Bestselling author and comedian, Ruby Wax, takes a candid, dark, and witty dive through her life and personal experiences with mental health, providing solace and advice for anyone out there who realises they aren't as well as they thought they were. Checking into a psychiatric institution wasn't exactly on Ruby Wax's agenda for 2022-- writing about it wasn't either, but here we are. These days, trying to stay sane in a completely chaotic world makes life incredibly difficult, especially if you're struggling with your mental health. While searching for inner peace and equanimity amidst global chaos, Ruby realises that, ultimately, the most challenging gauntlet we all must face is ourselves. I'm Not as Well as I Thought I Was is Ruby's most honest, rawest book to date-- an insight into the depths of her psyche, and a stark exploration of what trauma can do to someone. Reflecting on years of personal and professional experience, she opens up to readers about her struggles with mental health and different treatments over the years, hoping to provide reassurance and guidance to anyone confronting their own anticipated, or unanticipated, struggles with mental health. An honest and refreshing new exploration of mental health from mindfulness expert Ruby Wax

A searing account of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does, written by a British psychiatrist.

For many of us who suffer from depression or anxiety, the simple act of endurance, of having to appear 'normal', is a daunting, painful and heroic task. Getting out of bed, packing the kids off to school, showing up for work, preparing dinner ... These can be astonishing achievements when it sometimes takes a superhuman effort simply to stand upright. How do you keep going? How do you do what you do, day in, day out, conforming to people's idea of you and functioning in the way society expects you to, when all you want to do is disappear and hide? In "Fire On All Sides", Rhodes attempts to find how to make the unbearable bearable in the most exposing circumstances imaginable. As he embarks on a gruelling five-month concert tour, performing in front of thousands of people, the tortuous voices in his mind his constant companions, he has no choice but to face these wild, mad ramblings head on. Luckily, there is the music. There is always the music. Bach, Chopin, Beethoven - they are his holy grail, his mechanism for survival. Just. This is an important, urgent book. It's about going through your day feeling like you can't find a way out of the crazy, it's about not setting the happiness bar too high, it's about accepting the messy imperfection that is life. Rhodes explodes the myths surrounding depression, anxiety and stress - the plagues of our society - into a million pieces, then sticks them back together again with his characteristic thought-provoking, laser sharp and humorous style. The really good news? It's going to be OK. Just.

Earlier this year John Suchet revealed that his beautiful 67-year-old wife Bonnie, the love of his life, is suffering from Dementia. During the past three years he has gone from lover to carer, and he has found his new job exceptionally tough. In this moving and bitterly honest account, the newsreader reveals his loneliness and his despair. For John, it was love at first sight. For many years he had admired Bonnie from afar, hoping and dreaming one day she would feel the same way. Nearly a decade after they first met, their passionate and romantic love affair began. They married in 1985, head over heels in love, and have enjoyed more than 20 years of love and laughter. Both had been married before (she had two children and he had three) but both felt, the day they married, they finally joined their other half. In March 2004, John began to notice strange quirks in Bonnie's behavior. She underwent her first set of neurological tests in March 2005, which brought back no definite results. Then, in February 2006, following a second set of tests, she was diagnosed with Dementia. For three years John personally cared for his beloved wife, keeping her condition secret from all but family and close friends. But in the middle of September this year, more than 26 years after his life with Bonnie began, John made the agonizing decision to move his wife to a full-time care home. Written in passionate and vivid prose that captures both the warmth of the good times and the utter despair of the bad times, John weaves together a series of moving and heartfelt stories.

In a time of political turbulence, and as the Welfare State totters under the strain in a country that has changed dramatically since 1945, Archbishop Justin Welby sets out to identify the values that will enable us to reimagine, and to enact, a more hopeful future. The thesis is that the work of reimagining is as great as it was in 1945, and will happen either by accident – and thus badly – or deliberately. The author draws on Britain's history and Christian tradition to identify this country's foundational values, and the building blocks necessary to implement them in a post-Brexit, multicultural society. He explores the areas in which values are translated into action, including the traditional three of recent history: health (especially public, and mental), housing and education. To these he adds family; the environment; economics and finance; peacebuilding and overseas development; immigration; and integration. He looks particularly at the role of faith groups in enabling, and contributing to, a fairer future. When so many are immobilized by political turmoil, this book builds on our past to offer hope for the future, and practical ways of achieving a more equitable society.

In 1993 Linda Grant's mother, Rose, was diagnosed with multi-infarct dementia. With Rose's memory deteriorating, a whole world was in the process of being lost. This book looks at the issues of identity, memory & autonomy that dementia raises.

Peter Hitchens demolishes the arguments for liberalising legislation on drugs and offers a brilliant critique of the cannabis lobby and its intellectual and moral shallowness. Again and again British politicians, commentators and celebrities intone that 'The War on Drugs has failed'. This is then used as an argument for abandoning attempts to reduce drug use through the criminal law. Peter Hitchens shows that in Britain, there has been no serious 'war on drugs' since 1971, when a Tory government adopted a Labour plan to implement the revolutionary Wootton report. The special legal status of cannabis as a supposedly 'soft' drug (in fact, Hitchens argues, the threat it poses to mental health makes it at least as dangerous as heroin and cocaine) began a progressive reduction of penalties for possession, effectively disarming the police.

"Over the years of the developing judicial review of ministerial and governmental decisions, Louis Blom-Cooper was a leading advocate who grew up with the advent of a distinctive brand of public law. His range of public activities, both inside and out of the courtroom, saw him dubbed by his colleagues as a polymath practitioner. They included chairmanship of plural public inquiries in child abuse and mental health, media contributions and innovation in penal reform. This book is a collection of his essays, prefaced by a self-examination of his unorthodox philosophy towards the law in action. It covers a variety of socio-legal topics that express his ambition to inform the public on the workings of the legal system. This involves a discussion of the history of Britain's unwritten and, in the author's view, insufficiently interpreted constitution. It reflects a commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights and portrays its international origins. It also opines on crime and punishment in the functioning of the courts and elsewhere, and the political shift from the penal optimism of the 1970s to the reactionary punitiveness of the post-1990s. The essays conclude with a miscellany of affairs, reflecting on professional practices and the author's judicial heroes Lord Reid and Lord Bingham."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

On sentencing Jason Mitchell to three terms of life imprisonment for the manslaughter in December 1994 of three people--first a retired couple and subsequently his father, whose body he dismembered--the judge at Ipswich Crown Court on 5 July 1995 expressed the view that it was difficult to understand why Jason, a restricted patient, had been allowed back into the community. Were the doctors at fault in their diagnosis of Jason's psychotic symptoms? Were they wrong in thinking that he was fit to return to the community so soon after becoming mentally ill and being hospitalized in 1990? Did the Mental Health Review Tribunals in 1991 and 1993, which sanctioned Jason's conditional discharge, act in error? What happened to Jason's prison medical records of 1988-9, which disclosed signs of oncoming schizophrenia while he was serving a sentence of two years' youth custody? Were doctors, probation officers and social workers handicapped by the absence of these records? These and other pertinent questions relating to the management of Jason's case by mental health services, and the care and treatment he received from doctors and nurses, are fully explored in this report of the independent panel of inquiry set up in 1995 by Suffolk Health Authority.