Many people search for the secret to mental well-being. What if the answer is closer than you think? Psychologist Magna Parks-Porterfield, PhD, gives you eight steps to maintaining positive well-being in her book "Keys to Optimal Mental Health." From changing your lifestyle to learning how to grow from adversity, she lays out a plan to help you overcome depression and anxiety. Not only for those with diagnosed mental illnesses, this book serves as a guide for anyone looking for peace of mind. Dr. Parks-Porterfield backs up her scientific-based research with principles coming from what she considers the first guide to better living-the Bible. These principles challenge you to have joy in your ability to overcome your difficulties-and to have the power to do so. Each chapter features practical tips to help you focus on her key points. The steps she outlines take effort, but through her meticulous research, Dr. Parks-Porterfield offers the inspiration you need to carry through and find the peace you desire. Discover the true source for achieving wellness and for living better emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Inspiring strategies from a wellness expert for keeping fit, relieving stress, and strengthening emotional well-being. We all know that exercise is good for physical health, but recently, a wealth of data has proven that exercise also contributes to overall mental well-being. Routine exercise alleviates stress and anxiety, moderates depression, relieves chronic pain, and improves self-esteem. In this inspiring book, Christina Hibbert, a clinical psychologist and expert on women's mental health, grief, and self-esteem, explains the connections between exercise and mental well-being and offers readers step-by-step strategies for sticking to fitness goals, overcoming motivation challenges and roadblocks to working out, and maintaining a physically and emotionally healthy exercise regimen. This book will help readers to get moving, stay moving, and maintain the inspiration they need to reap the mental health benefits of regular exercise. The 8 keys include improving self-esteem with exercise, exercising as a family, getting motivated, changing how you think about exercise, and the FITT principle for establishing an effective exercise routine.

This crucial volume provides a concise overview of the conceptual foundations and clinical methods underlying the rapidly emerging subspecialty of integrative mental healthcare. It discusses methods for guiding practitioners to individualized integrative strategies that address unique symptoms and circumstances for each patient and includes practical clinical techniques for developing interventions addressed at wellness, prevention, and treatment. Included among the overview: Meeting the challenges of mental illness through integrative mental health care. Evolving paradigms and their impact on mental health care Models of consciousness: How they shape understandings of normal mental functioning and mental illness Foundations of methodology in integrative mental health care Treatment planning in integrative mental health care The future of mental health care A New Paradigm for Integrative Mental Healthcare is relevant and timely for the increasing numbers of patients seeking integrative and alternative care for depressed mood, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other mental health problems such as fatigue and chronic pain. “Patients are crying out for a more integrative approach, and this exemplary book provides the template for achieving such a vision.” -Jerome Sarris, MHSc, PhD, ND “For most conventionally trained clinicians the challenge is not “does CAM work?” but “how do I integrate CAM into my clinical practice?” Lake’s comprehensive approach answers this central question, enabling the clinician to plan truly integrative and effective care for the mind and body.” -Leslie Korn, PhD, MPH

