Here are 100 books that Madness at the Movies fans have personally recommended if you like
Madness at the Movies.
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I have a reputation as an expert on the portrayal of psychopathology in contemporary cinema, and I have lectured on this topic hundreds of times in dozens of different countries. This reputation builds on five editions of Movies and Mental Illness and two editions of Positive Psychology at the Movies. I am also currently coauthoring a third book: Movies, Mini-series, and Multiculturalism: Using Films to Understand Culture, and I edit a series of film reviews for Hogrefe titled A Clinical Psychologist Goes to the Movies. Much of my career has been devoted to exploring the fascinating interface of psychopathology and media.
I loved this book. It is a quick read (100 pages) that will introduce readers to the importance of film in contemporary society.
Schlozman is a child psychiatrist who writes beautifully; he is also one of the world’s leading authorities on the relationship between cinema and mental illness, and he is someone who is deeply concerned by the ways in which films perpetuate stigma for people who are coping with mental illness, substance abuse or a developmental disability. Schlozman was an English teacher before becoming a psychiatrist; this is likely one of the reasons he writes so well.
Our world is inundated by film. Our best stories are told on movie screens, on televisions, on smartphones and laptops. Film argues that on-screen storytelling is the most ubiquitous format for art to intersect with health and well-being, offering a way for us to appreciate, understand and even celebrate the most nuanced and complex notions of what it means to be healthy through the stories that we watch unfolding. Clinicians use film to better understand their patients, and individuals use film to better understand themselves and each other.
Using case histories and based on academic research from a range of…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I have a reputation as an expert on the portrayal of psychopathology in contemporary cinema, and I have lectured on this topic hundreds of times in dozens of different countries. This reputation builds on five editions of Movies and Mental Illness and two editions of Positive Psychology at the Movies. I am also currently coauthoring a third book: Movies, Mini-series, and Multiculturalism: Using Films to Understand Culture, and I edit a series of film reviews for Hogrefe titled A Clinical Psychologist Goes to the Movies. Much of my career has been devoted to exploring the fascinating interface of psychopathology and media.
I found this book to be full of literary and film examples of mental illness that I could bring into the courses I teach in abnormal psychology and medical ethics.
The writing is clear and engaging, and the book introduced me to numerous films that I had not previously seen. I was especially interested in the discussion of films that illustrate (a) positive psychology and (b) movies that depict therapists in action.
Providing intriguing insights for students, film buffs, and readers of various genres of fiction, this fascinating book delves into the psychology of 100 well-known fictional characters.
Our favorite fictional characters from books and movies often display an impressive and wide range of psychological attributes, both positive and negative. We admire their resilience, courage, humanity, or justice, and we are intrigued by other characters who show signs of personality disorders and mental illness-psychopathy, narcissism, antisocial personality, paranoia, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, among many other conditions. This book examines the psychological attributes and motivations of 100 fascinating characters that include examples of…
I have a reputation as an expert on the portrayal of psychopathology in contemporary cinema, and I have lectured on this topic hundreds of times in dozens of different countries. This reputation builds on five editions of Movies and Mental Illness and two editions of Positive Psychology at the Movies. I am also currently coauthoring a third book: Movies, Mini-series, and Multiculturalism: Using Films to Understand Culture, and I edit a series of film reviews for Hogrefe titled A Clinical Psychologist Goes to the Movies. Much of my career has been devoted to exploring the fascinating interface of psychopathology and media.
I have devoted much of my life to teaching medical students about mental illness and medical ethics, and this edited book is the best source for recommending films that are appropriate for the classroom. Medical students don’t have enough free time to watch entire films, but they love it when I bring in clips that illustrate schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for example.
I found the book especially helpful for teaching interviewing skills–it is far less threatening for students to see examples of bad practice than to have these same behaviors pop up in clinical settings or in role-playing scenarios.
"Whole System Working" is an approach that enables people to find sustainable solutions to local problems. It is also a theoretical approach to organizational development that views groups of people who share a common purpose as a "living system". Based on King's Fund work over four years with health agencies and their local partners in housing, local government, the independent sector, transport, and local people, this book describes the founding principles which characterize the approach, gives examples of its application in practice, and answers common questions.
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
I have a reputation as an expert on the portrayal of psychopathology in contemporary cinema, and I have lectured on this topic hundreds of times in dozens of different countries. This reputation builds on five editions of Movies and Mental Illness and two editions of Positive Psychology at the Movies. I am also currently coauthoring a third book: Movies, Mini-series, and Multiculturalism: Using Films to Understand Culture, and I edit a series of film reviews for Hogrefe titled A Clinical Psychologist Goes to the Movies. Much of my career has been devoted to exploring the fascinating interface of psychopathology and media.
I found Young’s book to be tremendously helpful as I searched for films to use in my abnormal psychology courses. There are numerous recommendations for psychologically relevant films that my students found fascinating.
