Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan’s Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life—which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job—Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That’s when things start to get crazy.

At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he’s just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away. The stress becomes unbearable and Craig stops eating and sleeping—until, one night, he nearly kills himself.

Craig’s suicidal episode gets him checked into a mental hospital, where his new neighbors include a transsexual sex addict, a girl who has scarred her own face with scissors, and the self-elected President Armelio. There, isolated from the crushing pressures of school and friends, Craig is finally able to confront the sources of his anxiety.

Ned Vizzini, who himself spent time in a psychiatric hospital, has created a remarkably moving tale about the sometimes unexpected road to happiness. For a novel about depression, it’s definitely a funny story.

Do you ever get hungry? Too hungry to eat?

Holly's older sister, Giselle, is self-destructing. Haunted by her love-deprived relationship with her late father, this once strong role model and medical student is gripped by anorexia. Holly, a track star, struggles to keep her own life in balance while coping with the mental and physical deterioration of her beloved sister. Together, they can feel themselves slipping and are holding on for dear life.

This honest look at the special bond between sisters is told from the perspective of both girls, as they alternate narrating each chapter. Gritty and often wryly funny, Skinny explores family relationships, love, pain, and the hunger for acceptance that drives all of us.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a novel by the French professor of philosophy, Muriel Barbery. Set within an elegant hôtel particulier in Paris, the story revolves around two main characters: Renée, the concierge, who is typically short, plump, middle-aged, and inconspicuous, with an unexpected passion for art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture; and Paloma, a twelve-year-old resident of the building, who is talented, precocious, and has decided to end her own life on her thirteenth birthday unless she can find something worth living for.

The narrative follows Renée who, despite her position, conceals a world of intellectual wealth and refined tastes beneath a veneer of simplicity. Similarly, Paloma hides her exceptional intelligence behind the facade of a mediocre pre-teen. When a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives at the building, their lives begin to change as they discover kindred spirits in each other.

Humorous and full of biting wit, the story exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous and explores rich secret lives hidden beneath conventional exteriors, evoking a sense of kinship and understanding of human complexities.

"You've eaten too much, you fat pig."

When Jessica was thirteen years old, she met the Monkey. The Monkey lived inside her: a driving, fiery voice telling her that thinness was the only way. The only way to be safe, to be good, to be acceptable, and above all, to escape from the cold, looming threat of approaching adulthood. Jessica listened to the Monkey, and it consumed her.

This is the illuminating story of a teenage girl's wanderings in darkness: the spiral down into madness, the terrible realities of an adolescent psychiatric unit, and the stark choice that she must either tame her monster—or die.

Through memory, reflection, and enduring black humour, Jessica makes a tenuous peace with the world and with her emerging adult self.

Francesca is at the beginning of her second term in Year Eleven at an all-boys' school that has just started accepting girls. She still misses her old friends, and, to make things worse, her mother has had a breakdown and can barely move from her bed.

But Francesca had not counted on the fierce loyalty of her new friends, or falling in love, or finding that it's within her power to bring her family back together. A memorable and much-loved Australian classic told with humour, compassion and joy, from Melina Marchetta, the internationally bestselling and multi-award-winning author of Looking for Alibrandi.

In Edinburgh in the 1930s, the Lennox family is having trouble with their youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional, and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done.

Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released. Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? And how is it possible for a person to be so completely erased from a family's history?

Maggie O’Farrell’s intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth will haunt readers long past its final page.

Disenfranchised Grief delves into the kind of grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially validated, or publicly mourned. This comprehensive work addresses the unique psychological, biological, and sociological issues involved in disenfranchised grief.

The contributing authors explore the concept of disenfranchised grief, helping to define and explain this type of grief. They offer clinical interventions to assist grievers in expressing their hidden sorrow.

The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other "black holes" of depression can be cured without drugs. In Feeling Good, eminent psychiatrist, David D. Burns, M.D., outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life.

Now, in this updated edition, Dr. Burns adds an All-New Consumer′s Guide To Anti-depressant Drugs as well as a new introduction to help answer your questions about the many options available for treating depression.

• Recognise what causes your mood swings
• Nip negative feelings in the bud
• Deal with guilt
• Handle hostility and criticism
• Overcome addiction to love and approval
• Build self-esteem
• Feel good everyday

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a young adult coming-of-age novel by American writer Stephen Chbosky. Set in the early 1990s, the novel follows Charlie, an introverted observing teenager, through his freshman year of high school in a Pittsburgh suburb. The novel details Charlie's unconventional style of thinking as he navigates between the worlds of adolescence and adulthood, and attempts to deal with poignant questions spurred by his interactions with both his friends and family.

The story is presented in a series of letters that Charlie writes to an unnamed friend, and these documents chronicle his trials, tribulations, and triumphs as he goes through his first year of high school. Charlie's journey is one of self-discovery and growth, and the book deftly explores themes of mental health, romance, and the intense emotions associated with the teenage years. Through Charlie's experiences, the reader is drawn into the tumultuous world of first dates, family dramas, and new friendships, as well as the more serious issues of sex, drugs, and personal loss.

An Unquiet Mind is a deeply powerful memoir about bipolar illness that has both transformed and saved lives. Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness, has also experienced it firsthand.

Throughout her life, even while she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients. Her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide.

In this memoir, Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication.

Fight Club follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.

In this novel, Chuck Palahniuk offers a dark and provocative look into the depths of the human psyche, delivering a tale that is as unsettling as it is compelling. With biting satire and a unique voice, Fight Club has become a modern classic, exploring themes of identity, consumerism, and the search for meaning in a contemporary world.

