This book offers a new approach by combining the disciplines of history, psychology, and religion to explain the suicidal element in both Western culture and the individual, and how to treat it. Ancient Greek society displays in its literature and the lives of its people an obsessive interest in suicide and death. Kaplan and Schwartz have explored the psychodynamic roots of this problem--in particular, the tragic confusion of the Greek heroic impulse and its commitment to unsatisfactory choices that are destructively rigid and harsh. The ancient Hebraic writings speak little of suicide and approach reality and freedom in vastly different terms: God is an involved parent, caring for his children. Therefore, heroism, in the Greek sense, is not needed nor is the individual compelled to choose between impossible alternatives.

In each of the first three sections, the authors discuss the issues of suicide from a comparative framework, whether in thought or myth, then the suicide-inducing effects of the Graeco-Roman world, and finally, the suicide-preventing effects of the Hebrew world. The final section draws on this material to present a suicide prevention therapy. Historical in scope, the book offers a new psychological model linking culture to the suicidal personality and suggests an antidote, especially with regard to the treatment of the suicidal individual.

In this issue of Physician Assistant Clinics, guest editors Kim Zuber (Metropolitan Nephrology Associates, Alexandria, Virginia) and Jane S. Davis (University of Alabama Medical Center) bring their considerable expertise to the topic of Behavioral Health. Provides in-depth, clinical reviews on Behavioral Health, providing actionable insights for clinical practice. Presents the latest information on this timely, focused topic under the leadership of experienced editors in the field; Authors synthesize and distill the latest research and practice guidelines to create these timely topic-based reviews.

Mental health is a growing field, but one still limited by a lack of prior research and challenged by increased demand for new solutions and treatments. Mobile and web-based technologies have the potential to fill some of the gaps. Advanced Technological Solutions for eHealth and Dementia Patient Monitoring provides comprehensive coverage of issues in patient health and support from the perspectives of doctors, nurses, patients, and caregivers. With its focus on challenges and opportunities, as well as future research in the field, this book is a vital reference for researchers, scholars, advanced students, software developers, managers, and stakeholders working at the forefront of eHealth systems.

In a sense this book wrote itself. Excerpts from journals written over nineteen years of workplace exposure to chemicals depict the images and struggles within a gradually deteriorating brain that had once been completely functional. The author's strong, healthy body was breaking down as well. However, through her journey Ms. Vitanza learned what the brain can do to heal itself. Much of what she practiced was of benefit to her, until at last her mind found piece. Her personal account of events and feelings is supplemented by medical records, and by illustrations taken from drawings and paintings that she made when experiencing particular symptoms. Fumes and Fine Dust closes the long journey to rebirth. May those who read this book benefit as well.

Employees of different labor sectors are involved in different projects and pressed to deliver results in a specific period of time, which increases their mental workload. This increase can lead to a high mental workload, which in turn leads to a decline in job performance. Therefore, strategies for managing mental workload and promoting mental health have become necessary for corporate success. Evaluating Mental Workload for Improved Workplace Performance is a critical scholarly book that provides comprehensive research on mental workload and the effects, both adverse and positive, that it can have on employee populations as well as strategies for decreasing or deleting it from the labor sector. Highlighting an array of topics such as psychosocial factors, critical success factors (CSF), and technostress, this book is ideal for academicians, researchers, managers, ergonomists, engineers, industrial designers, industry practitioners, and students.

We cannot explain why people kill themselves. There are no necessary or sufficient causes for suicide, so rather than explaining suicide (looking for causes), perhaps we can understand suicide, at least in one individual, a phenomenological approach. This book begins by examining the diaries from eight individuals who killed themselves. Using qualitative analyses, supplemented in some cases by quantitative analyses, Lester seeks to uncover the unique thoughts and feelings that led these individuals to take their own lives. Lester has also studied suicide notes, the poems of those who died by suicide (both famous poets and unpublished poets), the letters written by suicides, blogs and twitter feeds, and one tape recording of a young man who killed himself just an hour or so after he recorded the tape. This book will give you insights into the "I" of the storm, the suicidal mind. David Lester has PhD's from Cambridge University (UK) and Brandeis University (USA). He is a former President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and a leading scholar on suicide, murder, the fear of death and other topics and thanatology.

In the past century there has been awareness of the importance of a global public health perspective in understanding the etiology, course and treatment of mental disorders. However, just recently there has been a focus on population science and with it an evidence-based call to improving public mental health in communities. Mental Health in Public Health synthesizes important topics in public health psychiatry that were discussed at the American Psychopathological Association (APPA) meeting in 2010. The book, like the APPA meeting, aims to bring advanced knowledge of the social and environmental risk factors for psychiatric disorders, as well as ideas for preventing them. Chapters are written by experts from around the world and include such public health concerns as Veteran's mental health, mental health disparities among minorities, causes of addictions, and mortality of these disorders.

Assessing, Diagnosing, and Treating Serious Mental Disorders uniquely provides information that is useful across mental health, psychopathology, practice, and human behavior and development classes, particularly for psychopathology and advanced mental health practice courses. DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria is provided for each mental disorder discussed in the textbook. This book represents a new wave of social work education, focusing on mental disorders as an interaction among neurobiology, genetics, and ecological social systems. Edward Taylor argues that most all mental disorders have a foundation within the person's brain that differentially interacts with the social environment. Therefore, how the brain is involved in mental disorders is covered far more comprehensively than found in most social work textbooks. However, the purpose is not to turn social workers into neuroscientists, but to prepare them for educating, supporting, and where appropriate providing treatment for, clients and families facing mental illness. Entire chapters are dedicated to explaining bioecological and other related theories, family support and intervention, and assessment methods. To help students conceptualize methods, the book includes specific steps for assessing needs, joining, and including families in mental health treatment decisions. Methods for helping families become part of the treatment team and for providing in-home interventions are highlighted. Throughout the book, readers can find helpful outlines and illustrations for how to understand, assess, and treat mental disorders.

Over the past few decades, psychoanalysis and dynamic psychiatry have been steadily stepping back from a key role in the understanding and treatment of depressive disorders. This book investigates the basis for such retreat by delving into the history of medicine, philosophy, religion, and literature. It unveils the social motives for the overwhelming consensus currently gathered by the biomedical model of depression. The book then moves on to discuss at depth psychoanalytic literature on depression and reveals how it possesses an enormous explanatory power for depression symptoms. This approach allows the author to offer readers a comprehensive, dynamically-oriented model of symptom formation in depression.

Written directly to individuals who have experienced childhood trauma, this book provides essential information that allows victims to begin recovering from their immense pain and suffering, and empowers them to examine their specific issues in order to become a true survivor. The American Medical Association currently estimates at least one in every five adults suffered abuse as a child. While childhood abuse or trauma is certainly not a new issue, it has reached epidemic proportion. Yet most clinicians have not been sufficiently trained to appreciate or understand the devastating long-term impact of abuse on the total person. John J. Lemoncelli, EdD, authored this book to enable those who suffer in silence to understand what happened, take control, and begin and maintain a program of recovery. It helps those abused in childhood to grasp how their experience impacted their development and the extent to which it negatively affects their present lives; encourages them to let go of the belief that they are damaged, dirty, or at fault; and provides an effective strategy for externalizing the source of their anguish, rather than blaming themselves. The author outlines several stages and common issues that may need to be addressed, but as no "one size fits all" treatment is possible, he provides strategies that empower victims to identify the specific sources of their pain.