A remarkable and ultimately encouraging multi-voiced call for better mental health approaches.
Hun presents series of conversations about mental health with people from all walks of life.
As he does in the other entries in this series (any one of which can be read independently of the others), the author opens this volume with some sobering observations about the “mental health epidemic” currently gripping the world—as readers are reminded, mental health problems are not always obvious and visible. He intends this book to be a resource for people dealing with mental health challenges, particularly in Korea, Japan, and Thailand, where the situation is particularly stark. The collected interviews range widely and frequently involve a central frustration: Many people are generally unwilling to take these problems seriously. As Muhammad Syazan Bin Saad and Hannah Bastrisyia, two young “peer supporters” in Singapore, note, “Especially in the Asian culture, we don’t see mental illness as a form of real illness per se.” Joel Wong, a social worker, underlines the book’s central assessment of the seriousness of the issue, noting that, internationally, one in five people will develop a mental health problem at some point in their lives. The scope of that reality is reflected in the variety of emphases in these interviews, from educating small children on the subject to the workings of various kinds of therapy, and this underscores Hun’s wise choice to turn the bulk of his book over to a succession of different voices. Some interviewees are more experienced than others, and some are more articulate; the varying perspectives combine to present a mosaic-like look at caregiving that feels very authentic. Psychologist Camellia Wong mentions at one point that people often struggle with the dissonance between their ideal self and their true self, and this dissonance, in various forms, crops up in all of these interviews, each one a fascinating glimpse into the current state of mental health issues.
A remarkable and ultimately encouraging multi-voiced call for better mental health approaches.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2022
ISBN: 9789815058253
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Penguin Random House SEA
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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