, she would lose her balance and not be able to judge distance. One afternoon after demanding to walk home, she got lost and had her first incident of incontinence. When attending the grand opening of a local supermarket, she experienced a sensory overload from the music that sent her into panic mode. She was living a strange irony of the symptoms she once studied. 
 
Her mind finally started to return. She described it like crawling out of a black hole. Dr. Lipska wanted to keep fighting, but the two new drugs that showed promise for her genetic variation were not approved by the FDA and were not covered by insurance. The drug company gave her the drugs for “compassionate use” and she began both types. Her body exploded in a rash, but eventually she had promising results. In July 2015, she had a scan that showed the tumors shrank considerably or disappeared.  There was no way to know exactly which treatment worked, but she was grateful (even though the scientist in her was annoyed). She continued to have brain scans every six weeks. Small tumors have appeared and were treated with CyberKnife.
 
Dr. Lipska has tried to put all the pieces together and figure out how to move forward. Her family doesn’t talk much about those two summer months. She was scared about how her mind failed and has since regularly tested herself to see if her symptoms are returning. She publicly shared her story through The New York Times for the first time and received a positive response. But her story took another twist in August 2016. At the site of her biggest tumor she experienced brain tissue necrosis. This is a delayed and sometimes fatal effect of radiation, where the surrounding tissue of the brain tumor does not heal after the radiation.  Dr. Lipska noticed a blind spot at the top of her visual field in her left eye. She was diagnosed with irreversible optic neuropathy- total blindness in her left eye due to the radiation she received. Lipska refused to give up, retrained her body to deal with the blindness, and even trained for a family triathlon. Two weeks before the race she experienced a leg twitch. She was having seizures due to necrotic tissue in her right motor cortex.  Despite her complications she continued to compete in the triathlon, taking the swimming leg of the race. When she passed the timing piece to her husband, he said, “Life is a team sport! And remember, my love, we’ll conquer this beast!”
 
The prognosis for Dr. Lipska is good, but she is cautious. She is worried it could all happen again with old age. But she knows it is through the support of her family that she got through her journey to madness and back.
 
Other Related Resources
Barbara K. Lipska Webpage
https://www.barbaralipska.com/bio/
 
The New York Times Article written by Dr. Lipska
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscientist-who-lost-her-mind.html
Possible questions include:

1. What symptoms did Dr. Lipska experience that mimic mental illness?
2. What role did her family play in her story with melanoma?
3. How does this story fight the stigma of mental illness?
4. How is this story a testament to optimism?

 
NPR Interview with Dr. Lipska
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/03/31/598236622/the-neuroscientist-who-lost-her-mind-returns-from-madness
 
Megyn Kelly TODAY interview with Dr. Lipska
https://www.today.com/video/meet-the-neuroscientist-who-lost-her-mind-then-got-it-back-again-1209150019548
 
2018 Gaithersburg Book Festival in Maryland book talk with Dr. Lipska
https://www.c-span.org/video/?445042-12/the-neuroscientist-lost-mind
 
WGBH News interview with Dr. Lipska
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abWumGocVoU
 
WBUR- Radio Boston interview with Dr. Lipska
http://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2018/04/23/neuroscientist-new-book
 
Psychology Today posts from authors
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/experts/barbara-k-lipska-phd-elaine-mcardle
 
The Guardian Article
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/30/i-was-a-caricature-of-my-worst-traits-how-brain-cancer-can-affect-the-mind
 
Wall Street Journal article written by James (son-in-law) about the family triathlon
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-triathlon-is-easy-next-to-soviets-and-polio-1495492959
 
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor- Harvard trained brain scientist who suffers from a stroke and then writes about it
http://mystrokeofinsight.com/
http://drjilltaylor.com/book.html
https://www.amazon.com/My-Stroke-Insight-Scientists-Personal/dp/0452295548
https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104154403
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts 
Phineas Gage
 
