Mental Health Awareness Month
Mental Health Awareness Month has been observed in the U.S. since 1949. Thank you for stopping by to view the resources that the library offers about the topic of mental health and wellness.
Mental health awareness is an important issue. Mental health can impact grades, relationships, self-esteem, and a variety of other factors in our lives. We hope these resources can help you to learn more about mental health awareness.
Recommended resources on mental health and Chicagoland Area Community Health Clinics that provide comprehensive mental health services to everyone, regardless of a person’s ability to pay.
- TrevorLifelineA crisis intervention and suicide prevention phone service available 24/7
- TransLifelineTrans Lifeline is a national trans-led organization dedicated to improving the quality of trans lives by responding to the critical needs of our community with direct service, material support, advocacy, and education. Our vision is to fight the epidemic of trans suicide and improve overall life-outcomes of trans people by facilitating justice-oriented, collective community aid.
- Taking Good Care of Yourself As you work on your recovery, you might want to write down some of your main goals. These goals can be short-term and easily achievable, or you can start identifying bigger, more long-term goals that you want to work your way towards. It's helpful to think of small steps to take toward them over a certain amount of time, like a week or a month. Remember to congratulate yourself for any successes. Achieving goals - even small ones - is a sign of hope and accomplishment.
- Mentalhealth.gov Provides one-stop access to U.S. government mental health and mental health problems information.
- National Alliance on Mental Illness NAMI advocates for access to services, treatment, support, and research and is steadfast in its commitment to raise awareness and build a community for hope for all of those in need.
- Mental Health America Advocates for changes in mental health and wellness policy, educates the public and provides critical information, and delivers urgently needed mental health and wellness programs and services.
- Teen Mental Health Mental health information for teens and their parents.
- Chicago Women's Health Center Counseling CWHC has offered counseling services since 1989, with an emphasis on both education and self-help. We offer individual counseling and options counseling, as well as groups and workshops. Individual counseling sessions are typically weekly, 50-minute sessions. To learn more about counseling services and availability, please call the Counseling Program at (773) 935-6126 ext. 200.
- Center on Halsted: Behavioral Health Our long history in the community informs our services and makes us a unique provider of affirming, safe and supportive care. We are particularly competent in addressing important issues facing today’s LGBTQ community members and caring allies. While most of our services are offered at Center on Halsted, we also provide some of our services away from Center on Halsted at specific off-site locations. Our services are offered both in English and Spanish. If you are interested in our psychotherapy services, please contact us at 773.472.6469 EXT 460 or behavioralhealth@centeronhalsted.org
- ACCESS Services Community Health Network: Behavioral Health Services At ACCESS, we treat the whole person and believe behavioral health is a integral part of one’s overall heath. We have an integrated approach to care and our specialists work directly with our primary care teams to ensure that all aspects of a patient’s health are reviewed and monitored on a regular basis. To schedule a visit at one of our health centers and see a provider to get a behavioral health referral, please call 1.866.267.2353.
- Alivio Medical Center: Behavioral and Mental Health Counseling services are available for children, adolescents, adults, couples and families with issues such as depression, anxiety, domestic violence, learning disabilities, conduct problems, aggressive behavior and many other behavior and emotional difficulties.
- Lawndale Christian Health Center Behavioral Health Behavioral Health is an integrated Primary Care Psychology service, in which the behavioral health providers offer brief, immediate support to LCHC physicians and their patients in areas such as mental health concerns, coping with chronic illness and life problems, and behavioral change assistance in a variety of areas such as weight loss, medication compliance, and lifestyle change.
- CommunityHealth: Emotional and Personal Support Social work and counseling services are available to patients at our health center. Both The Counseling Program (individual counseling) and Psychiatry* (short-term medication monitoring) at CommunityHealth, as with other in-house specialties, have varying waits, depending on current availability.
