Terri Cheney ripped the covers off her secret battle with bipolar disorder in her New York Times bestselling memoir, Manic. Now, in this "stigma-buster" and "must-read", she blends a gripping narrative with practical advice (Elyn Saks). Cheney flips mental illness inside out, exposing the visceral story of the struggles, stigma, relationship dilemmas, treatments, and recovery techniques she and others have encountered. Sometimes humorous, sometimes harrowing, Modern Madness is the ultimate owner's manual on mental illness, breaking this complex subject down into readily understandable concepts like Instructions for Use, Troubleshooting, Maintenance, and Warranties. Whether you have a diagnosis, love or work with someone who does, or are just trying to understand this emerging phenomenon of our times, Modern Madness is a courageous clarion call for acceptance, both personal and public. With her candid and riveting writing, Cheney delivers more than heartbreak; she promises hope.

Madness and Modernism provides a phenomenological study of schizophrenic disorders, criticizing some standard conceptions of these disorders. Sass argues that many aspects of this group of disorders can actually involve more sophisticated (albeit dysfunctional) forms of mind and experience.

Throughout most of history, in China the insane were kept within the home and treated by healers who claimed no specialized knowledge of their condition. In the first decade of the twentieth century, however, psychiatric ideas and institutions began to influence longstanding beliefs about the proper treatment for the mentally ill. In The Invention of Madness, Emily Baum traces a genealogy of insanity from the turn of the century to the onset of war with Japan in 1937, revealing the complex and convoluted ways in which “madness” was transformed in the Chinese imagination into “mental illness.” ​ Focusing on typically marginalized historical actors, including municipal functionaries and the urban poor, The Invention of Madness shifts our attention from the elite desire for modern medical care to the ways in which psychiatric discourses were implemented and redeployed in the midst of everyday life. New meanings and practices of madness, Baum argues, were not just imposed on the Beijing public but continuously invented by a range of people in ways that reflected their own needs and interests. Exhaustively researched and theoretically informed, The Invention of Madness is an innovative contribution to medical history, urban studies, and the social history of twentieth-century China.

Parenting in the modern world is an overwhelming concept. It seems to divide everyone from psychologists and politicians to scientists and salesmen, leaving the parents themselves with a terrible headache as a result. How can anyone live up to such expansive and conflicting expectations? As Zoe Williams explores, the madness begins before the baby has even arrived: hysteria is rife surrounding everything from drinking alcohol and eating cheese to using a new frying pan. And it only gets worse. The list of things you need to consider (as well as the things you never realised you needed to consider) is ever-increasing, and questions of breastfeeding, buggies, staying at home, schooling - and what your mother-in-law thinks you're doing wrong - take over completely. The task of raising a child has been turned into a circus of ludicrous proportions. Combining laugh-out-loud tales of parenthood with myth-busting facts and figures, Zoe provides the antithesis of all parenting discussions to date. After all, parents managed perfectly well for centuries before this modern madness, so why do today's mothers and fathers make such an almighty fuss about everything?

Originally published: London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2015.

'Distracted Subjects' offers a feminist analysis of early modern madness. Carol Neely reveals the mobility & heterogeneity of discourses of 'distraction', the most common term for the condition in late 16th & early 17th century England.