In this combination of diligent science reporting, moving patient success stories, and surprising self-discovery, journalist Julia Hotz helps us discover the lasting and life-changing power of social prescribing. Traditionally, when we get sick, health care professionals ask, “What’s the matter with you?” But around the world, teams of doctors, nurses, therapists, and social workers have started to flip the script, asking “What matters to you?” Instead of solely pharmaceutical prescriptions, they offer “social prescriptions”—referrals to community activities and resources, like photography classes, gardening groups, and volunteering gigs. The results speak for themselves. Science shows that social prescribing is effective for treating symptoms of the modern world’s most common ailments—depression, ADHD, addiction, trauma, anxiety, chronic pain, dementia, diabetes, and loneliness. As health care’s de facto cycle of “diagnose-treat-repeat” reaches a breaking point, social prescribing has also proven to reduce patient wait times, lower hospitalization rates, save money, and reverse health worker burnout. And as a general sense of unwellness plagues more of us, social prescriptions can help us feel healthier than we’ve felt in years. As the first book on social prescribing, The Connection Cure empowers you to find, experience, and implement this revolutionary medicine in your own community. While touring the globe to investigate the spread of social prescribing to over thirty countries, Hotz meets people personifying its revolutionary potential: an aspiring novelist whose art workshop helps her cope with trauma symptoms and rediscover her joy; a policy researcher whose swimming course helps her taper off antidepressants and feel excited to wake up in the morning; an army vet whose phone conversations help him form his only true friendship; and dozens more. The success stories she finds bring a long-known theory to life: if we can change our environment, we can change our health. By reconnecting to what matters to us, we can all start to feel better.

Rediscover the benefits of a real-life social network! Although today's technology allows you to communicate with people all over the globe, it can also leave you feeling disconnected and unhappy in the real world. The Loneliness Cure helps you rediscover the power of socializing in person and finally find the affection you've been longing for. Written by communication expert Kory Floyd, PhD, this valuable guide details the causes of affection hunger, helps you assess your needs, and offers six compelling strategies for attracting more intimacy into your relationships and everyday life. This guidebook details the causes of affection hunger, helps you assess your needs, and shows you how to build genuine connections to those around you. Whether you're looking to get the undivided attention of a friend, reconnect physically with a romantic partner, or grow closer to your family, this book provides you with the tools you need to lead a healthier, happier, and more affectionate life.

The New York Times Bestseller from Surgeon General, Vivek H. Murthy, MD. “We have a massive, deadly epidemic hidden in plain sight: loneliness. It is as harmful to health as smoking and far more common. And as his gripping stories of the science and suffering make clear, we can do something about it. Together is fascinating, moving, and essential reading.”—Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal “Together made me rethink much of what I believe about physical health, public policy, and the human condition. By revealing America’s epidemic of loneliness—and then offering an array of remedies for the condition—Murthy has done a great service, and made Together the most important book you’ll read this year.”—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of When and Drive The book we need NOW to avoid a social recession, Murthy’s prescient message is about the importance of human connection, the hidden impact of loneliness on our health, and the social power of community. Humans are social creatures: In this simple and obvious fact lies both the problem and the solution to the current crisis of loneliness. In his groundbreaking book, the 19th surgeon general of the United States Dr. Vivek Murthy makes a case for loneliness as a public health concern: a root cause and contributor to many of the epidemics sweeping the world today from alcohol and drug addiction to violence to depression and anxiety. Loneliness, he argues, is affecting not only our health, but also how our children experience school, how we perform in the workplace, and the sense of division and polarization in our society. But, at the center of our loneliness is our innate desire to connect. We have evolved to participate in community, to forge lasting bonds with others, to help one another, and to share life experiences. We are, simply, better together. The lessons in Together have immediate relevance and application. These four key strategies will help us not only to weather this crisis, but also to heal our social world far into the future. Spend time each day with those you love. Devote at least 15 minutes each day to connecting with those you most care about. Focus on each other. Forget about multitasking and give the other person the gift of your full attention, making eye contact, if possible, and genuinely listening. Embrace solitude. The first step toward building stronger connections with others is to build a stronger connection with oneself. Meditation, prayer, art, music, and time spent outdoors can all be sources of solitary comfort and joy. Help and be helped. Service is a form of human connection that reminds us of our value and purpose in life. Checking on a neighbor, seeking advice, even just offering a smile to a stranger six feet away, all can make us stronger. During Murthy’s research for Together, he found that there were few issues that elicited as much enthusiastic interest from both very conservative and very liberal members of Congress, from young and old people, or from urban and rural residents alike. Loneliness was something so many people have known themselves or have seen in the people around them. In the book, Murthy also shares his own deeply personal experiences with the subject—from struggling with loneliness in school, to the devastating loss of his uncle who succumbed to his own loneliness, as well as the important example of community and connection that his parents modeled. Simply, it’s a universal condition that affects all of us directly or through the people we love—now more than ever.

