A scathing look at a crisis that can no longer be ignored and a heartfelt call to demand change.
A veteran psychiatrist casts a spotlight on America’s failing mental health care system.
Rosenlicht untangles the knot that is health care in America and proposes a framework for a new system that embraces physical and mental health as one. Throughout the book, he immerses readers in today’s mental health crisis, providing shocking statistics about the nation’s homeless population, who are seen and yet go unacknowledged. “As I negotiate bodies and human feces on our downtown sidewalks, endure petty crime, and see people who cycle in and out of jail, I can only shake my head in disgust,” he writes—and his disgust is not for the hapless people roaming the streets because they don’t get the help they need. He blames the divide of physical and mental health care defined by insurance companies that focus on increased profits over improved lives. In a for-profit health care system that is ready to drop the seriously ill due to the cost of coverage, he’s not surprised that mental health care has turned into a morass of inadequate coverage, insurmountable costs, and zero follow-through for those most in need. “I’ve seen a constant rotisserie of scams, evasions, contracts, rule bending and obfuscation as health insurers avoid paying for care, pharmaceutical companies charge the most they can get away with, and healthcare systems compete for healthy and wealthy clients who need little care…all while doing everything they can to avoid the poor, and the truly sick, especially the mentally ill.” The very titles assigned to people—caregivers or doctors as “providers” and patients as “clients”—reveal that the health care system is so rooted in a business model that it seems impossible to find a way out. But Rosenlicht offers glimpses of hope, reminding readers that people continue to fight for a better system in America that encompasses all citizens, with emphasis on care, not profit.
A scathing look at a crisis that can no longer be ignored and a heartfelt call to demand change.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781639367306
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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
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
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