Exploring brain science, trauma, and resilience, the below collection of new nonfiction about mental health is available at the Davenport Public Library. While this isn’t a complete list of all new mental health nonfiction available, we hope the below will be helpful. As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.
100 Questions & Answers about Depression by Laura L. Smith
Everything You Want to Know About Depression: A Q&A Guide
If you or a loved one is experiencing depression, don’t despair. 100 Questions & Answers About Depression For Dummies is your go-to guide for understanding what depression really is, why it happens, and what you can do about it. Learn about the types of depression, symptoms and causes, affordable treatment options, and small daily habits that can really help.
Designed to be straightforward, this book features short, easy-to-absorb sections that allow you to quickly find the information you need to support your health and well-being. Whether you prefer to read all the Q&As or jump to specific topics, this guide is structured to expand your knowledge efficiently.
Find answers to questions like:
- What are the early signs of depression?
- Can depression be caused by a chemical imbalance?
- How long does it take for antidepressants to work?
- What role does self-care play in managing depression?
100 Questions & Answers About Depression For Dummies is your trustworthy, stigma-free guide to this common mental health concern.
Allow me to interrupt : a psychologist reveals the emotional truth behind women’s ADHD by Gilly Kahn
The world is right—ADHD girls and women do interrupt—but not all of it is unintentional, and almost all of it is extraordinary.
If you picked up this book, chances are you want to learn more about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in females—and you just opened up a Pandora’s box. For many women, the lack of knowledge surrounding ADHD’s unique presentation in their lives has led to feeling misunderstood, criticized, frustrated, and alone. Female biology is complicated, and unfortunately, the mainstream understanding of ADHD often simplifies a condition that isn’t simple.
One thing we are quickly learning about ADHD in women, which seems intuitive, is that the role of emotions and emotion dysregulation have been underemphasized in the ADHD criteria. Think about it: If it’s hard to control our behavior, it will, by default, be hard to control our emotional responses. And this relationship is amplified for girls, who are more susceptible to anxiety and depression than boys.
Allow Me to Interrupt takes a deep dive into the most unjustifiably underrecognized ADHD symptom: emotion dysregulation. In an effort to educate, inspire, and support other women with ADHD, clinical psychologist and writer, Dr. Gilly Kahn, shares other women’s and girls’ ADHD stories along with her own. She also provides specific strategies backed by scientific explanations with a distinct focus on ADHD and emotion regulation in women.
This book is written to empower you and teach you to love your beautifully strong brain. As women with ADHD, we are misunderstood, underappreciated, and unidentified. But it isn’t too late to interrupt the status quo, correct misperceptions, and describe the very real emotional lives of girls and women with ADHD. As Katherine so eloquently interjects in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew:
“Why, sir, I trust I may have leave to speak, and speak I will.” – Post Hill Press
Art cure : the science of how the arts save lives by Daisy Fancourt
A groundbreaking exposé showing how the arts—alongside diet, sleep, exercise and nature—are the forgotten fifth pillar of health
From cradle to grave, engaging in the arts has remarkable effects on our health and well-being. Music supports the architectural development of children’s brains. Artistic hobbies help our brains to stay resilient against dementia. Dance and magic tricks build new neural pathways for people with brain injuries. Arts and music act just like drugs to decrease depression, stress, and pain, reducing our dependence on medication. Going to live music events, museums, exhibitions, and the theater decreases our risk of future loneliness and frailty. Engaging in the arts improves the functioning of every major organ system in the body, even helping us to live longer.
This isn’t sensationalism, it’s science: the results of decades of studies gathering data from neuroimaging, molecular biomarkers, wearable sensors, cognitive assessments, and electronic health records. From professor Daisy Fancourt, an award-winning scientist and science communicator and director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health, this book will fundamentally change the way you value and engage with the arts in your daily life and give you the tools to optimize how, when, and what arts you engage in to achieve your health goals. The arts are not a luxury in our lives. They are essential. – Celadon Books
Bad thoughts : a preacher and a shrink’s guide to reclaiming your mind and soul by Judah Smith and Les Parrott
Overcome bad thoughts and discover lasting inner health that transforms your life and faith by the renewing of your mind.
