Reading for Wellness
Find a book you enjoy to read for fun.
Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories That Smash Mental Health Stereotypes by
Channeling their own experiences, sixteen exceptional authors subvert mental health stereotypes in a powerful and uplifting collection of fiction. A teen activist wrestles with protest-related anxiety and PTSD. A socially anxious vampire learns he has to save his town by (gulp) working with people. As part of her teshuvah, a girl writes letters to the ex-boyfriend she still loves, revealing that her struggle with angry outbursts is related to PMDD. A boy sheds uncontrollable tears but finds that in doing so he's helping to enable another's healing.
The Chosen One by
There are many watchers and they are always white.That's the first thing Echo notices as she settles into Dartmouth College. Despite graduating high school in Cleveland as valedictorian, Echo immediately struggles to keep up in demanding classes. Dartmouth made many promises it couldn't keep. The campus is not a rainbow-colored utopia where education lifts every voice. Nor is it a paradise of ideas, an incubator of inclusivity, or even an exciting dating scene. But it might be a portal to different dimensions of time and space--only accessible if Echo accepts her calling as a Chosen One and takes charge of her future by healing her past.
All the Bright Places by
The New York Times bestselling love story about two teens who find each other while standing on the edge. Theodore Finch is fascinated by death. Every day he thinks of ways he might kill himself, but every day he also searches for--and manages to find--something to keep him here, and alive, and awake. Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her small Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister's recent death. When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school--six stories above the ground-- it's unclear who saves whom.
Icebreaker by
Seventeen-year-old Mickey James III is a college freshman, a brother to five sisters, and a hockey legacy. With a father and a grandfather who have gone down in NHL history, Mickey is almost guaranteed the league's top draft spot. The only person standing in his way is Jaysen Caulfield, a contender for the #1 spot and Mickey's infuriating (and infuriatingly attractive) teammate. When rivalry turns to something more, Mickey will have to decide what he really wants, and what he's willing to risk for it.
The Silence That Binds Us by
Maybelline Chen isn't the Chinese Taiwanese American daughter her mother expects her to be. May's beloved brother, Danny, on the other hand, has just been admitted to Princeton. But Danny secretly struggles with depression, and when he dies by suicide, May's world is shattered. In the aftermath, racist accusations are hurled against May's parents. May challenges these ugly stereotypes through her writing. Yet the consequences of speaking out run much deeper than anyone could foresee.
Stuff That's Loud by
Do you have thoughts that seem loud? Do your worries spiral out of control and then suck you in? Do intrusive thoughts show up and make you scared of doing certain things--or not doing things--a certain way? Do you ever get a feeling like something bad might happen? Does this loud stuff make you feel alone, or worse--crazy? First, you aren't alone--even if it sometimes feels that way. And second, you are not crazy. But you might be struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). And while OCD can be difficult, you don't have to let it have power over you. Instead, you can live a life full of meaning, great relationships and joy with the help of this book.
We Are All So Good at Smiling by
Whimsy is back in the hospital for treatment of clinical depression. When she meets a boy named Faerry, she recognizes they both have magic in the marrow of their bones. The Forest whispers to Whimsy. The Forest might hold the answers to the part of Faerry he feels is missing. They discover the Forest holds monsters, fairy tales, and pain that they have both been running from for 11 years.
Transcendent Kingdom: a Read with Jenna Pick by
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.
Hidden Valley Road by
There was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony...But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse--six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself.