The Thyroid Guide or Empathy in Mental Illness

The Thyroid Guide

Author: Beth Ann Ditkoff

The definitive guide for the more than twenty million Americans suffering from chronic thyroid problems or thyroid cancer

Beth Ann Ditkoff, M.D., and Paul Lo Gerfo, M.D., two leading thyroid surgeons, identify the common symptoms of thyroid disease--weight gain or loss, fatigue, nervousness, and sleeplessness--and provide advice on diagnostic tests, treatments, medications, and self-help strategies.

Every person with thyroid disease can be helped with proper diagnosis and treatment. Most thyroid problems are chronic, so patients need information to cope with a disease that will likely be with them for life. This authoritative, easy-to-use book helps them understand their conditions and gives them the knowledge they need to manage their medications and symptoms. Drs. Ditkoff and Lo Gerfo are clinicians and researchers who have successfully treated thousands of patients.

Thyroid Facts

• More than twenty million people currently receive treatment for thyroid problems

• An estimated two million people have an undiagnosed thyroid condition

• At least 10 percent of women over the age of sixty will show evidence of underactive thyroid

• In women of childbearing age, thyroid dysfunction can cause menstrual problems, infertility, and miscarriage

• An underactive thyroid can cause sexual dysfunction

• Eight percent of pregnant women develop thyroid disease, which is often misdiagnosed as postpartum depression

• The majority of thyroid disease affects women

Book review: Communiquer dans de Petits Groupes :Principes et Pratiques

Empathy in Mental Illness

Author: Tom F D Farrow

The lack of ability to emphathise is central to many psychiatric conditions. Empathy is affected by neurodevelopment, brain pathology and psychiatric illness. Empathy is both a state and a trait characteristic. Empathy is measurable by neuropsychological assessment and neuroimaging techniques. This book specifically focuses on the role of empathy in mental illness. It starts with the clinical psychiatric perspective and covers empathy in the context of mental illness, adult health, developmental course, and explanatory models. Psychiatrists, psychotherapists and mental heath professionals will find this a very useful encapsulation of what is currently known about the role of empathy as it relates to mental illness.

Table of Contents:

Part I. 'Dysempathy' in Psychiatric Samples: Foreword: empathy in mental illness Peter W. R. Woodruff;

1. Empathic dysfunction in psychopathic individuals James Blair;
2. Empathy deficits in schizophrenia Kwang H. Lee;
3. Empathy, antisocial behaviour and personality pathology Mairead Dolan and Rachael Fullam;
4. Empathy and depression Lynn O'Connor, Jack Berry, Thomas Lewis, Katherine Mulherin and Eunice Yi;
5. Empathy, social intelligence, and aggression in adolescent boys and girls Kaj Björkqvist;
6. Impaired empathy following ventromedial prefrontal brain damage Simone Shamay-Tsoory;
7. Non-autism childhood empathy disorders Christopher Gillberg;
8. Empathy and autism Peter Hobson;

Part II. Empathy and Related Concepts in Health:
9. Neonatal antecedents for empathy Miguel Diego and Nancy Aaron Jones;
10. The evolutionary neurobiology, emergence and facilitation of empathy James Harris;
11. Naturally occurring variability in state empathy John Nezlek, Astrid Schütz, Paulo Lopes and C. Veronica Smith;
12. Neuroimaging of empathy Tom Farrow;
13. The neurophysiology of empathy Nancy Aaron Jones and Chantal Gagnon;
14. The cognitive neuropsychology of empathy Jean Decety, Philip Jackson and Eric Brunet;
15. The genetics of empathy and its disorders Henrik Anckarsäter and Robert Cloninger;
16. Empathogenic agents: their use, abuse, mechanism of action and addiction potential Dan Velea and Michel Hautefeuille;
17. Existential empathy: the intimacy of self and other Marco Iacoboni;
18. Empathizing and systemizing in males, females, and autism: a test of the neural competitiontheory Nigel Goldenfeld, Simon Baron-Cohen, Sally Wheelwright, Chris Ashwin and Bhismadev Chakrabarti;
19. Motivational-affective processing and the neural foundations of empathy India Morrison
20. Face processing and empathy Tony Atkinson;

Part III. Empathic Models, Regulation and Measurement of Empathy:
21. Balancing the empathy expense account: Strategies for regulating empathic response Sara Hodges and Robert Biswas-Diener;
22. Empathic accuracy: measurement and potential clinical applications Marianne Schmid Mast and William Ickes;
23. A Perception-Action model for empathy Stephanie Preston;
24. The Shared Manifold Hypothesis: embodied simulation and its role in empathy and social cognition Vittorio Gallese;
25. Using literature and the arts to develop empathy in medical students Johanna Shapiro.