You can live a long and healthy life. There is no magic pill or Fountain of Youth, but you can achieve it with simple lifestyle modifications: 1. Eating the right foods 2. Getting the right exercise 3. Reducing and managing stress 4. Improving the quality of sleep 5. Eliminating tobacco 6. Remaining intellectually engaged 7. Staying involved socially The advice in Longevity Decoded works-because it puts you in charge of shaping your future. Everyone wants to live a long and healthy life-Longevity Decoded is your roadmap. The seven keys cost nothing, except your time and commitment. Dr. Stephen Schimpff provides you with straightforward advice for achieving and maintaining good health over a long life. Following his seven keys will pay generous returns over the years ahead, and there's a bonus: You'll become a role model and inspiration to your children and grandchildren! "Dr. Schimpff explores the exciting topic of healthy aging. He combines the science of aging with evidence to suggest how each of us influences our personal journey in life. We make choices every day which impact our health. This book will help you understand how those daily choices will influence your life not only today, but as you get older. Begin today to plan for tomorrow." -James (Jim) M. Anders, Jr., CPA, MBA, CGMA, President and Chairman of the Board, National Senior Campuses, Inc., Administrator and Chief Operating Officer, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Inc. "A highly enjoyable and uplifting read written by a physician with uncommon intellect and wisdom. Certainly, we can all benefit from following Dr. Schimpff's prescription for a healthier and more meaningful life." -R. Alan Butler, Chief Executive Office, Erickson Living "Brilliant work by Dr. Stephen Schimpff yet again! Dr. Schimpff has done a systematic analysis of aging and longevity. His uncanny ability to use data and science together makes his suggestions compelling and convincing, while being insightful. Despite being a complete and thorough account for advanced readers, his book is simple enough to understand for a beginner. If there is only one book you want to read on this subject, it should be this one." -Hiren Doshi, CEO, Paragon Private Health, Co-founder and President, OmniActive Health Technologies "As my age cohort heads toward Medicare, like a veritable tsunami of aging boomers, this text ought to be our navigational guide in the storm. We will want yoga on the lawn, rather than a wheelchair in the garden; we will crave gourmet organic meals, not a nursing home tray!! Dr Schimpff will help us to achieve these dreams with his folksy and reassuring style. This book only confirms for me that the best is yet to come!" -David B. Nash MD, MBA. Founding Dean of the Jefferson College of Population Health "As the world's older population continues to expand at an unprecedented rate, Dr. Schimpff gives readers simple steps that can lay the crucial groundwork for our future health. He provides an optimistic approach to the inevitability of aging and a refreshing perspective that our 'golden years' can also be our 'golden age, ' based on his first-hand experience as a healthcare practitioner." -E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine

Bridging the gap between neuroscience and clinical therapy. In this handbook, clinical psychologist and bestselling author Jennifer Sweeton details the eight main areas of the brain affected by mental illness, how brain changes show up in the therapy room as symptoms and behaviors, and the types of therapies and psychotherapeutic techniques research has shown can heal the brain. Areas covered are the thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, insula, nucleus accumbens, anterior cingulate, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. No longer will you need to feel unsure when referencing basic brain functions related to behavioral health. After reading this book, you will feel confident and excited about your ability to take a client-centered, strategic, brain-based approach to treatment planning. Chapter summaries and tables of brain region, mental health condition, and therapeutic approach are included for easy reference.

Bring an end to emotional eating by getting to the root of the problem. Most books about emotional eating tend to focus on how to strengthen self-restraint or how to identify what triggers it. The former can make the problem worse, while the latter may be different each time it occurs. Both approaches fail to help emotional eaters understand why they feel compelled to do something that they don’t want to do in the first place. This understanding is the key to changing this behavior. Howard Farkas, who has more than two decades of professional and teaching experience as a clinical psychologist specializing in emotional eating, explains the underlying motive that drives the behavior: emotional eating is not a passive failure of self-control, but an active impulse to reject the control of dieting. This defiant need “to be bad” usually leaves the person feeling guilty and anxious about their eating, and recommitting to their diet until the cycle repeats, and the compulsive eating recurs. 8 Keys to End Emotional Eating provides a detailed plan for breaking this pattern. By explaining the root cause that drives the desire to binge, Farkas offers practical skills to help you learn to change your mindset about dieting and end the impulse to binge. His road map for the future will help readers maintain healthy eating habits for years to come.

Easy strategies for dealing with the near-universal experience of stress. Stress has become a near-universal experience as well as a rising public health concern. According to many measures, people today are dealing with stressors that are greater in number and severity than in the past several decades, and this stress is taking a toll on our collective wellness. Bringing considerable content from her popular stress management Web site on About.com, Elizabeth Scott distills information about stress management into central ideas and strategies for consumers. These include learning to reduce the stress response and stressors, practicing long-term resilience habits, and putting positive psychology research into action. These various perspectives provide a multilayered framework for understanding stress and approaching stress management that is inspirational, action-oriented, and backed by foundational and recent knowledge in the field. The quick-to-read “8 keys” format of the book can be utilized on many levels so that busy readers can quickly find relief from stress.