Books
Mindfulness for Dummies by
Breathe deep, declutter your mind, and start leading a healthier, happier life The worry won't stop. You're feeling stressed out, the day-to-day seems overwhelming, and it seems difficult to do the simplest things. How can you escape this continual negative feedback loop? Mindfulness is the answer. Practiced by millions of people worldwide, mindfulness puts you back in a healthy relationship with yourself by teaching techniques that allow you to maintain a moment-by-moment awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and environment. Clear your mind of distracting thoughts Focus on breathing and other self-control techniques Change the wiring and makeup of your brain Free yourself from the stress With this expert, easy-to-follow guide, there's never been a better time to get to grips with mindfulness and the many ways it can help you lead a happier, healthier life.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 1119641616Publication Date: 2020-01-10
From Mindfulness to Heartfulness by
Open Mind, Open Heart Millions have found mindfulness to be a powerful practice for reducing stress, enhancing attention, and instilling tranquility. But it can offer so much more--it can transform you, make you more fully awake, alive, and aware of your connection to all beings. In Japanese, the character that best expresses mindfulness, 念, consists of two parts--the top part, 今, meaning "now," and the bottom part, 心, meaning "heart." Using stories from his own life as the son of an Irish father and a Japanese mother, a professor in Japan and America, a psychotherapist, a father, and a husband, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu describes eight "heartfulness" principles that help us realize that the deepest expression of an enlightened mind is found in our relation to others.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781523094561Publication Date: 2018-02-09
Mindfulness by
How does mindfulness promote psychological well-being? What are its core mechanisms? What value do contemplative practices add to approaches that are already effective? From leading meditation teacher Christina Feldman and distinguished psychologist Willem Kuyken, this book provides a uniquely integrative perspective on mindfulness and its applications. The authors explore mindfulness from its roots in Buddhist psychology to its role in contemporary psychological science. In-depth case examples illustrate how and why mindfulness training can help people move from distress and suffering to resilience and flourishing. Readers are guided to consider mindfulness not only conceptually, but also experientially, through their own journey of mindfulness practice.
Call Number: BF637.S4 F4275 2019ISBN: 9781462540105Publication Date: 2019-06-05
What Happens in Mindfulness by
Well known for applying mindfulness to the treatment of depression, pioneering researcher John Teasdale now explores the broader changes that people can experience through contemplative practices. What goes on in our minds when we are mindful? What does it mean to talk of mindfulness as a way of being? From a scientific perspective, how do core elements of contemplative traditions have their beneficial effects? Teasdale describes two types of knowing that human beings have evolved--conceptual and holistic-intuitive--and shows how mindfulness can achieve a healthier balance between them. He masterfully describes the mechanisms by which this shift in consciousness not only can reduce emotional suffering, but also can lead to greater joy and compassion and a transformed sense of self.
Call Number: BF637.M56 T43 2022ISBN: 9781462549450Publication Date: 2022-05-04
Teaching Mindfulness Skills to Kids and Teens by
Packed with creative, effective ideas for bringing mindfulness into the classroom, child therapy office, or community, this book features sample lesson plans and scripts, case studies, vignettes, and more. Leading experts describe how to harness the unique benefits of present-focused awareness for preschoolers, school-age kids, and teens, including at-risk youth and those with special needs. Strategies for overcoming common obstacles and engaging kids with different learning styles are explored. Chapters also share ways to incorporate mindfulness into a broad range of children's activities, such as movement, sports, music, games, writing, and art. Giving clinicians and educators practices they can use immediately, the book includes clear explanations of relevant research findings.