Adrenal glands
Anosognosia- lack of insight
Antipsychotic drugs in the 1950s
Blood-brain-barrier (BBB)
Brain
Brain bank
Cerebellum
Confidentiality
Consciousness
Creativity
CT scan
Dementia
DSM-5
Dyspraxia
Empathy
Frontal cortex
Frontal lobotomy
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD)
Gray vs. white matter
Hippocampus
Id vs. superego
Immunotherapy
Language
Lipska model- neonatal hippocampal lesion model of schizophrenia
Lobes- frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital
Localization
Mental illness statistics
MRI
Nature vs. nurture
Neuroscientist
Paranoia
PET scan
Pituitary glands
Prefrontal cortex
Psychosis
Schizophrenagenic mother myth
Schizophrenia
Sensory overload
Short vs. long-term memory
Spatial memory
Stigma of mental illness
Thyroid glands
Visual field

Jessica Flitter
West Bend East High School, West Bend, WI
jflitter@wbsd-schools.org
​
The Horse That Won’t Go Away:  Clever Hans, Facilitated Communication and the Need for Clear Thinking
Author(s): Heinzen, T.E, Lilienfeld, S.O. and Nolan, S.A.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4641-4574-2

APA Style Citation
Heinzen, T. E., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Nolan, S. A. (2015). The horse that won't go away: Clever Hans, facilitated communication and the need for clear thinking. New York: Worth, a Macmillan Education imprint.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Horse-That-Wont-Go-Away/dp/1464145741

​Book Description
Psychology is a science! The authors of The Horse That Won’t Go Away emphasize that clear, critical thinking is the “hallmark of psychological science." Sometimes we make mental mistakes that can lead to bad decisions, poor investments, and failed social programs, but clear thinking and the scientific approach helps prevent us from fooling ourselves or others. “Making psychological science available to the public- and helping people apply it to their daily lives” is why the authors wrote this book.
 
The first part of the book tells the story of Clever Hans, the infamous horse that could count. Wilhelm von Osten, a retired math teacher, taught his horse how to tap the ground as he answered various mathematical questions.  This amazing feat took place in Berlin, Germany and gained public attention in the early 1900s.  From there, the story of Clever Hans was fostered by the media, vivid public demonstrations, validation by experts, and incredible explanations.  The authors take you through a detailed description of von Osten’s mission, his endorsement by experts, the media’s misrepresentation of the findings of the Hans Commission, and von Osten’s desire to contribute to the field of science. It was thanks to Oskar Pfungst that we finally found out how Clever Hans was able to complete such amazing feats.  With critical thinking and organized experiment, Pfungst was able to rule out alternative explanations. After the explanation was made public, von Osten himself expressed cognitive dissonance and believed even stronger in his horse's intelligence. At the age of 70, von Osten died "apparently of a broken heart" and was sadly "frustrated in the great goal of his life."   He failed to contribute to science, but his failure opened our eyes to the power of confirmation bias.  Unfortunately, we did not learn from the story of Clever Hans. The United States had their own rock star horses, Beautiful Jim Key on display at the 1904 World’s Fair and Lady Wonder who demonstrated psychic abilities for three questions per dollar.
 
These might just be examples involving horses, but the authors propose a more current example that follows the same pattern. It is known as Clever Hands- the facilitated communication story.  Julian and Thal Wendrow, from Michigan, wanted to communicate with their autistic daughter, Aislinn, who was nonverbal. A keyboard was placed in front of her, and she sat next to a facilitator who held and guided her hand over the letters. Soon Aislinn was composing poems, taking classes, and speaking of her dreams. The miracle therapy seemed to work.  Then, one morning Aislinn communicated with a facilitator at school about sexual abuse that was occurring at home. Her father was arrested and held in jail. The accusations were later found untrue, and he was released, but his and his family’s life was ruined.  The method used by his daughter, facilitated communication, started in Australia and was meant to be used with children with obvious physical disabilities. Then, in the 1990s Douglas Biklen, a professor of special education and sociologist, helped promote its use in the United States for autism, which he viewed as a motor disorder. Biklen was both articulate and persuasive, and the method was quickly adopted in schools. In addition, it was endorsed by the media and famous individuals just like the Clever Hans story.  Just as critical thinking disproved the horse’s supposed intelligence, the method of facilitated communication came apart once researchers demanded the claims be tested. Testimonials and anecdotes would no longer suffice. Experimental tests were introduced, for example, an autistic child was told to spell a word such as “keys” with the facilitator out of the room. The facilitator did not know the word the child was trying to spell, and when the facilitator returned and assisted the child, they were only able to produce nonsense words.  The facilitator has been unconsciously assisting the child in the same way von Osten had been unconsciously cueing his horse. Almost a century later the exact same fatal flaw was occurring.  You would think the story ends here, but instead, facilitated communication has reappeared. In 2004 and 2010 documentaries about autism began to gain the public’s attention once again. Douglas Bilken made a comeback by giving speeches at prestigious institutions and winning awards. Facilitated communication rebranded itself by changing its name to supported typing or rapid prompting.  The Facilitated Communication Institute became known as the Institute for Communication and Inclusion.  Even though the method is unsupported by science, it continues to make its way into homes of families who place much hope into an unsound practice.
 