The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out for the one and only date of their lives. Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters' breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear.

Darkness Visible tells the story of William Styron's recovery, laying bare the harrowing realities of clinical depression and chronicling his triumph over the disease that had claimed so many great writers before him. In the summer of 1985, Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip of advanced depression. His struggle with the disease culminated in a wave of obsession that nearly drove him to suicide, leading him to seek hospitalization before the dark tide engulfed him.

His final words are a call for hope to all who suffer from mental illness that it is possible to emerge from even the deepest abyss of despair and “once again behold the stars.”

A woman diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder reveals her harrowing journey from abuse to recovery in this #1 New York Times bestselling autobiography written by her own multiple personalities.

Successful, happily married Truddi Chase began therapy hoping to find the reasons behind her extreme anxiety, mood swings, and periodic blackouts. What emerged from her sessions was terrifying: Truddi’s mind and body were inhabited by the Troops—ninety-two individual voices that emerged to shield her from her traumatizing childhood.

For years the Troops created a world where she could hide from the pain of the ritualized sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her own stepfather—abuse that began when she was only two years old. It was a past that Truddi didn’t even know existed, until she and her therapist took a journey to where the nightmare began...

Written by the Troops themselves, When Rabbit Howls is told by the very alter-egos who stayed with Truddi Chase, watched over her, and protected her. What they reveal is a spellbinding descent into a personal hell—and an ultimate, triumphant deliverance for the woman they became.

A magnificent coming-of-age story steeped in nostalgia, Norwegian Wood blends the music, the mood, and the ethos that were the sixties with a young man’s hopeless and heroic first love.

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman. 

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is the story of a sixteen-year-old who retreats from reality into the bondage of a lushly imagined but threatening kingdom, and her slow and painful journey back to sanity.

Chronicles the three-year battle of a mentally ill, but perceptive, teenage girl against a world of her own creation, emphasizing her relationship with the doctor who gave her the ammunition of self-understanding with which to help herself.

Joanne Greenberg wrote this novel, which is a fictionalized autobiography, to give a picture of what being schizophrenic feels like and what can be accomplished with a trusting relationship between a gifted therapist and a willing patient. It is not a case history or study. She likes to think it is a hymn to reality.

Revelación literaria en los años cincuenta, Kenzaburo Oé quedó consagrado como el mejor novelista japonés de la generación posterior a Yukio Mishima desde los años sesenta y se ha afirmado que recuerda a Dante, William Blake y Malcom Lowry.

"Una cuestión personal", una de sus mejores y más crueles novelas, animada de una extraña violencia interior, cuenta la terrible odisea de Bird, un joven profesor de inglés abrumado por una cenagosa existencia cotidiana en el Japón contemporáneo. Su anhelo secreto es redimirse a través de un mítico viaje por África, donde, según cree, su vida renacerá plena de sentido. Pero tales proyectos sufren un vuelco de ciento ochenta grados: su esposa da a luz un monstruoso bebé, condenado a una muerte inminente o, en el mejor de los casos, a una vida de vegetal. Este hecho convulsiona el lánguido e indolente existir de Bird y, durante tres días y tres noches, se arrastra por un implacable recorrido hacia lo más profundo de su abismo interior. Descenso a los infiernos en el que le acompañará Himiko, una vieja compañera de estudios. Bird buscará refugio en el alcohol, en los brazos de Himiko y, principalmente, en su propia vergüenza y humillación: ¿debe aceptar la fatalidad, cargar para siempre con un hijo anormal y renunciar a sus planes de una vida mejor o, por el contrario, debe desembarazarse del bebé provocando un desenlace fatal?

The Bell Jar is the only novel written by American poet Sylvia Plath. It chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time.

Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel that epitomizes the spirit of the sixties. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald, and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electroshock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy—the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned.

The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor is Gabriel García Márquez's remarkable account of a real-life event. In 1955, eight crew members of the destroyer Caldas were swept into the Caribbean Sea. The tale unfolds with Luis Alejandro Velasco, the sole survivor, who bravely endured ten days adrift on a life raft without food or water. His harrowing ordeal of survival is vividly captured in this narrative, which also explores the aftermath of his rescue, including the unexpected consequences of fame and the fickle nature of public adoration.

Originally published as a series of newspaper articles, this work caused a sensation and a scandal upon its release. Márquez's retelling of Velasco's extraordinary tale of endurance, from his intense loneliness and thirst to his unwavering determination to survive, reads like an epic, drawing readers into the depths of human resilience and the will to live. This story not only highlights the physical challenges of Velasco's journey but also delves into the psychological effects of isolation and the struggle to maintain hope in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Maria has been caught and sent to the home of the mentally ill after killing her parents. Everybody is keeping her from going home, and Maria doesn't want to be here. She's had enough of these games and meeting new people as bad as her.

She wants the voices back. And she'll do anything to get them back and go home.

But will she ever get home?

Are you frustrated by emotions that are limiting you from being successful? Are you looking for a deeper understanding of how emotions shape our lives?

Are your emotions getting in the way of your success at work or relationships? Do you want to learn the tools for change?

If so, this is the book for you. It examines a range of emotions, like fear, anger, joy, compassion, grief and love. It considers how these motivate us, how they sabotage us, and offers us a wide range of strategies to address them.

With an emphasis on emotional management, the goal is finding a balance across a range of emotions. In it, you will find clear, simple examples to help demonstrate common concerns and solutions in a range of areas, including communication, relationships, employment, substance use, and culture.

Some things should be taught in school, but since they aren’t, they are here. If you are ready for something more, read on....