cover image Mental Wellness for Women

Mental Wellness for Women

Rita Baron-Faust. William Morrow & Company, $25 (354pp) ISBN 978-0-688-12072-6

This third title in the NYU Medical Center series of health handbooks for women--following volumes on breast cancer and heart disease--focuses on what medical science currently knows about mental illness. Baron-Faust, a medical writer, notes that women suffer from depression and eating disorders in higher numbers than men, and that schizophrenia and other thought disorders are equally common in both sexes. Chapter discussions follow on these and other mental illnesses. Chapters on Mood Disorders, Anxiety and Panic, Personality Disorders and more feature informative descriptions, self-quizzes, suggested treatments utilizing psychotherapy and/or pharmacotherapy and lists of medications with their side effects. Brief and continuing stories of individual women speaking in their own words about their illnesses and treatments give the book a human face. Balanced consideration is given to the controversial issue of the role of female hormones on mental disorders, and the question of how life cycle events affect women's mental well-being is examined. There is also a chapter that delineates the differences between various psychotherapeutic approaches. The book concludes with a chapter of practical advice for maintaining mental wellness. (Jan.)