Your thoughts don’t have to control you. You can control your thoughts–if you know how. And that’s exactly what Judah Smith (New York Times bestselling author and popular pastor) and Les Parrott (New York Times bestselling author and trusted psychologist) will teach you.
Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience, the principles of Christian formation, and their unique relationship as therapist and client, Smith and Parrott give you a fresh, easy-to-understand, and highly practical guide to curbing your compulsive negativity and finding inner health that lasts.
In these pages, they dive into what they call the “Big 5”–the most commonly held self-destructive thoughts–revealing what they are, why they happen, and how you can overcome them. You’ll be equipped to:
- Let go of false guilt and discover the road to grace
- Cure your disease to please and cultivate authentic relationships
- Extinguish self-doubt and rekindle your confidence
- Put pride in its place and embrace humility
- Quit questioning your personal value and receive God’s gift of love
Smith brings the sermon. Parrott brings the science. Together, they’re dedicated to helping you retrain your brain and refresh your spirit. – Zondervan Books
Empire of madness : reimagining western mental health care for everyone by Khameer Kidia
An urgent rethinking of the Western approach to mental health, which treats the symptoms rather than the exploitative systems causing our distress—by a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School physician-anthropologist—offering lessons from the rest of the world.
What if the mainstay of mental health care involved cancelling onerous debt, giving poor people free housing, and paying reparations to the descendants of slavery and colonialism? In Empire of Madness, Dr. Khameer Kidia re-evaluates the Western approach to mental health, which medicates symptoms instead of changing the structures that harm the human psyche. A physician and researcher whose own family suffers from the psychological effects of colonialism, Kidia highlights the limitations of the Western mental health model by reporting from the front lines of mental health crises at home, in the clinic, and during a decade of fieldwork.
Clear-eyed and openhearted, Kidia asks the nuanced questions unaddressed by our current mental health model: How do history, culture, and politics shape mental distress? Are hoarding and burnout medical diagnoses or social problems? Why are schizophrenia outcomes sometimes better in poor countries without antipsychotics? Can a traditional healer treat mental illness better than a Western-trained clinician? For those living in poverty, can cash replace pills?
With rigorous research, cutting analysis, and illuminating prose, Kidia invites us to reimagine mental health as a global idea where our wellbeing is mutual and everyone’s voice—patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers alike—matters. – Crown
Flex your feelings : train your brain to develop the 7 traits of emotional fitness by Dr. Emily Anhalt
This is Atomic Habits for your mental health—a data-driven, practical, step-by-step plan for developing the 7 essential traits of emotional strength necessary to face all of life’s challenges and become the best leader, entrepreneur, and human you can be.
Can you train your brain for greater emotional health,
just like you train your body for better physical fitness?
We know how to push our bodies for peak physical fitness—but when it comes to our emotional health, many of us just wing it. What if you could coach your mind for greater satisfaction and success, just like you train your body to get stronger? That’s the promise of Flex Your Feelings, a data-driven, step-by-step plan for developing the 7 essential traits of emotional fitness necessary to become the best leader, entrepreneur, and human you can be.
Here’s the good news: emotional fitness can be LEARNED…even if you didn’t grow up with mentally strong role models, and even if you’re not sure how to do it. Dr. Emily Anhalt—psychologist to the Silicon Valley tech elite and founder of Coa, the “gym” for mental fitness—offers a prescriptive, 7-step plan to help you develop the emotional strength and flexibility to cope with whatever comes your way. As you progress in your career and through your life, she explains, emotional intelligence isn’t just a “nice to have” soft skill. It’s a vital talent that allows you to show up as your best self, in good times and during tough moments. In Flex Your Feelings, you’ll find a blueprint for building an emotional fitness practice that works for you—so you can live it, every day. – G.P. Putnam’s Sons
The Johns Hopkins guide to psychological first aid : a practical approach to helping family, friends, coworkers, and others cope by George S. Everly, Jr. & Jeffrey M. Lating
A practical guide for how to offer compassionate, effective support during times of emotional crisis and acute distress.
