Best Books to Support Your Mental Health

Parenting: 

How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish

This book shares ways to: cope with your child’s negative feelings, express your feelings without being hurtful, engage your child’s willing cooperation, set firm limits, understand how to give helpful praise, and resolve family conflicts peacefully.

School and Academics: 

ADHD and the College Student by Patricia Quinn

A great resource for understanding ways to set up your college environment as an individual with ADHD. This book includes tips and tricks related to: designing a successful program, seeking emotional support, nurturing strong relationships, understanding your medication, and accessing specialized services at college.

Relationships: 

Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller

Attachment is the most advanced relationship in human history. This book explores the three different attachment styles and their origins: secure, anxious, and avoidant. Throughout this book, readers will build an understanding of their attachment style, their partners attachment style, and guidance on how to build strong relationships. 

The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

This book outlines the 5 common ways that people give and receive love: acts of service, giving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, and physical touch. Understanding your preferred love language and the languages of those around you will help foster meaningful relationships that last.

Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab

Healthy boundaries are essential in maintaining a work/life balance, relationships, and coping with toxic people. This book, rooted in CBT, explores techniques and strategies to understand and enforce the boundaries necessary for you to live your best life. 

Personality/Self-Development

Untamed by Glennon Doyle 

This book explores the social conditioning, numbing addictions, and institutional allegiances experienced by women in society. Author Glennon Doyle explores the voice of longing that she experienced, and how she used this voice to transform her life and connect with herself and others on a new level. 

The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron

This book guides readers through understanding and assessing for sensitivity using self-assessments and additional techniques. For those that suffer from stress and anxiety, understanding sensitivity and how to use it to your advantage in the world can be an immense strength. 

The Origins of You by Vienne Pharaon

Licensed marriage and family therapist Vienne Pharaon explores the patterns and habits most of us have developed from childhood, and educates readers on how to break these patterns and cycles. This empowering book reminds readers that you can be the agent of change and take initiative in breaking family patterns. 

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. This book offers the framework for building and sustaining successful habits and will leave readers feeling confident in reshaping their habits and building new routines. 

Neurodivergence: 

The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin

This book explores the prevalence, diagnosis, and treatment of the Autism Spectrum Disorder over the last century. Author Temple Grandin recounts her lifetime of experience with the diagnosis, and the advances in biological and genetic technology in understanding how Autism has evolved. 

Smart but Scattered by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare

There is nothing more frustrating than watching your bright son or daughter struggle to complete tasks like finishing homework, putting away toys, or following instructions at school. This guide for parents helps explain and approach your child in expanding executive functioning skills. 

The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida

This one of a kind memoir written by thirteen year old Naoki Higashida demonstrates how an Autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives and responds. Naoki answers even the most delicate questions people want to know, showing how self-aware and insightful he is along the way. 

Trauma: 

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

This book explores how trauma reshapes the body and the brain, while connecting readers to innovative treatments. Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk explores research in understanding the brain’s neuroplasticity and our capacity to heal from traumatic events. 

Technology: 

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

This book explores the significant societal drop in mental health after the 2010’s, a time where “phone-based childhood,” replaced the traditional nature of childhood. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply in the last decade, and this book explores the causes and implications of such rates. 

Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke

This book is about how to find balance between pleasure and pain, in a world where dopamine sources are increasingly prominent. We are living in a world of high-stimulation, dopamine rich experiences making us all vulnerable to overconsumption.