The leading cause of death on Planet Earth is Metabolic Syndrome. Some 40% of all Earthlings now suffer from this condition which covers the gamut of Heart Disease, Cancer, Neurodegeneration, Liver disease, and PCOS. What is worth knowing is that ALL of these and related conditions start with Fatigue, known in scientific circles as "energy deficiency." 40% of the Earth's population has a formal clinical diagnosis that their mitochondria cannot make adequate levels of energy. [Cu]re Fatigue is a book devoted to educating the masses and their doctors exactly how and why this is happening. Our mitochondria make energy by a series of enzymes to work synergistically to create ATP, the cellular currency of energy. These mitochondrial enzyme reactions rely on minerals that are easily lost to stress. This book explains these concepts, how these challenges can be overcome and introduces the reader to a simple, proven Root Cause Protocol that is designed to generate more energy and end fatigue. This book is designed for those seeking the truth in human metabolism and those wanting to take back control of their health. It is one part textbook and one part user's guide based on a decade of research and client experience.

Psychotherapy across distance and time, from Freud’s treatments by mail to crisis hotlines, radio call-ins, chatbots, and Zoom sessions. Therapy has long understood itself as taking place in a room, with two (or more) people engaged in person-to-person conversation. And yet, starting with Freud’s treatments by mail, psychotherapy has operated through multiple communication technologies and media. These have included advice columns, radio broadcasts, crisis hotlines, video, personal computers, and mobile phones; the therapists (broadly defined) can be professional or untrained, strangers or chatbots. In The Distance Cure, Hannah Zeavin proposes a reconfiguration of the traditional therapeutic dyad of therapist and patient as a triad: therapist, patient, and communication technology. Zeavin tracks the history of teletherapy (understood as a therapeutic interaction over distance) and its metamorphosis from a model of cure to one of contingent help. She describes its initial use in ongoing care, its role in crisis intervention and symptom management, and our pandemic-mandated reliance on regular Zoom sessions. Her account of the “distanced intimacy” of the therapeutic relationship offers a powerful rejoinder to the notion that contact across distance (or screens) is always less useful, or useless, to the person seeking therapeutic treatment or connection. At the same time, these modes of care can quickly become a backdoor for surveillance and disrupt ethical standards important to the therapeutic relationship. The history of the conventional therapeutic scenario cannot be told in isolation from its shadow form, teletherapy. Therapy, Zeavin tells us, was never just a “talking cure”; it has always been a communication cure.

The compelling autobiography of a remarkable Catholic woman, sainted by many, who championed the rights of the poor in America’s inner cities. When Dorothy Day died in 1980, the New York Times eulogized her as “a nonviolent social radical of luminous personality . . . founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and leader for more than fifty years in numerous battles of social justice.” Here, in her own words, this remarkable woman tells of her early life as a young journalist in the crucible of Greenwich Village political and literary thought in the 1920s, and of her momentous conversion to Catholicism that meant the end of a Bohemian lifestyle and common-law marriage. The Long Loneliness chronilces Dorothy Day’s lifelong association with Peter Maurin and the genesis of the Catholic Worker Movement. Unstinting in her commitment to peace, nonviolence, racial justice, and the cuase of the poor and the outcast, she became an inspiration to such activists as Thomas Merton, Michael Harrinton, Daniel Berrigan, Ceasr Chavez, and countless others. This edition of The Long Loneliness begins with an eloquent introduction by Robert Coles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and longtime friend, admirer, and biographer of Dorothy Day.

One day Donna Jackson Nakazawa found herself lying on the floor to recover from climbing the stairs. That’s when it hit her. She was managing the symptoms of the autoimmune disorders that had plagued her for a decade, but she had lost her joy. As a science journalist, she was curious to know what mind-body strategies might help her. As a wife and mother she was determined to get her life back. Over the course of one year, Nakazawa researches and tests a variety of therapies including meditation, yoga, and acupuncture to find out what works. But the discovery of a little-known branch of research into Adverse Childhood Experiences causes her to have an epiphany about her illness that not only stuns her—it turns her life around. Perfect for readers of Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, Nakazawa shares her unexpected discoveries, amazing improvements, and shows readers how they too can find their own last best cure.