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Everyday Psychological First Aid equips readers with the tools to respond effectively and compassionately to emotional crises—whether they unfold in a home, workplace, school, or public setting. Based on decades of research, experience, and real-world examples, George S. Everly, Jr, and Jeffrey M. Lating present a streamlined, accessible version of the Johns Hopkins RAPID model of psychological first aid, designed specifically for everyday use by adults without formal training in mental health.
This guide empowers people to step in when someone is struggling—to listen, stabilize apparent distress, and offer effective, meaningful support. Offering advice and practical coping techniques for a variety of situations—like helping a stranger in a moment of panic or responding to the grief of a friend—the scenarios and checklists throughout the book help readers navigate some of life’s most difficult moments with clarity and care. This practical manual speaks to a world facing rising anxiety, loneliness, trauma, and loss by offering a simple, evidence-informed method for fostering resilience and restoring connection.
Everly and Lating emphasize that while no one can say the perfect thing in a crisis, everyone can learn how to offer compassion and help when it matters most. By making psychological first aid as accessible as physical first aid, this guide acts as an essential toolkit for being there when someone needs you most. – Johns Hopkins University Press
Mattering : the secret to a life of deep connection and purpose by Jennifer Breheny Wallace
From award-winning journalist and bestselling author Jennifer Wallace comes Mattering—a landmark book that introduces a transformative new framework to confront the loneliness, burnout, and lack of purpose so many of us face today.
In this groundbreaking work, Wallace makes an urgent case: mattering—the feeling that we are valued and have an opportunity to add value—is a core human need, as essential to our well-being as food and water. And yet, in today’s world, that fundamental need is going unmet, with perilous consequences. As mental and social health crises surge, we often blame social media, the pace of modern life, and polarizing politics. But beneath these issues lies a deeper crisis, what Wallace calls “an erosion of mattering.”
With her signature warmth and insight, Wallace weaves together research and deeply moving stories of mattering lost and regained. From burned-out employees to overwhelmed caregivers to people grappling with grief or struggling through a destabilizing transition, Mattering explores how our lives are transformed when we are reminded, in small and intentional ways, that we are valued and that we have value to offer. Wallace provides the essential elements to building what she calls our “mattering core”: recognizing your impact, being relied on (but not too much), feeling prioritized, and being truly known and invested in. Strengthening this core helps us reconnect to our sense of purpose, deepen our relationships, and navigate life’s uncertainties and challenges with greater resilience.
For readers of Brené Brown, David Brooks, and Adam Grant, Mattering is a rare, culture-shifting book that offers both a diagnosis and a remedy. With a clear road map and actionable takeaways, Wallace reveals how to unlock this powerful force within ourselves and how to build cultures of mattering in our homes, workplaces, and communities.
Mattering is both a call to action and a blueprint for living a meaningful life and creating a world we so urgently need. – Portfolio
Mindful meditations for Black men : restorative practices to soothe mind, body, and spirit by Jor-El Caraballo
An empowering and thought-provoking collection of meditations for Black men, helping them to experience the awareness, enlightenment, and healing they deserve from licensed therapist and popular author Jor-El Caraballo.
In Mindful Meditations for Black Men, mental health expert Jor-El Caraballo teaches Black men of all ages about the many benefits that mindfulness and meditation provide. From finding peace to practicing self-compassion and normalizing fear and defining success, each of the seventy entries in this book provide context and insight on a certain topic rooted in the practice.
In these meditations, you will:
-Learn the practice of mindful awareness and the power of presence
-Discover ideas, themes, and messages that influence the health and wellness of Black men
-Challenge self-criticism, internalized pressure, and self-limiting beliefs
-Encounter perspectives that help them embrace their full humanity
-Discover opportunities for further personal growth
This book is an invitation for personal reflection and growth. With Caraballo’s guidance, this book encourages and uplifts Black men and gives them space to discover the power of mindfulness. – Adams Media