Books on Mental Health

This book teaches children that violence is never okay. Children can learn to manage their anger and other strong feelings. Hands are capable of positive, loving actions such as playing, making music, learning, counting, helping, and much more.

Separation anxiety is common in young children and can make going to school a trial. This charmingly illustrated tale teaches children coping skills and reminds them that they can love, even miss, their parents and still enjoy school.

A book to teach children all about emotions. Each page involves a new feeling with a scenario describing how that feeling came about. Praised by parents, who say it's especially valuable when getting children to talk about the day's triumphs and troubles, and by professionals, who use it in pediatric clinics and with the developmentally disabled and emotionally troubled.

A warm and affectionate look at the joys and difficulties of making and keeping friends, relating to others, and finding your place in the world. Wonderfully empowering and emotionally resonant, Tom Percival's Big Bright Feelings series is the perfect springboard for conversations about mental and emotional health, positive self-image, building self-confidence and managing feelings.

While we all might feel afraid about standing out, "Perfectly Norman" shows that there's nothing better than being yourself. A poignant yet uplifting story about individuality, with stunning artwork in a striking minimal palette from the author/illustrator of "Herman's Letter."

A sensitive and reassuring story about what to do when a worry won't leave you alone, this is the perfect springboard for talking to children about emotional intelligence and sharing hidden anxieties.

Brimming with humor, this sparkling new book handles a timeless children's topic with wit and wisdom. Romp and stomp! Roar and slam! Almost everyone gets angry. But how can young dinosaurs also learn to calm down, take a time out, and behave?

This book gives children tools to cope with stress in all areas of their lives: on the playground with the school bully, at home with siblings, in the classroom with difficult tasks, and after school with peer pressures. You can easily adapt the relaxation scripts for multiple scenarios.

This book shows how overwhelming and frustrating shopping can be for a child. Llama Llama reminds us that we have big emotions and it’s important to recognize them to learn how to cope. The art is expressive and shows the surroundings from the viewpoint of a child.

A wonderful way for parents to talk with children about their feelings. With Johnson and Fancher's atmospheric, large-scale paintings bursting off the pages, Dr. Seuss's vision is brought to life.

A clever and engaging book about temper tantrums, dealing with emotions, and learning to express and understand your feelings. The perfect book for helping with bad days and noisy outbursts.

This award-winning anthology features 33 different voices, some authors and some not, who share essays, comics, lists, and more to recount their personal experiences with mental illnesses and mental health.

This book explains how to deal with the day-to-day challenges of anxiety. It will help you develop a positive self-image and recognize your anxious thoughts. The workbook also includes resources for seeking additional help and support if you decide you need it.

The worksheets and exercises in this book will help you learn to handle awkward social situations with grace and confidence, so you can make real connections with people you want to get to know. Based in proven-effective cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the skills you learn will also help you speak up for yourself when you need to and stop dreading class projects that put you on the spot.

Combines leading-edge brain science technology with a user-friendly, definitive, and actionable road map to safeguard and enhance brain health and functionality.

Everyone will struggle with fear, anxiety, or stress at some point in their lives, and everyone will have to overcome these challenges to create the life they were meant to live. This book shares how the power of love, encouragement, truth, faith, and belief can be part of the solution.

Author Bev Cobain is a cousin of Kurt Cobain, who ended his long struggle with depression and chemical dependency by taking his own life. This powerful book is her way of dealing with his death—and reaching out to teens with a life-saving message: You don't have to be sad, discouraged, or depressed. There is help and hope for you. Full of solid information and straight talk, "When Nothing Matters Anymore" defines and explains adolescent depression, reveals how common it is, describes the symptoms, and spreads the good news that depression is treatable.

This award-winning anthology features 33 different voices, some authors and some not, who share essays, comics, lists, and more to recount their personal experiences with mental illnesses and mental health.

This book shares Brooke's own gripping story, both the trauma of sex trafficking and her pathway through healing, moving on, and reclaiming power. Along the way, she imparts warm wisdom for others who have experienced similar violence, providing lessons from her own life and from the thousands of women, advocates, and lawmakers she's spoken with.

Combines leading-edge brain science technology with a user-friendly, definitive, and actionable road map to safeguard and enhance brain health and functionality.

In this book, a childhood anxiety disorder specialist examines all manifestations of childhood fears, including social anxiety, Tourette's Syndrome, hair-pulling, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and guides you through a proven program to help your child back to emotional safety. No child is immune from the effects of stress in today's media-saturated society. Fortunately, anxiety disorders are treatable.

This book offers proven effective skills based in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to aid you in helping your child overcome intense fears and worries. You'll also find out how to relieve your child's anxious feelings while parenting with compassion.

