There's a Book for That: Mental Health Awareness Month
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, observed at this time each year since 1949, when it was established by Mental Health America. America is in the midst of a mental health crisis. It’s more important than ever to reduce the stigma around mental health struggles so that people are more willing to ask for help. The following new and acclaimed books offer help and understanding and provide paths to self-acceptance and resiliency:
From the author of Hold On, But Don’t Hold Still, the emotionally charged and eye-opening account of a mother who navigates the cacophony of best practices and urgent advice from parenting authorities in search of a way to support her teen as he maps his own path to mental health. Featuring an urgent and affirming foreword by renowned and New York Times bestselling clinician Dr. Shefali Tsabary—Kuzmič’s new book debunks ten “parenting truths” that kept her in crisis, and delves into her insecurities and the mistakes she made to reveal invaluable lessons and transformative approaches that worked.
“To treat, even to cure, is not always to heal.” In this expansive cultural history of the treatment and healing of mental suffering, Kay Jamison writes about psychotherapy, what makes a great healer, and the role of imagination and memory in regenerating the mind. From the trauma of the battlefields of the twentieth century, to those who are grieving, depressed, or with otherwise unquiet minds, to her own experience with bipolar illness, Jamison demonstrates how remarkable psychotherapy and other treatments can be when done well.
Acclaimed author Jonathan Rosen’s riveting investigation of the forces that led his closest childhood friend from the heights of brilliant promise to the forensic psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. A story about friendship, love, and the price of self-delusion, The Best Minds explores the ways in which we understand—and fail to understand—mental illness.
In How Not to Kill Yourself, Martin chronicles his multiple suicide attempts in an intimate depiction of the mindset of someone obsessed with self-destruction. He argues that, for the vast majority of suicides, an attempt does not just come out of the blue, nor is it merely a violent reaction to a particular crisis or failure, but is the culmination of a host of long-standing issues. The result combines memoir with critical inquiry to give voice to what for many has long been incomprehensible, while showing those presently grappling with suicidal thoughts that they are not alone, and that the desire to kill oneself—like other self-destructive desires—is almost always temporary and avoidable.
In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free.
A literary sensation in Brazil, Luiz Schwarcz’s brave and tender memoir interrogates his ordeal of bipolar disorder in the context of a family story of murder, dispossession, and silence—the long echo of the Holocaust across generations.
The Emotional Lives of Teenagers is An urgently needed guide to help parents understand their teenagers’ intense and often fraught emotional lives—and how to support them through this critical developmental stage—from the New York Times-bestselling author of Untangled and Under Pressure.
In teenagers, powerful emotions come with the territory. And as teens contend with academic pressure, social media stress, worries about the future, and concerns about their own mental health, it’s easy for them—and their parents—to feel anxious and overwhelmed. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With clear, research-informed explanations alongside illuminating, real-life examples, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers gives parents the concrete, practical information they need to steady their teens through the bumpy yet transformational journey into adulthood.
The Emory University sociologist who coined the term languishing—low-grade mental weariness that affects our self-esteem, relationships, and motivation—explores the rise of this phenomenon and presents a comprehensive guide to flourishing in a world that demands too much. Languishing is for anyone tempted to downplay feelings of demotivation and emptiness as they struggle to haul themselves through day after day, and for those determined to flourish. We can expand our vocabulary—and with it, our potential.
Even before 2020, chronic loneliness was a private experience of profound anguish that had become a public health crisis. Since then it has reached new heights. Loneliness assumes many forms, from enduring physical isolation to feeling rejected because of difference, and it can have devastating consequences for our physical and mental health. As the founder of Project UnLonely, Jeremy Nobel unpacks our personal and national experiences of loneliness to discover its roots and to show how we can take steps to find comfort and connection.
“An essential book for our times, full of wisdom, compassion and sound advice. Every patient needs a copy of this gem.” –Katherine May, author of Wintering and Enchantment
Drawing on thirty years of medicine, and on insights from practitioners, psychologists, and writers across history, physician Gavin Francis delivers a profound, practical, and deeply hopeful guide to recovery. Rejecting the idea that healing is passive, Recovery offers tools and wisdom for convalescence, and shows how tending to our bodies, environments, and perspectives can help us move through the landscape of illness—and come out the other side whole.
In this groundbreaking portrait of the human mind, a renowned psychiatrist and neuroscientist explores the biological and physical nature of our inner worlds through poignant, and at times shocking, clinical stories. An illuminating, literary, and essential work, Projections transforms the way we see the brain as a biological and emotional object, grounded in universally resonant human stories and our common search for understanding.
In Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain . . . and what to do about it. The lived experiences of her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption give us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives. In essence, Dopamine Nation shows that the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery.
THE FEELING GOOD HANDBOOK: THE GROUNDBREAKING PROGRAM WITH POWERFUL NEW TECHNIQUES AND STEP-BY-STEP EXERCISES TO OVERCOME DEPRESSION, CONQUER ANXIETY, AND ENJOY GREATER INTIMACY
With his phenomenally successful Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, Dr. David Burns introduced a groundbreaking, drug-free treatment for depression. In this bestselling companion, he reveals powerful new techniques and provides step-by-step exercises that help you cope with the full range of everyday problems.
“I love the life these tools have allowed me to have.”—Jonah Hill
Change can begin right now. Learn to bring about dynamic personal growth using five uniquely effective tools—from psychotherapist Barry Michels and psychiatrist Phil Stutz, subject of the Netflix documentary Stutz, directed by Jonah Hill. A dynamic, results-oriented practice, The Tools aims to deliver relief from persistent problems and restore control and hope right away.
An acclaimed philosopher shows us how—in an age of unprecedented anxiety—we can find fulfillment by embracing the present and living more fully in the now. He is “the perfect guide for a course correction in life” (from the Introduction by Deepak Chopra).
For more on these and related titles visit the collection Mental Health Awareness
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