Like blogs, books can offer us much needed information or support when it comes to mental health and mental illness. They’re just in a longer format and we don’t have to anxiously wait for the next post. Here’s a few recommendations:
Patient Rights
E Derechonan di Pashent
Jayburtt Dijkhoff, PhD
In Papiamento. Available at DeWit & VanDorp bookstore and Plaza Bookshop, Aruba.
Recommended for anyone who wants to know their rights as patients and for healthcare professionals in Aruba.
Coming soon: review and analysis in English
Patient Experience – with humor
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened
The Bloggess aka Jenny Lawson
In her debut book/kinda memoir writes out loud (yes I know, but read it and tell me it isn’t true) what most of us try desperately to hide.
Furiously Happy
The Bloggess aka Jenny Lawson
Um yeah. Let’s just say Jenny struggles with depression and anxiety, plus possibly another few disorders that may never fully be defined because science and the universe don’t always agree. A brilliantly honest and moving look into what it’s like living with mental illness and how sometimes just surviving the day, the next hour, the next minute or the next second, is a HUGE accomplishment.
You Are Here
The Bloggess aka Jenny Lawson
I read this book while going through major changes in my mental illness (definitely for the worse) and honestly can’t tell you a bit about what I read. But I felt less alone and a tiny bit hopeful, so when I do read it again for the first time during a better frame of mind, I’ll probably, most likely, like it just as much as I did the previous two. Or at least I liked it just as much when I did read it, but, yanno, sometimes my brain and my feelings just don’t agree.
Broken
The Bloggess aka Jenny Lawson
Currently reading bits and pieces between legal documents, medical studies and other things that most people would consider ‘useful’. So far it’s touching in ways that are hard to explain to people who haven’t experienced it. And although I have problems connecting to my emotions in relations to others at times, Jenny’s writing makes me laugh, cry and feel anger in ways that I believe ‘normal’ people experience. So yeah. That. That makes Broken infinitely more useful to me right now.
Patient Experience – the Nitty Gritty
coming soon
Support books
You Are Not Alone
Ken Duckworth, MD – NAMI
The National Alliance on Mental Illness has brought out a book on navigating mental health. I haven’t had time to read everything, but it’s definitely a priority for me after all the medical articles and studies. It mixes the informative with patient experience stories (130 no less!). It might be a mental health guide, but instead of being written as a doctor telling a patient what to do, it provides understanding about the challenges in finding mental health care and support when you need it.
Also recommended for people who have a loved one dealing with mental illness, or even health care professionals who find dealing with patients with mental illness difficult.
Informative books
Trauma
The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk
Currently reading – hailed as ‘the trauma bible’. I will add my personal review once I struggle to get through it, but in the meantime here’s an interview with the author.
Generational Trauma
It Didn’t Start With You
Mark Wolynn
I read this book years ago at the recommendation of a friend. Her father, her daughter and she all had depressive/anxiety disorders. How they dealt with it as a family, and the openness and frankness with which they shared their experiences and support each other fascinated me to no extent.
With each generation the symptoms might not be gone, but the impact of having a mental illness on everyday functioning was greatly improved. To the extent where the granddaughter managed her illness in a way I could only admire and envy.