History is not supposed to repeat itself, and we are supposed to learn from it. However, if you look closely the Clever Hans effect is still present in everyday life. That is, humans still perceive what we want to believe. The authors investigate modern day examples of the effect, such as Potato the math-genius dog, elephants capable of painting self-portraits and landscapes, drug sniffing dogs, the Scared Straight program that terrifies youth in the hope of reducing future criminal behavior, the D.A.R.E. program meant to reduce future drug use, and the Your Baby Can Read video program, to name a few. While the animal tricks sound like fun, the authors point out the other examples play on the human desire to do good for others but can lead to real social harm, such as anxiety, false accusations, and bogus social programs wasting tax payers’ money.  The way to expose these claims for what they are is through critical thinking and the scientific approach. They implore readers to share the story of Clever Hans with each generation.  Von Osten did not make a lasting contribution to science like he wanted, but instead, he taught us the power and necessity of using the scientific approach.  Mental errors without critical thinking can lead to self-deception.  The authors end on the note, “That is why Clever Hans is the horse that won’t go away- and why we don’t want him to.”
Other Related Resources
 
Video Clips Involving Critical Thinking

1. Potato the math-genius dog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUeGKNg39mE
2. Maggie the mathematical dog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAo0MJbsC_g

 
Book Reviews
A book review of The Horse That Won’t Go Away:  Clever Hans, Facilitated Communication and the Need for Clear Thinking compiled by the American Psychological Association for the Psychology Teacher Network.
http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/ptn/2016/05/clever-hans.aspx
 
A book review of The Horse That Won’t Go Away:  Clever Hans, Facilitated Communication and the Need for Clear Thinking compiled for Psych Central, an independent mental health social network maintained by mental health professionals. 
https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-horse-that-wont-go-away-clever-hans-facilitated-communication-the-need-for-clear-thinking/
 
Facilitated Communication 
A series of articles on the controversial method of facilitated communication from the American Psychological Association, the Atlantic, Scientific American, and the Autism Speaks.
http://www.apa.org/research/action/facilitated.aspx

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/a-controversial-method-for-autism-communication/491810/
 
https://www.autismspeaks.org/blog/2012/01/09/all-children-deserve-access-communication
 
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-facilitated-communication-is-a-canard-why-teach-it/
 
Apple Video Released on World Autism Awareness Day
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/apple-releases-films-to-raise-autism-awareness/

Psychological Figures and Concepts 
Sigmund Freud
Clever Hans
Applied behavior analysis (ABA)
Autism
Automatic writing
Availability heuristic
Cognitive dissonance
Confirmation bias
Control group vs. experimental group
Critical thinking
Down syndrome, Turner syndrome, Fetal alcohol syndrome, PKU
ESP
Facilitated communication
False positives and false negatives
Hindsight bias
Illusory correlation
Intellectual disability
Intuition
Methods of elimination
Naïve realism
Phrenology
Prefrontal lobotomy
Regression to the mean
Savants
Shaping
Skepticism
Telepathy

​Just Mercy:  A Story of Justice and Redemption
Author:  Bryan Stevenson
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8496-5
 
APA Style Citation
Stevenson, Bryan (2015). Just Mercy:  A Story of Justice and Redemption.  New York: Random House.

Book Description
Just Mercy is an engaging series of true stories related to the fight for equality in the American justice system.  The memoir describes the journey of the author who dedicated his career to helping those who are the most vulnerable in society.  Stevenson holds degrees from Harvard Law and the Kennedy School of Government and chose to dedicate his talents and career fighting for civil rights law in the South. Stevenson is an attorney who has spent his career working to ensure that the most vulnerable individuals in society such as children, the mentally ill, the poor, and the wrongfully convicted receive a fair trial.  His non-profit organization, the Equal Justice Initiative works to offer legal assistance to those who face discrimination in the justice system. 
 
