Ruby Sisson Library

"From "weird, scary, ingenious" (The New York Times) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, a brutally honest and hilariously frenetic memoir about show business, mental health, and the comfort of rigid belief systems-from Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, to Suzuki violin training, to Richard Simmons, to 12-step programs. Maria Bamford is a comedian's comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to...

"From New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind, an essential investigation into the collapse of youth mental health-and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on most measures. Why? In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist...

"Liza Long is the single mother of a child with an undiagnosed mental disorder. When she heard about the Newtown shooting her first thought was, "What if my son does that someday?" She wrote an emotional response to the tragedy, which the Boise State University online journal posted as "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother." The post went viral, receiving 1.2 million Facebook likes, nearly 17,000 tweets, and 30,000 emails. Now, in The Price of Silence she takes...

New York Times columnist Warner turns an investigative eye to the epidemic of diagnosed childhood psychiatric disorders and widespread use of prescription psychotropic drugs to modify children's behavior. Major questions are raised: are drugs a substitute for proper parenting? Is there something more socially significant underlying the labeling and drugging of kids? Following an awkward introductory chapter about why the subject confounded and eluded...

When she is abandoned by her alcoholic mother, high school senior Ruby winds up living with her sister Cora, whom she has not seen for ten years, where she learns about Cora's new life, what makes a family, how to allow people to help her when she needs it, and that she has something to offer others as well.

"The Perfect Daughter is a thriller that explores the truth or lies behind a teenage girl's multiple personality disorder, from D.J. Palmer, the author of The New Husband. Grace never dreamt she'd visit her teenaged daughter Penny in the locked ward of a decaying state psychiatric hospital, charged with a shocking and brutal murder. There was not much question of her daughter's guilt. Police had her fingerprints on the murder weapon and the victim's...

"This book presents emerging discoveries, trends, and research areas in LGBT psychology, both in science and therapy. It brings together concise, substantive reviews of what is new or on the horizon in science and in key areas of clinical practice, and provides information and insight to help psychologists, mental health clinicians, and counselors better serve the LGBT populations that, increasingly, are seeking their services"--Publisher's description...

"The Close sisters are descended from very prominent and wealthy ancestors. When the Close sisters were very young, their parents joined a cult called the MRA, or Moral Rearmament. The family was suddenly uprooted to a cult school in Switzerland and, ultimately, to the Belgian Congo where their father became a surgeon in the war ravaged republic, and ultimately the personal physician to President Mobutu. Shortly after the girls returned to the US...