My Top 5 Mental Health Book Recommendations
These five books have been the most helpful in my efforts to improve my mental health and help others improve theirs
Of all the mental health-related books I’ve read, these five are the cream of the crop. They have helped me understand the factors that have influenced and continue to affect my own and others’ mental health. They have taught me how to challenge limiting beliefs and take other actions that have changed my life. They have inspired me to share what I’ve learned that may help others change theirs.
If you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to know your thoughts about them. I’d also love to hear about other mental health books you have found helpful and why. And if you buy these or other books from my mental health bookshop, your purchase helps support independent bookstores (and me).
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté. This book provides a comprehensive look at the many ways our culture negatively affects our mental and physical health. It points out that our economy depends on keeping us sick and unhappy. Our misery leads us to buy things that promise to relieve our pain or provide an escape from reality. I quoted from it in a previous post about our culture and mental health:
Culture and Mental Health, Part 2
·Last week, I wrote about some ways cultural values and systems are harmful to our mental health: Today’s post discusses ways to counteract our culture’s negative effects on mental health. The dominant culture in the United States (and some other nations) values profits more than people, conformity more than creativity, and competition more than collaboration. It teaches that anyone with the right mindset and work ethic can earn enough to support their family, enjoy life now, and save for retirement.
In some ways, this book is depressing. But it’s also inspiring, because it includes stories of people who have overcome major traumas and recovered from supposedly incurable diseases. And it emphasizes that we are all capable of becoming whole and rejecting the pressure to conform to unhealthy social norms:
Anyone, no matter their history, can begin to hear wholeness beckoning, whether in a shout or whisper, and resolve to move in its direction. With the heart as a guide and the mind as a willing and curious partner, we follow whatever path most resonates with that call.No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness With the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard Schwartz. I think the IFS Model is better than any other at explaining how we develop self-destructive beliefs and patterns of behavior. It’s not only the most helpful kind of therapy I’ve ever had, it’s also the most fun.
This book was written by the psychologist who developed the IFS model, and includes exercises to help you get to know and love all of the parts in your internal family.
I won’t attempt to describe the three different types of parts, how they interact, or the steps involved in becoming aware of and befriending each part here. I shared part of a conversation I had with two of my parts in a previous post:Listen In On My Conversation With My Inner Parts, Then Try Talking With Yours
·Internal Family Systems is the most fascinating and helpful approach to understanding and healing myself I’ve found. In case you’re not already familiar with it, here’s a brief explanation from the best site to visit if you want to learn more: IFS is a transformative tool that conceives every human being as a system of protective and wounded inner parts led by a core Self. We believe the mind is naturally multiple and that is a good thing. Just like members of a family, inner parts are forced from their valuable states into extreme roles within us. Self is in everyone. It can’t be damaged. It knows how to heal.
Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler. This book challenges the popular belief that everything happens for a reason. Many people like the idea that everything we experience is either the result of our own actions or part of a cosmic plan we don’t understand.
They think we deserve the good things because of our hard work, kindness to others, or other virtues. They are comforted by the idea that even terrible tragedies serve a higher purpose. Bad things can teach us valuable lessons. They can make us stronger. They can inspire us to take actions that make it less likely others will have to go through what we did.
The author rejected that idea when she was diagnosed with stage four cancer at age 35. In her words, “When someone is drowning, the only thing worse than failing to throw them a life preserver is handing them a reason.
As someone who has been told by well-meaning people that my worst experiences were part of a larger plan, I agree with her.
Untamed by Glennon Doyle. This compelling memoir may be the most inspirational book I have ever read. The author challenges us to free our wild selves from the cages others convince us to live in. She shares how shame tamed her and she lost her wild self to please others:
I was wild until I was tamed by shame … Until I surrendered myself to the cages of others’ expectations, cultural mandates, and institutional allegiances. Until I buried who I was in order to become what I should be. I lost myself when I learned how to please.
She acknowledges the inevitable pain that comes with freeing our wild selves. As she puts it, “The truest, most beautiful life never promises to be an easy one. We need to let go of the lie that it’s supposed to be.”
But she also emphasizes that the pain is necessary to gain our freedom and continue to become truer, more beautiful selves:
I can use pain to become. I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself … Whether I like it or not, pain is the fuel of revolution … I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses by Sarah Fay. I discovered this book because
publishes a mental health newsletter I subscribe to. It includes excerpts from Cured: The Memoir, the book she is currently writing as a sequel to this one.
As the title indicates, this book shares the story of how Sarah was repeatedly misdiagnosed with various mental illnesses. It describes her symptoms and the medications and other treatments she received. It also includes vivid depictions of events and behaviors some readers may find disturbing.
But this book isn’t just an account of her personal mental health journey. Sarah also shares eye-opening and well-researched information about the subjectivity of mental health diagnoses.
She explains how each revision to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) has increased the number of mental illnesses it includes. Revisions have also reduced the number, severity, and duration of symptoms patients must have to get diagnosed with mental illnesses. That has led some psychiatrists to question the validity and usefulness of mental illness diagnoses.
Sarah also reveals how drug companies fund and design the research used to show their drugs are safe and effective so they get FDA approval. Those companies also influence beliefs about the causes of mental illnesses (especially the chemical imbalance theory).I learned so much from this book! Some of the information in it challenged my beliefs about mental illnesses and whether it is possible to recover from them.
Other content resonated with my experience and reinforced my beliefs. Like Sarah, I have received different diagnoses from different psychiatrists. I once had to see a new psychiatrist less than a month after I had seen another one. My symptoms hadn’t changed, but my diagnosis did!Whew! This was much longer than I expected, but these five books have played significant roles in my mental health journey. I wanted to provide enough information about each one to help you decide whether it is likely to be a valuable companion on yours.
P.S. Remember, you can purchase these and other books I recommend from my mental health bookstore. And please let me know which books you recommend and why!
Thank you for these book suggestions, They sound like very good and informative books to read."Peoplemaking" by Virginia Satir. Virginia Satir was a family therapist (now deceased), and was a Family Therapist, who counseled "blended families." Blended Families are when two people get married and one or both spouses have children from a previous marriages. So Virginia Satir talks about methods to communicate to children, and to communicate to a new spouse, within the new family constellation. One chapter is on self esteem. She starts out the chapter, making an analogy from an old iron outdoor cooking pot on her farm when she was growing up. The cooking pot when it is full of something boiling on the fire means "high pot" (high in amount of substance in the pot) equals "high self esteem", and "low pot equal low amount of substance in the pot," equals "low self esteem." So, for example if a person or child in a family has a low pot day they have low self esteem. When a child or family member has low self esteem-low pot day, you treat them gently, calmly, and supportively. When a family member has a "high pot" -high self esteem day, you also pay attention to them in a supportive manner. Her methods of getting each family member to communicate to the other members are really great. I do not know if this book is out of print or not.
Thanks for this list of recommendations.
One of the best books I've found for depression is The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs, by Stephen S. Ilardi. Super practical and based on research in which they had great success in relieving symptoms of depression without drugs. The six steps are simple to follow; just a matter of consistency ...