Outstanding Academic Titles 2024: Mental Health

Enjoy this week's Outstanding Academic Titles list snippet: Five titles pertaining to mental health

Posted on May 22, 2025 in Outstanding Academic Titles

Enjoy these five selections from the Choice Reviews 2024 Outstanding Academic Titles list. This week, we highlight Outstanding Academic Titles focused on mental health. A hearty congratulations to the winning authors, editors, and publishers!

1. Half in love with death: managing the chronically suicidal patient      
Paris, Joel. Routledge, 2024

Paris (emer., psychiatry, McGill Univ., Canada) explores the treatment of chronically suicidal patients and challenges current interventions. Clinicians often view suicide as difficult to treat and thus face dilemmas regarding the hospitalization, safety, and treatment of chronically suicidal patients, considering clinical and legal risks. Examining epidemiological and social perspectives and myths surrounding suicide prevention, Paris illuminates the inner worlds of the chronically suicidal. Although psychiatric medications may treat comorbidities, they provide no demonstrated benefit for preventing suicide; psychotherapy, however, is useful. The book includes a thought-provoking discussion of suicide over the life course. With scant research available, clinicians struggle with how to manage acute and chronically suicidal patients. They hope hospitalization will provide safety, yet it offers no guarantees and may exacerbate chronicity. Therapy with patients who experience chronic suicidality needs to focus on life goals, limit setting, and treating underlying borderline personality disorders (BPD). Paris urges readers to think differently about chronicity and recommends dialectical behavior therapy for BPD—although it is not usually covered by insurance—and stepped care. He reports that shorter treatment periods of 12 weeks are more effective than ongoing therapy over years. View on Amazon

2. Child and adolescent mental health in social work: clinical applications      
by Jacqueline Corcoran and Courtney Benjamin Wolk Oxford, 2023

This comprehensive volume on the biopsychosocial facets of mental health in children and adolescents is an important contribution to the field. Authors Corcoran and Wolk (both, Univ. of Pennsylvania) use the models of evidence-based social work practice, professional values and ethics, and DSM diagnostic categories as a frame for assessing and treating children. Both authors are experienced researchers, teachers, and, most importantly, practitioners who have worked with children and families. Accordingly, they provide a practical and refreshing real-world approach. The book includes a valuable chapter on the strengths and limitations of the DSM, as well as an overview of relevant childhood disorders, biopsychosocial risk factors, assessment processes, and potential intervention strategies. The authors also consider the use of medications and cognitive behavioral and psychodynamic models for understanding assessment and intervention. The text is strengthened by the use of case material that is real and not contrived, and by the inclusion of cultural and spiritual considerations. The use of research has more depth than is typical, and each chapter has a rich list of references.  View on Amazon

3. Psychological care for cancer patients: new perspectives on training health professionals 
Nesci, Domenico Arturo. Lexington Books, 2023

This excellent book introduces professionals to the work of Nesci (Univ. Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy; Scuola Internazionale di Psicoterapia, Italy) and his life-long interest in and commitment to the psychological care and well-being of cancer patients and their caregivers. Through his early experience as a trainee, he realized the unique challenges cancer patients face: difficult treatments and the existential threats cancer presents, the latter usually ignored by medical teams. Patients may be labeled as uncooperative or depressed based on their lack of positive emotional expression to staff. Nesci developed a theory explaining patients’ reactions and treatment needs, also realizing the need to support medical staff burdened with difficult treatments and uncertain outcomes. He then created a group discussion protocol for medical trainees to raise awareness of the psychosocial aspects of medical care. Written as a professional memoir, this volume describes the author’s early experiences as he began to specialize in treating cancer patients and their families and training medical teams. His protocol emphasizes the need to listen, observe, and empathize, key skills needed to support medical staff and to help patients come to terms with the existential challenges their illness presents. View on Amazon

4. Toxic stress: how stress is making us ill and what we can do about it   
Wulsin, Lawson R. Cambridge, 2024

Wulsin, MD, grabs readers’ attention with Toxic Stress and does not let go. The book promises to address the how, why, and what of chronic stress, and explain how stress makes people ill, why chronic stress is so detrimental in comparison to acute stressors, and most importantly, what can be done to reduce and offset those debilitating effects. In this powerful text, Wulsin addresses coronary heart disease, functional disorders, diabetes, PTSD, and other illnesses that he argues involve shared pathways and are all stress-related chronic conditions. He is not claiming that stress is the “sole” cause for any of these illnesses, but he makes a clear case—both physiologically and psychologically—for the stress-related aspects of each illness and how much they actually have in common. The writing is clear, and Wulsin presents many, many cases. View on Amazon.

5. Why delusions matter    
Bortolotti, Lisa. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023

People who hold delusional beliefs—beliefs that do not represent what the majority would view as reality—are typically stigmatized. In the present work, Bortolotti (philosophy, Univ. of Birmingham, England) presents an alternative approach to the topic. Rather than viewing delusions as solely negative, Bortolotti suggests that there can be benefits, such as providing people causal explanations for traumatic events, which can contribute to their well-being by giving them a consistent sense of self and motivation to engage with others in the world. The book consists of two parts: the first focuses on delusions, how they are personal, unshakable investments that influence behavior, how they are difficult for others to believe, and the extent to which they contribute to one’s identity. The second section of the book challenges the assumption that delusions are an indicator of psychological dysfunction. Instead, there may be advantages to holding delusional beliefs as long as they do not lead to self-harm. View on Amazon.

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