The BEST Books For Your Mental Health

  • Best Mental Health Information books:
  1. I Hate You - Don't Leave Me by Jerald Kreisman and Hal Strauss, this book was recommended to me by a Community Psychiatric Nurse and I enjoyed the layout with chapters dedicated to each symptom of BPD and real-life examples of a person identifying with this symptom. This book helped me to accept my diagnosis.
  2. Dialectical Behaviour Therapy by Matthew McKay, Jeffery Wood and Jeffery Brantley, I bought this book when I began doing DBT in the community as this was the book the Psychologist was working from. I found it useful in reading up a bit more on some skills that I hadn't understood so easily. And I enjoyed a lot of the exercises and found them helpful. It's important with DBT though that you don't try and grab all of the skills; take the ones which work for you and adapt others to work and then have a variety available for different situations.

  • Best Motivational books:
  1. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, I think it's incredibly sad to think of young people barely having a life because of an illness but the attitudes of the young people in this story are amazing. They have a humour about the entire situation of dying from cancer and they face their imminent death without fear, making the most of what time they do have. It makes me think that if they can have humour in that situation, why can't I crack a smile?
  2. Girl A: The Truth About the Rochdale Sex Ring By the Victim Who Stopped Them, I must give this book an obvious trigger warning to anyone who is considering reading it. It was difficult to read but I thought that the honesty and detail was helpful in understanding the entirety of the trauma and the effect it had on the girl's life. It also left me thinking how much she'd been through at such a young age yet she still managed to have a successful future; as I am hoping to do.

  • Best 'Feel Good' books:
  1. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll,
  2. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin, I basically chose these two as 'feel good' books because I feel that when you read these books, you get to escape. Away from reality and into a land where the unimaginable is possible.

  • Best 'Grateful For Your Life' books:
  1. If I Stay by Gayle Foreman, It's such a sad story that she's only young and loses her entire family and now has to find reasons to be alive in other things. I tried to put myself in the situation and whether I would choose to wake up or choose to die. And I know this will sound cheesy, but I realised that if I lost the people I love, I could keep going. I would. I'd have Dolly and my blogging. And I'd make them proud. P.s. tear warning - I've cried both times I watched this movie!
  2. Before I Die by Jenny Downham, I loved this book. Yet another young person dying, but it was how she chose to spend her last time; doing all the things that she wouldn't normally do. And it made me think that I'd hate to die with things I still want to do... This book was also so realistic with the medical side of the story too, which is equally important.


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