Reiki means universal life energy, and its practice simply refers to the technique of transferring healing energy from giver to receiver. Although this practice dates back some 2500 years, it’s a relative newcomer on the Western healing scene. In this beautiful, practical step-by-step guide the reader is introduced to all aspects of this fascinating therapy.
Starlanyl offers an impassioned, in-depth manifesto for FMS and myofascial pain syndrome (MPS) patients that explores the wide spectrum of traditional and alternative approaches to these two disorders. Herself a physician living with both FMS and MPS, Starlanyl gives the reader valuable information for working with various health specialists through numerous “data sheets” geared to a particular practitioner, e.g., the cardiologist or dentist.
The original edition of this classic survival manual offered the first comprehensive patient guide for managing these conditions. Its extensive set of healing tools included targeted bodywork for painful trigger points and strategies to helpccope with chronic pain and sleep problems and the numbing effects of fibrofog.
Fibromyalgia is a misunderstood, misdiagnosed disease whose symptoms include severe muscle pain, fatigue, sleep problems, and depression. The sufferers, mostly middle-aged women, don’t get much respect, and in the past, patients were often told the disease was in their heads.
Trichotillomania, the irresistible urge to pull out one’s hair, often starts early – the average onset age is 12 to 13 – and is surprisingly widespread. Help for Hair Pullers reviews the latest treatment options and offers effective cognitive-behavioral techniques for controlling this disorder. Web resources are also included.
Western Suffolk Psychological Services, Huntington, NY. Text provides an overview of this disorder, explaining its causes, treatment options, effective medications, and cognitive and behavioral treatments. Also includes questionnaires, clinical rating scales, and the official DSM diagnostic criteria.
“The Hair Pulling ‘Habit’ and You: How to Solve the Trichotillomania Puzzle,” by Ruth Golomb and Sherrie Vavrichek, is a long overdue and welcome addition to the field of popular psychiatry self-help books. This book offers education regarding trichotillomania, and practical, easily implemented techniques. It addresses one of the most underrecognized problems in psychiatry and offers much hope to one the most underserved clinical populations. What it has to offer is especially valuable given that many sufferers are either too ashamed of their problem to pursue professional intervention, or are unable to identify a knowledgable professional in their area.
A nineteenth-century French dermatologist combined the words trich (hair), tillo (to pull), and mania (uncontrollable) to give the name trichotillomania to the compulsive, irresistible urge to pull out hair.
We’ve all heard that you can’t judge a book by its cover, and that is certainly true of Trichotillomania. The Medusa-like figure on the jacket suggests that patients with trichotillomania are evil, mythical creatures, rather than real people with a troublesome disorder. Fortunately, the authors are well aware of the difficulties faced by these patients; they do a superb job of characterizing the clinical aspects of the disorder and providing a careful review of its pathophysiologic features and treatment. Francois Hallopeau, a French dermatologist, coined the term trichotillomania by combining the Greek words trichos (meaning hair), tillein (meaning to pull), and mania (meaning madness, or an abnormal penchant or morbid impulse). Although mania has since come to be regarded as a form of psychosis, the term accurately describes the compulsive nature of hair pulling.
This edited text outlines a comprehensive behavioral approach to the assessment, analysis, and treatment of tic disorders, trichotillomania, and repetitive behavior disorders, such as thumb sucking, nail biting, pica, bruxism, and other habits.