The book is a combination of historical background information and the detailed accounts of many of Stevenson’s most memorable cases.  One early case involved Walter McMillian, a black man who was wrongly convicted and given the death sentence for the murder of a white woman in Alabama. Despite numerous witness that testified that the accused was at a church fish fry at the time of the crime, McMillian was sentenced based largely on the testimony of three other witnesses.  The trial lasted only one and half days.  After spending six years on death row, Stevenson and the Equal Justice Institute were able to prove that witnesses for the prosecution lied on the stand and that the prosecution had illegally suppressed evidence that would have exonerated Mr. McMillian. 
 
The Equal Justice Institute also helped overturn the wrongful conviction of Marsha Colbey who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after giving birth to a stillborn child.  Ms. Colbey, a poor white woman living in rural Alabama could not afford prenatal care and she and her family buried the stillborn child in a grave near the trailer where they lived.  An investigation began when a neighbor noticed Ms. Colbey was no longer pregnant yet did not have a baby.  A pathologist with a history of creating inaccurate and faulty reports declared that the baby was born alive and died by drowning.  During her trial, the pathologist's report was exposed as inaccurate by the state’s own expert witness, who testified that due to Colbey’s age and lack of prenatal care that a stillbirth likely. The expert witness further stressed that he could not declare a life birth much less a homicide in this case.  The state of Alabama obtained a conviction based on evidence regarding Ms. Colbey’s prior drug use and poverty to present a picture of her as a bad mother who deserved imprisonment.  The Equal Justice Institute was able to win a unanimous decision from the state Supreme Court overturning her conviction based on a failure to provide a fair trial by an impartial jury.  The Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences agreed to re-examine the evidence in the case and produced a new autopsy report concluding that there was no evidence that the baby was born alive. 
 
Just Mercy highlights many of the problems in the justice system including flaws in investigations, trials, sentencing, and prison.  The book thoroughly investigates issues related to the intersection between psychology and the law.  The books primarily focus on the problems of mass incarceration, and the effects of prison on children, adolescents, the mentally ill and the intellectually disabled.  Numerous aspects and events in this book can be used to highlight topics in social psychology including racial profiling, implicit prejudice, stereotype threat, and discrimination. 
 
Other Related Resources
 
Author’s Website
The author’ website provides information about the book, the author's biography, links to stories in the book, videos, discussion guides, and ways to get involved in promoting justice.
http://bryanstevenson.com/
 
Author Bryan Stevenson’s TED Talk
The author’s TED talk which has received over 3 million views on the TED site alone.  Considered by many to be the best TED talk ever given.  Stevenson spoke in March of 2012 in front of 1,000 attendees at the TED conference in Long Beach, California.  After an 18-minute presentation, Stevenson received the longest standing ovation in TED history.  Attendees that day spontaneously donated $1 million dollars to his nonprofit (the Equal Justice Institute). 
http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice?language=en
 
Equal Justice Institute Website
The Equal Justice Initiative is a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.  EJI works with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment.  EJI also prepares reports, newsletters, and manuals to assist advocates and policymakers in the critically important work of reforming the administration of criminal justice.  Photographs and summaries of many of the cases from the book as well as other EJI cases are available on the website.  The website provides a great deal of information on discrimination, the death penalty, mass incarceration, and juvenile justice.
http://www.eji.org/
 
Equal Justice Institute article on the decision of the U.S. Justice Department to end the use of private prisons
http://www.eji.org/news/justice-department-will-phase-out-private-prisons
 
Guardian Article about author Bryan Stevenson – Desmund Tuto calls Stevenson “America’s Mandela.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/01/bryan-stevenson-americas-mandela
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Dorthea Dix
Death Penalty
Death Penalty for children, mentally ill, intellectually disabled
Deinstitutionalization
Discrimination
Equal Justice Initiative
Insanity Defense
Mass Incarceration
Megan’s Law
Prejudice (Explicit and Implicit)
Racial Profiling
Stereotype
Stereotype Threat

​The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience 
Author:  Kent A. Kiehl PhD
ISBN: 13: 9780770435868
 
APA Style Citation
Kiehl, Kent (2014). The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience.
New York: Broadway Books.