At age six, January ("Jani") Schofield was diagnosed with one of the most severe cases of child-onset schizophrenia on record. A passionate and inspirational account, January First is a father's soul-bearing memoir of the daily challenges and unwavering commitment to save his daughter from the edge of insanity while doing everything he can to keep his family together.

"Present through the End" offers the guidance and essential wisdom we need when we are struggling to support someone who is nearing death. This book helps us meet the many challenges ahead and navigate through difficult times with clarity and kindness—both for the person who is dying and for ourselves.

"Square Peg" illuminates the struggles of millions of bright young children—and their frustrated parents and teachers—who are stuck in a one-size-fits-all school system that fails to approach the student as an individual. Rose shares his own incredible journey from troubled childhood to Harvard, seamlessly integrating cutting-edge research in neuroscience and psychology, along with advances in the field of education, to provide a roadmap for parents and teachers of kids who are the casualties of America's antiquated school system.

"The Dark Eclipse" is a book of personal essays in which author A.W. Barnes seeks to come to terms with the suicide of his older brother, Mike. Using source documentation—police report, autopsy, suicide note, and death certificate—the essays explore Barnes’ relationship with Mike and their status as gay brothers raised in a large conservative family in the Midwest.

Everyone will struggle with fear, anxiety, or stress at some point in their lives, and everyone will have to overcome these challenges to create the life they were meant to live. This book shares how the power of love, encouragement, truth, faith, and belief can be part of the solution.

"Touched with Fire" examines the relationship between bipolar disorder and artistic creativity. It contains extensive case studies of historic writers, artists, and composers assessed as probably having had cyclothymia, major depressive disorder, or manic-depressive/bipolar disorder.

This New York Times bestselling memoir of a young man’s addiction to methamphetamine tells a raw, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful tale of the road from relapse to recovery.

This memoir by David Sheff describes how his family dealt with his son Nic's methamphetamine addiction. Sheff traces the first warning signs: the denial, the three a.m. phone calls—is it Nic? the police? the hospital? His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every treatment that might save his son. And he refused to give up on Nic.

In this bestselling book, readers are presented with a revolutionary approach to thinking about daily life—everyday activities, events, problems and creative opportunities—and a therapeutic lifestyle is proposed that focuses on looking more deeply into emotional problems and learning how to sense sacredness in even ordinary things.

This book offers a myth-shattering look at drug abuse and addiction treatment, based on cutting-edge research. The existing addiction treatments have helped some, but they have failed to help many more. To discover why, David Sheff spent time with scores of scientists, doctors, counselors, and addicts and their families, and explored the latest research in psychology, neuroscience, and medicine. In "Clean," he reveals how addiction really works, and how we can combat it.

This book helps parents identify and understand anxiety in their children, outlines effective and convenient parenting techniques for reducing anxiety, and shows parents how to promote bravery for long-term confidence. From trouble sleeping and separation anxiety to social anxiety or panic attacks, "Growing Up Brave" provides an essential toolkit for instilling happiness and confidence for childhood and beyond.

Author Sheila Walsh helps women overcome the same old rut of struggles and pain by changing the way they think about God, themselves, and their everyday lives. She shares practical, doable, daily strategies that will help women move forward one step at a time knowing God will never let them down.

"Look Me in the Eye" describes how Robison grew up as a misfit in the 1960s, at a time when the Asperger syndrome diagnosis did not exist in the United States. This memoir describes how Robison learned to fit in, without actually knowing why he was different. His situation was made even more complicated at times by his neglectful and abusive father and a somewhat crazed mother.

From clinician and researcher Dr. Mary Fristad and fellow treatment expert Dr. Jill Goldberg Arnold, this book explains how treatment works and what additional steps parents can take at home to help children with mood disorders—and the family as a whole—improve the quality of their lives. It also explains why symptoms look so different (and can be so much harder to manage) in children and teens than in adults, how to find the right doctor or therapist, and how to help kids develop their own "coping toolkits."

This book helps you discover your child's primary language—then speak it—to develop a stronger relationship with your flourishing child.

Was your mother too busy, too tired, or too checked-out to provide you with the nurturing you needed as a child? Men and women who were “undermothered” as children often struggle with intimate relationships, in part because of their unmet need for maternal care. "The Emotionally Absent Mother" will help you understand what was missing from your childhood, how this relates to your mother’s own history, and how you can fill the “mother gap.”

This book gives children tools to cope with stress in all areas of their lives: on the playground with the school bully, at home with siblings, in the classroom with difficult tasks, and after school with peer pressures. You can easily adapt the relaxation scripts for multiple scenarios.

A longtime trauma worker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky offers a deep and empathetic survey of the often-unrecognized toll on those working to make the world a better place. We may feel tired, cynical, numb, or like we can never do enough. These and other symptoms affect us individually and collectively, sapping the energy and effectiveness we so desperately need if we are to benefit humankind, other animals, and the planet itself.