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Mental Health Awareness

Did you know May is National Mental Health Awareness Month? Here is a selection of books navigating the science of mental health, as well as personal accounts of mental health struggles.

Cover of Like a Boy But Not a Boy:
Andrea
Bennett

A revelatory book about gender, mental illness, parenting, mortality, bike mechanics, work, class, and the task of living in a body. Inquisitive and expansive, Like a Boy but Not a Boy explores author andrea bennett's experiences with gender expectations, being a non-binary parent, and the sometimes funny and sometimes difficult task of living in a body.

Cover of Suicidal: why we kill ours
Jesse
Bering

In Suicidal, Bering takes us through the science and psychology of suicide, revealing its cognitive secrets and the subtle tricks our minds play on us when we're easy emotional prey. Scientific studies, personal stories, and remarkable cross-species comparisons come together to help readers critically analyze their own doomsday thoughts while gaining broad insight into a problem that, tragically, will most likely touch all of us at some point in our lives.

Cover of Unwinding Anxiety: new sci
Judson
Brewer

A step-by-step plan clinically proven to break the cycle of worry and fear that drives anxiety and addictive habits. Judson Brewer explains how to uproot anxiety at its source using brain-based techniques and small hacks accessible to anyone. Available to download: eBook | Audio

Cover of A Mind Spread Out On the G
Alicia
Elliot

The Mohawk phrase for depression can be roughly translated to "a mind spread out on the ground." In this urgent and visceral work, Alicia Elliott explores how apt a description that is for the ongoing effects of personal, intergenerational, and colonial traumas she and so many Native people have experienced. Elliott's deeply personal writing details a life spent between Indigenous and white communities, a divide reflected in her own family, and engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love, art, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, and representation. Available to download: Audio

Cover of Good Morning, Monster: a t
Catherine
Gildiner

In this fascinating narrative, therapist Catherine Gildiner presents five of what she calls her most heroic and memorable patients. Among them: a successful, first generation Chinese immigrant musician suffering sexual dysfunction; a young woman whose father abandoned her at age nine with her younger siblings in an isolated cottage in the depth of winter; and a glamorous workaholic whose narcissistic, negligent mother greeted her each morning of her childhood with "Good morning, Monster. Available to download: eBook

Cover of Nobody’s Normal: how cul
Roy Richard
Grinker

A compassionate and eye-opening examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody's Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma-from the eighteenth century, through America's major wars, and into today's high-tech economy. Available to download: Audio

Cover of Finding Comfort During Har
Earl
Johnson

Finding Comfort is about providing emotional and spiritual care following a mass fatality incident like a mass shooting, terrorist act or catastrophic natural disaster. Through examples and practical suggestions, it explores the needs of those who are suffering and how those needs can be met.

Cover of Broken (in the best possib
Jenny
Lawson

As Jenny Lawson's hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken (in the best possible way), she explores her experimental treatment of transcranial magnetic stimulation with brutal honesty. Available to download: eBook | Audio

Cover of The Hilarious World of Dep
John
Moe

Moe has written a remarkable investigation of the disease, part memoir of his own journey, part treasure trove of laugh-out-loud stories and insights drawn from years of interviews with some of the most brilliant minds facing similar challenges. Throughout the course of this powerful narrative, depression's universal themes come to light, among them, struggles with identity, lack of understanding of the symptoms, the challenges of work-life, self-medicating, the fallout of the disease in the lives of our loved ones, the tragedy of suicide, and the hereditary aspects of the disease. The Hilarious World of Depression illuminates depression in an entirely fresh and inspiring way. Available to download: Audio

Cover of Waiting for an Echo: the m
Christine
Montross

Galvanized by her work in our nation's jails, psychiatrist Christine Montross illuminates the human cost of mass incarceration and mental illness. Dr. Christine Montross has spent her career treating the most severely ill psychiatric patients. Several years ago, she set out to investigate why so many of her patients got caught up in the legal system when discharged from her care--and what happened to them therein. Waiting for an Echo is a riveting, rarely seen glimpse into American incarceration. It is also a damning account of policies that have criminalized mental illness, shifting large numbers of people who belong in therapeutic settings into punitive ones.

Cover of Together: the healing powe
Vivek Hallegere
Murthy

In Together, the former Surgeon General addresses the overlooked epidemic of loneliness as the underpinning to the current crisis in mental wellness and offers solutions to create connection and stresses the importance of community to counteract the forces driving us to depression and isolation. Available to download: eBook | Audio

Cover of Hello I Want to Die Please
Anna Mehler
Paperny

In Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me, Mehler Paperny turns her journalist's eye on her own experience and others'-in the ward; as an outpatient; facing family, friends, and coworkers; finding the right meds; trying to stay insured and employed. She interviews psychiatrists and other experts to reveal how primitive our methods of healing the brain still are-and provides an invaluable guide to a system struggling, and often failing, to help those in need. At once heartrending and humorous, outraging and serious, this is a must-listen for anyone touched by depression-and that's everyone. Available to download: Audio

Cover of How to Change Your Mind: w
Michael
Pollan

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into the experience of various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists... Available to download: eBook | Audio

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Sue
Stuart-Smith

The garden has always been a place of peace and perseverance, of nurture and reward. Using contemporary neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and compelling real-life stories, The Well-Gardened Mind investigates the remarkable effects of nature on our health and well-being. Available to download: eBook