The book is relatively short, but it is scholarly and a quick read. Young is a clinical psychologist, and he draws on his professional background in recommending relevant films. I came away from this book with dozens of new ideas for films to use in the classroom.
Psychology at the Movies explores the insights to be gained by applying various psychological lenses to popular films including cinematic depictions of human behavior, the psychology of filmmakers, and the impact of viewing movies.
Uses the widest range of psychological approaches to explore movies, the people who make them, and the people who watch them
Written in an accessible style with vivid examples from a diverse group of popular films, such as The Silence of the Lambs, The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Taxi Driver, Good Will Hunting, and A Beautiful Mind
Brings together psychology, film studies, mass communication, and…
As a kid, I read constantly. After my beloved mother left my abusive father and came out as a lesbian, a homophobic judge took me and my siblings--one of whom has Down syndrome--away from her. Reading was an escape. I loved weekends when I could leave my father’s house near Los Angeles and visit my mother who had a backyard full of trees and gardens. My parents argued constantly but as long as I could grow plants and observe birds, I was okay. Eventually, I moved to Oregon and volunteered to care for owls. I wrote Avenging the Owl to show that in the middle of family meltdowns, kids can turn to the natural world for comfort and inspiration.
This is a book that explores deeply the role that fathers can play in our life. Lily is a transgender girl, which confounds her father and causes friction in their family. Norbert, nicknamed Dunkin, takes meditation for bipolar disorder—the same illness that caused his father to commit suicide. I appreciate this book for so many reasons; Gephart treats the transgender character with deep respect, and she doesn’t shy away from the topic of parental suicide. A children’s librarian once told me that suicide was too heavy for middle-grade fiction, but I disagree. In fact, I based a key plot point in my own novel on the experience of one of my past high school students whose father committed suicide when she was still in middle school.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST KIDS BOOKS OF THE YEAR by NPR • New York Public Library • JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD SELECTION • GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS
For readers who enjoyed Wonder and Counting by 7's, award-winning author Donna Gephart crafts a compelling story about two remarkable young people: Lily, a transgender girl, and Dunkin, a boy dealing with bipolar disorder. Their powerful journey, perfect for fans of Wonder, will shred your heart, then stitch it back together with kindness, humor, bravery, and love.
Lily Jo McGrother, born Timothy McGrother, is a girl. But being a girl is not so easy…
When my older sister died, I felt a pressing need to tell her story. Rachel was a strong, courageous woman, who endured decades in a psychiatric system that failed her. She was a survivor, but the stigma of severe mental illness made her an outcast from most of society. Even so, her enduring passion for poetry inspired me to write about her. I sought out other people’s stories. I enrolled in workshops and therapy. I devoured books and blogs by survivors, advocates, and family members. Everything I read pointed to a troubling rift between the dominant medical model and more humane, less damaging ones. This list represents a slice of my learning.
Psychiatric medications are prescribed more judiciously than when my sister first took them, but still many people find them intolerable.
Bergner first encountered mental illness when his younger brother Bob was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after dancing on a ferry to the rhythm of the ocean. Sadly, his parents believed that dancing was a symptom to be eliminated with higher doses of lithium.
Bergner finds two others to share their experiences: a roller derby star turned peer counselor, who heard voices since childhood; and a lawyer who feels doomed to failure despite his achievements in important cases. All three discontinue medication, two of them successfully.
Interspersed with their stories is a short history of psychiatry with a focus on the limitations of neuroscience and serious missteps in psychopharmacology.
“A profound and powerful work of essential reporting." —The New York Times Book Review
An important—and intimate—interrogation of how we treat mental illness and how we understand ourselves
In the early 1960s, JFK declared that science would take us to the moon. He also declared that science would make the “remote reaches of the mind accessible” and cure psychiatric illness with breakthrough medications. We were walking on the moon within the decade. But today, psychiatric cures continue to elude us—as does the mind itself. Why is it that we still don’t understand how the mind works? What is the difference…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
I’ve been a reader since childhood and books have simply become a part of my life’s tapestry. They have comforted me in times of stress. They have provided me with ripples of joy. And simply kept me up almost all night. The books that I have recommended underscore the changing cultures of the human condition all centered around three universal themes, faith, mental illness, and family. When drafting my first novel I dived into simply capturing aspects of the human condition. As a mental health clinician I see the many tides of life and how the human condition has many times been couched within family dynamics.
This novel changed the way I looked a mental illness. Campbell was a tremendous author and her prose is clearly highlighted in this heart-wrenching novel about how mental illness not only impacts the sufferer but ricochets and touches everyone around them. 72 Hour Hold is an important timeless work that helps to uncover what many have suspected or even known about what their family members fight behaviorally and in the shadows of their minds. Depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety are real and so are the families they impact. What families experience and what we openly discuss are sometimes two separate realities. Pick up this book and see why Campbell attempts to pull the covers off of mental illness and discover just why mental health matters. As a mental health clinician and author sometimes seeing what the issue looks like can dive deeper that any label.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • "A tightly woven, well-written story about mothers and daughters, highs and lows, ex-husbands and boyfriends.... Universally touching." —San Francisco Chronicle
Trina is eighteen and suffers from bi-polar disorder, making her paranoid, wild, and violent. Frightened by her own child, Keri searches for help, quickly learning that the mental health community can only offer her a seventy-two hour hold. After these three days Trina is off on her own again.
