Hi Everyone,
We encourage you to recommend any book you loved reading. If you have one, kindly indicate the name of the book, author or maybe write a brief description about the book through the comments of this post. If you can add the link about the book, that would also be cool!
Thank you very much!
Scott
Suggestions:
Ben's Friends Recommendation:
This book is a compilation of patient tips and stories to help others patients and loved ones get through this difficult time in life. Ben’s Friends is a “little Internet miracle” and we plan on continuing for many more years.
To help others locate the ebook easier, don't forget to give the ebook a 5-star rate review in Amazon. Strong positive review like 5-star bumps up the ebook in Google search results. Thanks!
Red Lawhern's Recommendation:
Angela Kennedy has assembled a major body of well-referenced research in "Authors of our own Misfortune? The Problems With Psychogenic Explanations for Physical Illnesses". The book is difficult in two ways. Kennedy writes as a social scientist and researcher. Her intended audience is primarily medical doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists who assign diagnoses of psychosomatic disorder to patients seen in their practices. Non-professional readers may find her long paragraphs and 8-line sentences to be hard slogging. In language and style, the book is nearly inaccessible to any but the most persistent of college educated non-physician readers.
This being said, a second and deeper sense of difficulty applies in this book. Kennedy directly challenges both medical doctors and mental health professionals to examine and revise their assumptions about a range of important issues pertaining to so-called "psychogenic" medical symptoms. These are by definition, symptoms of physical disorder or disease that are presumed to be "caused" by the mental state or thinking of the patient. The term "assumed" is highly central here. Kennedy is also challenging professional doctors who may be in emotional denial that what they practice in "psychosomatic" medicine is a dangerous and destructive mythology rather than a consistent or constructive healing art.
Kennedy effectively demolishes an entire branch of current psychiatric practice as codified in the 5th and previous editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association. She demonstrates compellingly that there is no basis in science for such diagnoses as "Somatic Symptom Disorder", "Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder (Conversion Disorder)", "Hypochondriasis," or "Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy". She also sets forth evidence that several presently controversial medical disorders are far better explained as poorly understood medical illness, than they are treated as outgrowths of any emotional or psychogenic process. These medical disorders include Fibromyalgia, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis /Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
Kennedy demonstrates predictable and unnecessary harms that grow from misdiagnosing medical disorders as mental disease entities. Chief among these is the denial of effective medical assessment and treatment to millions of people who are instead written off as "head cases" and then disregarded as reliable reporters of their own medical symptoms and conditions. The careless or frustrated discharge of "difficult" patients who have subtle or unusual medical problems can and already has led to patient deaths. Likewise, among mental health professionals charged with caring for psychosomatic patients, there are no truly effective modalities of treatment. None.
If you are a mental health professional, then you should read this book and ask yourself how many of your patients have been harmed by the fallacies it reveals. If you are a patient who has been referred by a medical doctor for mental health evaluation, or who has been diagnosed with so-called psychogenic symptoms, then you should buy this book and give it to the practitioner who diagnosed you. You may even want to add a note on the flyleaf: "if you can't do better than this, then it's time you looked for an honest line of work!"
Fair Disclosure: I approached this book with a predisposition to accept its premises. I read it to verify that sufficient research was quoted to support those premises. As a social networking site moderator for over 5,000 chronic face pain patients, I have met many who were written off as head cases because their medical doctors didn't recognize what was causing their pain. I have separately published on the connections between psychogenic diagnoses and patient suicides. See "Psychogenic Pain and Iatrogenic Suicide"
Thus I may have a bias of my own: having seen the damage done to medical patients with rare disorders by psychosomatic medicine, I am convinced that this branch of psychiatry is a complete crock! Practitioners of this mythology should be confronted with the harms they do, and if necessary barred from treating patients until they have been reeducated.
Mimi's Recommendation:
1. How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers
This life-affirming, instructive and thoroughly inspiring book is a must-read for anyone who is—or who might one day be—sick. And it can also be the perfect gift of guidance, encouragement, and uplifting inspiration to family, friends, and loved ones struggling with the many terrifying or disheartening life changes that come so close on the heels of a diagnosis of a chronic condition or even life-threatening illness.
Hope's Recommendation:
The Happiness Project describes one person’s year-long attempt to discover what leads to true contentment.
Saraiderin's Recommendation:
1. Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted
The groundbreaking biography of the most influential surgeon in American history.
LaRae's Recommendation:
1. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)
Rooted in traditional Toltec wisdom beliefs, four agreements in life are essential steps on the path to personal freedom. As beliefs are transformed through maintaining these agreements, shamanic teacher and healer don Miguel Ruiz asserts lives will "become filled with grace, peace, and unconditional love."
In Clean, a New York City cardiologist and a leader in the field of integrative medicine, Dr. Alejandro Junger, offers a major medical breakthrough. Dr. Junger argues that the majority of common ailments are the direct result of toxic build-up in our systems accumulated through the course of our daily lives.The toxins are unavoidable but Clean offers a solution.
3. Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao
Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses, which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of our existence. The classic text of these 81 verses, called the Tao Te Ching or the Great Way, offers advice and guidance.
Mydi's Recommendation
1. Don't Waste Your Pain: Keeping Your Faith in the Midst of Chronic Pain
"Pain and suffering are no strangers to humankind, and their existence is well documented in the Bible. God doesn’t promise that you won’t suffer, but He does promise you won’t suffer alone; He will be with you. In Don’t Waste Your Pain, author Myndi Orr describes her journey with chronic pain to show that God has a purpose in our lives through pain.
Paddy's Recommendation
1. Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, And Psychoanalysis
In this engrossing new study of Sigmund Freud’s life and work, Richard Webster has set out to provide a clear answer to the controversies that have raged for a century around one of the most influential of all modern thinkers.
Gail's Recommendation
1. Striking Back : The Trigeminal Neuralgia and Face Pain Handbook
Published by TNA in 2004 and authored by George Weigel and Kenneth F. Casey, M.D., this handbook is written in layman's terms, describes all aspects of trigeminal neuralgia (TN) and facial pain, and provides vital information and resources for patients, family, friends and healthcare professionals. A must-have guide for every facial pain patient!
KRay's Recommendation:
With more than twelve years’ experience treating its sufferers and seeing the nation’s health-care system come up short, Dr. Peter Abaci developed innovative treatments that have helped thousands better their lives in dramatic ways—techniques he now offers in this book for the first time.
Pleasure Reading Books:
Jack's Recommendation:
1. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
2. The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Illustrated)
3. Sherlock Holmes: The Ultimate Collection (4 Novels, 44 Short Stories, and Exclusive Bonus Features)
Tkal's Recommendation:
2. Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)
3. Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games)
Houston Man's Recommendation:
1. Doctor Sleep: A Novel (The Shining)