Book Description
Author Dr. Kent Kiehl is a neuroscientist whose research involves utilizing brain imaging and clinical interviews to study mental illness especially criminal psychopathology.  His research has involved taking mobile fMRI machines into prisons to study the brains of inmates he has determined were psychopaths based on clinical interviews and the Hare Psychopathy Test.  Kiehl is currently a Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Law at the University of New Mexico.  He has compiled brain scans from over 3,000 offenders at eight different prisons.  Dr. Kiehl is the protégé of the world famous expert in psychopaths and creator of the influential psychopath checklist, Dr. Robert Hare. The book opens with Dr. Kiehl’s first encounter with a psychopath during his graduate work at a Canadian prison.  The book traces Kiehl’s career and depicts how a variety of academic experiences led him to become an expert in this field.  His early work using EEGs to examine the brain waves of killer whales, experience with fMRI machines, and clinical work under the leading expert in psychopathy all contributed to this interesting research area.  His research eventually led him to conduct fMRI research on prisoners and has resulted in the discovery of important physiological differences in the brains of psychopaths.  His work provides insight into the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of psychopathy. 
 
The author gives a thorough explanation of a question that comes up in nearly every introductory or abnormal psychology course, “What is the difference between a psychopath, a sociopath, and an individual with antisocial personality disorder?” The term psychopath was first used by the German psychiatrist J.L.A. Koch (1841-1908) to describe individuals who exhibited these traits throughout their entire life history and across most areas of their lives.  Koch narrowed the term to differentiate these individuals from others who were merely criminals.  Koch’s use of the term psychopath was based on biological causes.  This purely biological explanation for psychopathology soon was criticized by the growing influence of Behaviorism.  If individuals were blank slates at birth, then the traits described by Koch would have environmental causes.  The term sociopathy was first used in the 1930’s and was created to describe individuals with the same traits as psychopaths but whose cause was social and not physiological.  The simple answer then is that psychopaths are created by “nature” and sociopaths are created by “nurture.”  For the author, the terms sociopathy and psychopathy are very different.  Sociopathy would involve a very wide range of individuals who behave in antisocial ways as a result of negative environmental influences whereas psychopathy is a concept based on genetics and biology with measurable brain differences. 

Today, psychopathy is diagnosed based on the 20 items of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, the clinical rating tool considered the gold standard for the assessment of psychopathy.  The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised is given by a trained clinician who conducts a semi-structured interview lasting approximately two hours and collects extensive additional files on the individual.  The additional files often include police reports, assessments completed by other mental health workers, family history, employment history, educational records, childhood history, and criminal history.  Based on this information the individual is given a score for each of the 10 traits that describe the affective, impulsive, and antisocial symptoms of psychopathy.  Each item receives a score ranging from 0-2.  A score of 0 indicates that the trait is not present in the individual, a score of 1 indicates the trait describes the individual in some areas of their life, and a score of 2 indicates that the trait is present in all aspects of the individual's life.  The 20 traits on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist- Revised are described in detail in the book and are listed below:

1. Glibness (insincerity or thoughtless) and Superficial Charm
2. Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth
3. Need for Stimulation
4. Pathological Lying
5. Conning/Manipulation
6. Lack of Remorse or Guilt
7. Shallow Affect
8. Callous/Lack of Empathy
9. Parasitic Lifestyle
10. Poor Behavioral Controls
11. Promiscuous Sexual Behavior
12. Early Behavioral Problems
13. Lack of Realistic, Long-Term Goals
14. Impulsivity
15. Irresponsibility
16. Failure to Accept Responsibility for Own Actions
17. Many Short-Term Marital Relationships
18. Juvenile Delinquency
19. Revocation of Conditional Release (Repeated failure to learn from punishments)
20. Criminal Versatility

The author doubts that the average clinician can diagnose psychopaths accurately because they have difficulty reliably detecting the affective criteria such as lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse.  One common mistake that leads to overrating on the affective criteria is an excessive focus on the index crime (the one specific bad thing that the individual did which often leads to arrest).  For an individual to be diagnosed as a psychopath, these traits must be expressed across multiple areas of their lives and have existed for most of their life as evidenced by events from childhood.  One trick that the author suggests is to evaluate the individual on the psychopath checklist without using any information related to the index offense.  An actual psychopath would receive a high rating on traits even if the index offense were not included.  Also, according to the author, non-experts are often prone to giving excessively high scores across all areas if an individual has committed an extremely horrific crime, which may or may not be warranted.  The best way to prevent misdiagnosis is to have clinicians who work with individuals in forensic settings to undergo specialized training. 
 