Fed up with the bureaucracy and determined to save her daughter by any means necessary, Keri signs on for an illegal intervention known as The Program,…
I am a professor emeritus of History and Arctic & Northern Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A mostly lifelong Alaskan, my research interest has been northern, especially Alaska, history. I’m deeply interested in northern peoples and cultures and both their resilience and adaptation in the face of rapid socio-economic and cultural change. As I write, I strive to create a narrative that will fascinate and inspire; that will resonate deeply, so the reader continues to think about the book well after finishing it. Such narratives attract me as a reader.
Terese Marie Mailhot’s raw account of her traumatic childhood and its enduring consequences took my breath away. A nearly lifelong Alaskan, I am acutely aware of the social problems afflicting Indigenous communities; in fact, I’ve done research on the topic.
Yet, I have never read a more honest, painful, and beautifully written testimonial by an Indigenous person about her experience with childhood poverty and neglect, substance abuse in the home, sexual abuse, and resulting poor self-esteem and self-doubt. Mailhot, who was raised on Seabird Island in British Columbia, began writing her memoir as mental health therapy and it became a process of self-discovery.
Her experience highlights the effects of historical trauma on Indigenous individuals and communities, as well as the prevalence of maltreatment of Indigenous women.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Winner of the Whiting Award for Non-Fiction Selected by Emma Watson as an Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick
'I loved it' Kate Tempest 'Astounding' Roxane Gay 'A sledgehammer' New York Times
Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on an Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalised and facing a dual diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder, Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma.
Dave has lived with bipolar disorder and severe anxiety all of his adult life. He has also worked with over 800 people with mental illness in a certified peer support role. Dave is a blogger with Bp Magazine for Bipolar and a mental health influencer. His blog posts have been read by over a million people. Dave has been hospitalized, had most of the treatments available for bipolar disorder including ECT. Dave has come out the other side and has the rare ability to put all of his emotions and experiences in his writing with complete openness and honesty, making him a best-selling author about bipolar disorder.
In this book, Julie tells her story of living with bipolar disorder. She also shares some tools to help during the dark days. I started the OMG That’s Me! series so folks living with bipolar disorder will know they are not alone and that there is hope. Julie communicates this masterfully.
This fully revised and updated second edition of the bestselling Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder discusses all aspects of readers' relationships with bipolar partners: work, money, sex, medications and their side effects, therapeutic treatments, and more.
Also called manic depressive disorder, bipolar disorder can cause extreme mood swings, and people who suffer from this disorder can alternate between manic and depressed behavior without much warning.
Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder, Second Edition, builds on the practical advice offered in the original book by offering critical new information on the medications that are sometimes prescribed to manage bipolar disorder symptoms. Readers…
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
At a time when people are claiming to “believe” in science or not, books that incorporate science into their personal narratives make it clear that science isn’t a religion—it’s just there for the understanding. Using the natural world to understand humanity (or the lack of it), makes me believe that there are ways humans can be part of the world instead of pretend-masters of it. Each of these books tells a story about identity, growth, self-awareness (or the lack of it) while digging deeply into the earth that sustains us, confounds us, surprises and delights us—as well as sometimes breaks our hearts. I am an author of many books, an editor at Diagram, and a professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Susanne Paola Antonetta’s first book, Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir taught me how memoir can be compiled through multiple lenses—one that invites into the author’s self-view and another through which you can learn about place and environmental degradation. With two (or more) questions, who-I-am becomes complicated and textured. Antonetta’s new The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here illustrates that understanding ourselves comes only through looking at those selves through other texts, other people, our current understanding of ourselves, science, place, and our childhood’s vision of the world.
Antonetta takes quantum entanglement, her grandmother’s Christian Science beliefs, and her own account of spending summers at the shore in a small hut with her family whose history of mental health—and professional accomplishments—is complexly textured. In a section called “The Problem of the Past,” Antonetta describes the behavior of photon particles. In the double-slit experiment, if you send one beam of light through…
At their family’s New Jersey seaside cottages, Susanne Paola Antonetta’s grandmother led seances, swam nude, and imaginatively created a spiritualist paradise on earth. In The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here, Antonetta chronicles how in that unique but tightly controlled space, she began to explore the questions posed by her family’s Christian Science beliefs, turning those questions secular: What is consciousness? Does time exist? And does the world we see reflect reality? In this book, scientific research, family story, and memoir intertwine to mimic the indefinable movements of quantum particles.
Antonetta reflects on a life spent wrestling with bipolar disorder,…
