Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Psychology & Mental Health

The Courage to Be Happy presents profound insights into living life courageously and finding happiness along the way. It has already sold more than a million copies in Japan and is a sequel to The Courage to Be Disliked, which has changed lives across the globe as an international best-selling sensation. As in The Courage to Be Disliked, we follow a Socratic dialogue between a philosopher and a young man.

Sobering is the story of an insecure teenager turned Liverpudlian party girl, schoolteacher turned alcoholic and now recovering alcoholic turned award-winning podcaster. Melissa’s story is as dramatic as her unique voice, but her message is universal: mental health issues often drive vulnerable people to addiction, and working on mental health and personal development can help recovery.

Challenging the view that autism is something that needs to be ‘cured', Virginia Bovell testifies to the extraordinary care Danny has received for over 30 years and the everyday kindness and decency of the people – ‘the band of angels' – that surround him. She asks us to consider what makes a thriving individual versus an inadequate one; what it means to be ill versus what it means to not to conform; what roles society values and rewards; and how humans might flourish outside of failing political and economic systems.

In this captivating fusion of science and personal memoir, writer David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind. David has suffered from OCD for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is his honest attempt to understand the condition. At what point does a harmless idea become a blinding blizzard of unwanted thoughts? Drawing on the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients and their treatments, this is an audiobook that will challenge the way you think.

William Burroughs closed his classic novel Junky by saying he had determined to search out a drug he called ‘Yage’, a drug that could be ‘the final fix’. In The Yage Letters, a mix of travel writing, satire, psychedelia, and epistolary novel, he journeys through South America, writing to his friend Allen Ginsberg about his experiments with the strange drug, using it to travel through time and space and derange his senses.

Burroughs’ letters reveal his desire to escape the norms of American society which hemmed him in, and the extraordinary steps he took to break free.

By age 30, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: she had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

This powerful and moving story explains how a large corporation, Purdue, encouraged small-town doctors to prescribe OxyContin to a country already awash in painkillers. The drug's dangerously addictive nature was hidden, whilst many used it as an escape, to numb the pain of of joblessness and the need to pay the bills. Macy tries to answer a grieving mother's question - why her only son died - and comes away with a harrowing tale of greed and need.

'Did you hear Amy has heartbreak?! What bad luck to catch it right at the end of winter.' When Ziella Bryars was in the midst of heartbreak, a conversation with her neuroscientist best friend changed everything. Frustrated by unhelpful advice from magazines and rom-coms, Ziella began diving deep into the latest scientific research to help her understand the pain of heartbreak and find a route to recovery. This warm and witty self-help book outlines the impact a relationship break-up has on our brains and bodies, and explores how a science-based approach can help us heal.

This is a discussion of the transformation of drug use (especially morphine and cocaine, which was once commonly available in any chemist's shop) into a national menace. It revolves around the death of Billie Carleton, a West End musical actress, in 1918. Its cast of characters includes Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurant proprietor and Edgar Manning, a jazz drummer from Jamaica. They were eventually identified as the villains of the affair and invested with a highly charged sexual menace.

Your body needs maintaining to keep it healthy. So does your mind. Sounds simple, but tired and outdated ideas that tell men how they ought to be mean the message gets lost. And the results speak for themselves: suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50. There's no more room for debate - taking care of your head space should be as normal as eating your five-a-day or going to the gym. Many books make impossible promises about how they will fix all your problems and stresses with some miraculous 10-step programme. This one doesn't.

Overthinking is also known as worrying or ruminating and it's a form of anxiety that many people suffer from. Psychologist and New Zealand bestselling author Gwendoline Smith explains in clear and simple language the concepts of positive and negative overthinking, the truth about worry and how to deal with the "thought viruses" that are holding you back. She helps you understand what's going on in your head, using humour, lots of examples and anecdotes, and she offers powerful strategies for addressing your issues.

Have you ever wondered how your early life shaped you? From beginning to say simple words like 'mama' and learning how to walk around unaided, to the first day of school and forming new friendships, everyone has been a child. The roots of our adult selves go right back to our first experiences. How we think, act and interact is influenced by our early years, yet most people don't know the key findings from the juiciest child development studies that can give us insight into our adult selves.

Challenging the listener to take control and to stop hiding behind excuses for a bad night's sleep, neurologist W. Chris Winter explains the basic, often counterintuitive rules of sleep science. Dr Winter explores revolutionary findings, including surprising solutions for insomnia and other sleep disturbances, empowering listeners to stop taking sleeping pills and enjoy the best sleep of their lives.

Self-delusion expert and psychology nerd David McRaney sets out to discover not just what it takes to influence others, but why we believe in the first place. Along the way he meets a former Westboro Baptist Church member who was deradicalised on Twitter, goes deep canvassing to see how quickly people will surrender their character-defining views, finds a 9/11 Truther who turns his back on it all, and reveals how, within a few years, half a country can go from opposing the ‘gay agenda' to happily attending same-sex weddings.

The need for improved mental, physical and emotional wellbeing, and the ability to inspire a resilient mindset has never been greater. We were never designed to run in stress mode, and in a seemingly constant state of fight or flight. So, in those situations where we have little control over the sources of pressure, our only option is to influence the way in which we respond. Unashamedly Superhuman is a neuroscience-based peak performance training for anyone interested in reversing the impact of distraction and uncertainty.

Why does one smoker die of lung cancer but another live to 100? The answer is 'The Hidden Half' - those random, unknowable variables that mess up our attempts to comprehend the world. We humans are very clever creatures - but we're idiots about how clever we really are. In this entertaining and ingenious book, Blastland reveals how in our quest to make the world more understandable, we lose sight of how unexplainable it often is. The result - from GDP figures to medicine - is that experts know a lot less than they think.

Too many popular histories seek to establish heroes, pioneers and martyrs but as Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and/or dastardly deeds have been overlooked. We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those 'bad gays' whose un-exemplary lives reveals more than we might expect? Part-revisionist history, part-historical biography and based on the hugely popular podcast series, Bad Gays subverts the notion of gay icons and queer heroes.

The Self Illusion provides a fascinating examination of how the latest science shows that our individual concept of a self is in fact an illusion. Most of us believe that we possess a self - an internal individual who resides inside our bodies, making decisions, authoring actions and possessing free will. The feeling that a single, unified, enduring self inhabits the body is compelling and inescapable. But that sovereignty of the self is increasingly under threat from science as our understanding of the brain advances.

Eminent psychiatrist Dr Alastair Santhouse draws on his experience of treating thousands of hospital patients to show how our emotions are inextricably linked to our physical wellbeing. Our minds shape the way we understand and react to symptoms that we develop, dictate the treatments we receive and influence whether they work. They even influence whether we develop symptoms at all. Written with brutal honesty, deep compassion and a wry sense of humour, Head First examines difficult cases that illuminate some of our most puzzling and controversial medical issues.

Women are far more likely than men to suffer from anxiety, depression, migraines, brain injuries, strokes and Alzheimer's disease. But, until recently, scientific research has focused on 'bikini medicine,' assuming that women are essentially men with different reproductive organs. The XX Brain presents groundbreaking research showing that women's brains age distinctly from men's, due mostly to the decline of a key brain-protective hormone: estrogen.