In a fascinating chapter, the author examines the historical records to evaluate two infamous individuals according to the Psychopath Checklist-Revised.  The two individuals were both nineteenth-century presidential assassins:  John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln and Charles Guiteau, who assassinated President Garfield. The author draws upon the historical record and provides the reader with insight into how the criteria are measured and assessed.  Based on the author’s assessment of the historical record Charles Guiteau scores in the 99th percentile of psychopathy by scoring a 37.5/40 on the Psychopath Checklist-Revised.  John Wilkes Booth, on the other hand, earned an 8.4/40 on the checklist which although is two times the score of the average American male is below average for a criminal and not high enough for a diagnosis of psychopathy.
 
The text also discusses how psychopathy relates to the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder found in the DSM-5.  The DSM does not include psychopathy as a specific diagnosis but does include antisocial personality disorder.  According to Dr. Kiehl, the DSM antisocial personality disorder criteria will result in getting a clinician about halfway to a diagnosis of psychopathy according to the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised.  If an individual meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, then they likely have a very difficult personality.  The author advises that clinicians working in forensic settings not even bother with the antisocial personality criteria but instead begin immediately by using the Psychopath Checklist-Revised instead of the DSM.  Kiehl also provides insight into the DSM diagnosis of conduct disorder, which he believes is flawed because it is based entirely on observable criteria without reference to emotional, interpersonal, or affective characteristics associated with psychopathy.  Since nearly 80% of individuals who are given a conduct disorder diagnosis outgrow the antisocial behaviors, the author argues that it is of little utility because it does not predict which children are likely to develop psychopathy or lifelong personality problems.  Clinicians in secure juvenile facilities do not even bother conducting assessments for conduct disorder since nearly all of the children would meet the criteria.
 
The Psychopath Whisperer offers an amazing level of insight into the diagnosis of psychopathy but also makes a large number of connections to various units across the psychology curriculum.  As a result, the book is an excellent resource to add high-interest material to units including the biological bases of behavior, sensation and perception, abnormal and treatment, motivation, and emotion, personality, testing and individual differences, learning, and cognition.
 
Other Related Resources

Author’s Websites
http://kentkiehl.com/
The author’s site includes links to articles related to neuroscience, law, and psychopathy as well as videos and other resources. The website also has information about Dr. Kiehl’s research.
 
http://www.psychopathwhisperer.com/
This website includes author Kent Kiehl’s blog and other resources that are specifically related to the book.
 
http://www.mrn.org/people/kent-a-kiehl/principal-investigators/
The Mind Research Network’s website that includes resources, research articles, and information about Kiehl’s project.
 
Wired Interview with Kent Kiehl, Ph.D. about the Psychopath Whisperer
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/psychopath-brains-kiehl/
What It’s Like to Spend 20 Years Listening to Psychopaths for Science: An interview with the author about his research and the stories behind the book.
 
NPR Story:  Inside A Psychopath's Brain: The Sentencing Debate
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128116806
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Paul Broca
Sigmund Freud
Phineas Gage
Michael Gazzaniga
Robert Hare
Patient HM
John Nash
Peter Salovey
Adderall
ADHD
Affect
Amnesia
Amygdala
Anterior and Posterior Cingulate Cortex
Antisocial Personality Disorder
Atkins v. Virginia (2002)
Behaviorist Theory
Bipolar Disorder
Borderline Personality Disorder
Callous and Unemotional (CU) Trait
Child Psychopathy Scale
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Conduct Disorder
Corpus Callosum
Death Penalty
Delusion
Depression
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders (DSM) III, IV-TR, 5
EEG (Electroencephalogram)
Ego
Emotional Intelligence
Empathy
Factor Analysis
Frontal Lobe
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
Hallucination (auditory, command, visual)
Hippocampus
IQ
Juvenile Justice System
Limbic System
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Oppositional Defiant Disorder
Orbital Frontal Cortex
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Prefrontal Cortex
Psychopathic Trait
Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)
Recidivism
Schizophrenia
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Self-Report Inventory
Sleep-Wake Disorder
Sociopath
Substance Abuse
Youth Psychopathy Checklist