Must-Read
Best Books About Mental Health
Mental health writing splits between popular medicine (van der Kolk, Brene Brown, Haidt) and literary fiction that takes interior life seriously (Transcendent Kingdom, The Midnight Library, Educated). The right reading list draws from both. These seven do.
7 books on this list.
The Body Keeps the Scoreby Bessel van der Kolk
5.0“The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk 2014 review. A trauma psychiatrist's three-decade synthesis of how chronic psychological trauma is stored in the body. The canonical contemporary popular-medicine book on trauma.”
Atlas of the Heartby Brene Brown
4.0“Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown 2021 review. An illustrated mapping of eighty-seven distinct human emotions organized into thirteen emotional landscapes. Brown's most ambitious popular-psychology book.”
The Anxious Generationby Jonathan Haidt
4.0“The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt 2024 review. The smartphone-and-social-media-driven youth mental-health crisis and a four-point reform proposal. The most-cited contemporary book on adolescent psychology.”
Transcendent Kingdomby Yaa Gyasi
5.0“Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi 2020 review. A Stanford neuroscience graduate student runs reward-circuit experiments on mice while her Ghanaian-born mother lives in her apartment. Gyasi's second novel after Homegoing.”
The Midnight Libraryby Matt Haig
4.0“A gorgeous concept executed with warmth and wit. The Midnight Library will make you think differently about the choices you have made - and the ones still ahead.”
Educatedby Tara Westover
5.0“Educated by Tara Westover 2018 review. The memoir of growing up in a survivalist Idaho family that kept her out of school until age seventeen, and her subsequent education through Brigham Young University and Cambridge. The PEN/Bingham winner and one of the canonical contemporary memoirs.”
Crying in H Martby Michelle Zauner
5.0“Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 2021 review. Michelle Zauner's memoir about her Korean mother's death from pancreatic cancer and the Korean food that connected them. The breakout literary commercial memoir of 2021.”