An informative and supportive collection of interviews about mental health.
Hun presents interviews conducted with health care professionals in 2021 in Singapore.
As the author reminds his readers, the world is currently going through a mental health epidemic, with more people than ever experiencing various levels of depression and anxiety. He notes that there’s still a stigma attached to this epidemic, largely derived from an often clumsy and superficial conception of emotions. “Our understanding of emotions is largely limited to happiness, anger, and sadness, but what about everything else in between?” he asks. “What about the subtle emotions like guilt, jealousy, shame, disgust, contempt, and envy?” In these pages, Hun presents dozens of interviews he conducted with various health care professionals—doctors, caregivers, therapists, social workers, and others—on the front lines of Singapore’s ongoing campaign to provide the care that many people are only vaguely aware they need. Calvin Eng, president of the Association for Music Therapy in Singapore, for example, notes that “as long as the individual is open to exploring music and being part of the experience,” his own clients can find peace and resolution through his “jam sessions.” Other health care workers discuss the shame some people feel about their worst episodes, and the corrosive effects of stress (“Your mind goes into tunnel vision, and you stop being able to think creatively”). The interviews are uniformly conducted with skill, and the balance of subjects makes for a smoothly engaging read. Hun ensures that the reading experience is also consistently upbeat; the narrative line running through the text and interviews alike is that, no matter how grim things might seem for readers, there’s always hope. “There is always a way out,” Hun writes, “no matter how bad circumstances present themselves to you.” In a sentiment that many will value, he reminds readers that there’s no shame in admitting they need help.
An informative and supportive collection of interviews about mental health.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2022
ISBN: 9789815058277
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Penguin Random House SEA
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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