Every year on October 10, World Mental Health Day is observed with the objective of raising awareness to mental health issues around the world and in our own community. These may include anxiety and panic disorders, depression, anger, personality disorders, loneliness, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and body image or eating disorders.
You are not alone. The library is a safe and confidential space to find resources to improve your mental health. The books below are a great place to start.
If you feel that you are in danger of harming yourself or others, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-SUICIDE or 1-800-273-TALK.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
Lori Gottlieb is a therapist in Los Angeles. But she is also a patient, seeking the same type of therapy from her quirky therapist, Wendell. She explores the daunting questions and dilemmas of her patients lives, and finds that they are the same questions she is bringing to her own therapy sessions. “With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.”
If Your Adolescent Has an Anxiety Disorder: An Essential Resource for Parents by Edna B. Foa
Growing up can be stressful for any teenager, but it is considerably harder for the many adolescents who develop an anxiety disorder. This book is helpful for parents, teachers, mentors, or caregivers who spend time with teens. Knowing the right information about anxiety disorders is the first step towards helping adolescents who are dealing with them grow to become healthy, happy adults.
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esme Weijun Wang
Wang, a former lab researcher at Stanford University, uses her analytical eye to balance research with her own personal narrative in this collection. The author, who herself struggles with mental and chronic illness, explores mental illness from the perspectives of the medical community, the higher education system, institutionalization, and daily life.
Mindfulness: A Practical Guide by Tessa Watt
There is a growing body of research demonstrating the enormous benefits of mindfulness practice for our physical and mental health and wellbeing. Doctors and counsellors increasingly recommend mindfulness as an approach for patients with depression, stress and anxiety-related ailments. This book is a clear and concise guide to mindfulness practice, packed with straightforward exercises which the reader can try right away.
You Are Not Alone: Words of Experience and Hope for the Journey through Depression by Julia Thorne
A uniquely compassionate book that provides information, companionship and hope for individuals and families coping with depression, written by the Director of the Depression Initiative.
Caring for Yourself While Caring for Your Aging Parents: How to Help, How to Survive by Claire Berman
This practical book is a helpful guide for anyone involved in caring for aging parents, or see caregiving in their future. Drawing on experiences of adult children and through interviews with specialists in the geriatric field, Berman’s book addresses emotional stress and helpful tips for caring for older adults.
Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher, Ph.D.
As a therapist, Mary Pipher was becoming frustrated with the growing problems among adolescent girls. Why were so many of them turning to therapy in the first place? Why had they fallen prey to depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and crushingly low self-esteem? Reviving Ophelia is a call to arms, offering important tactics, empathy, and strength, and urging a change where young hearts can flourish again, and rediscover and reengage their sense of self.
Life Sucks: How to Deal with the Way Life Is, Was, and Always Will Be Unfair by Michael and Sarah Bennett
Being a teenager is hard. From school to parents to friendships and our changing bodies, teens go through a lot. This book is a helpful guide that addresses all of these topics and more, from the perspective of a psychologist and his own teenage daughter. It will also help teens know that it is okay to talk to parents and other adults about teenage frustrations and feelings.
Book descriptions were borrowed from Goodreads.
Agnes Robinson Waterloo Public Library 