Call Number: BF723.M37 T43 2015ISBN: 9781462522385Publication Date: 2015-09-24
Self-Care for New and Student Nurses by
Self-Care for New and Student Nurses presents techniques to prepare you for stressors present now and those to come. No matter where you are in your nursing career, this book offers you multiple ways to prioritize your own mental, physical, and emotional health.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781948057837Publication Date: 2021-04-01
Inkwell by
Tired. Uninspired. Emotionally exhausted. Overwhelmed. Burned out. In a world where the pace seems to get faster and the problems seem intractable, more and more people feel they just can't go on as they have been doing. The truth is, we're much better at caring for our bodies than caring for our spirits. In Inkwell, writing instructor and professor Anne Whitney shows how writing--informal, low-stakes writing, in just a few minutes a day--can be a powerful tool for your spiritual self-care. While many people are intimidated by writing, or remember writing from their school days as difficult or scary, this book offers practical, meaningful writing tools that anyone, regardless of writing experience, education, or training, can use to grow closer to God and heal spiritual wounds. In writing activities that range from quick jottings to more extended narratives, from drawing to analyzing what you've written, you'll cultivate mindful attention, helping you to settle down, feel your feelings, and center on what is most important to you rather than on what feels most urgent.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781506464800Publication Date: 2021-10-19
Good enough : a cookbook : embracing the joys of imperfection & practicing self-care in the kitchen by
You've got this! Good enough is a cookbook, but it's as much about the healing process of cooking as it is about delicious recipes. It's about acknowledging the fears and anxieties many of us have when we get in the kitchen, then learning to let them go in the sensory experience of working with food. It's about slowing down, honoring the beautiful act of feeding yourself and your loved ones, and releasing the worries about whether what you've made is good enough. It is. A generous mix of essays, stories, and nearly 100 dazzling recipes, Good Enough is a deeply personal cookbook. It's subject is more than Smoky Honey Shrimp Tacos with Spicy Fennel Slaw or Sticky Toffee Cookies; ultimately it's about learning to love and accept yourself, in and out of the kitchen.
Call Number: TX714 .B786 2022ISBN: 9781523509676Publication Date: 2022-01-11
Switch off and Find Calm by
Slowing down is not a luxury, it is a necessity Have you ever felt as though everyone wants too much from you? Does your life feel so full there is no room to do the things you enjoy? Do you feel as though life at full throttle is consuming you? Occupational therapist Angela Lockwood shows you how to recognise overwhelm and overstimulation, build habits that help you flick the switch, and re-energise both your mind and body. With Switch Off and Find Calm, you will learn to recognise when it's time to switch off and discover practical ways to make that happen.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 0730382184Publication Date: 2020-01-09
Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes by
"[A]nother hilarious essay collection from Phoebe Robinson." --The New York Times Book Review "Strikes the perfect balance of brutally honest and laugh out loud funny. I didn't want it to end." --Mindy Kaling, New York Times bestselling author of Why Not Me? With sharp, timely insight, pitch-perfect pop culture references, and her always unforgettable voice, New York Times bestselling author, comedian, actress, and producer Phoebe Robinson is back with her most must-read book yet. In her brand-new collection, Phoebe shares stories that will make you laugh, but also plenty that will hit you in the heart, inspire a little bit of rage, and maybe a lot of action. That means sharing her perspective on performative allyship, white guilt, and what happens when white people take up space in cultural movements; exploring what it's like to be a woman who doesn't want kids living in a society where motherhood is the crowning achievement of a straight, cis woman's life; and how the dire state of mental health in America means that taking care of one's mental health--aka "self-care"--usually requires disposable money. She also shares stories about her mom slow-poking before a visit with Mrs. Obama, the stupidly fake reassurances of zip-line attendants, her favorite things about dating a white person from the UK, and how the lack of Black women in leadership positions fueled her to become the Black lady boss of her dreams. By turns perceptive, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartfelt, Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes is not only a brilliant look at our current cultural moment, it's also a collection that will stay with readers for years to come.
Call Number: PN6165 .R638 2021ISBN: 9780593184905Publication Date: 2021-09-28
Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered by
The instant #1 New York Times and USA Today best seller by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, the voices behind the hit podcast My Favorite Murder! Sharing never-before-heard stories ranging from their struggles with depression, eating disorders, and addiction, Karen and Georgia irreverently recount their biggest mistakes and deepest fears, reflecting on the formative life events that shaped them into two of the most followed voices in the nation. In Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered, Karen and Georgia focus on the importance of self-advocating and valuing personal safety over being 'nice' or 'helpful.' They delve into their own pasts, true crime stories, and beyond to discuss meaningful cultural and societal issues with fierce empathy and unapologetic frankness. "In many respects, Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered distills the My Favorite Murder podcast into its most essential elements: Georgia and Karen. They lay themselves bare on the page, in all of their neuroses, triumphs, failures, and struggles. From eating disorders to substance abuse and kleptomania to the wonders of therapy, Kilgariff and Hardstark recount their lives with honesty, humor, and compassion, offering their best unqualified life-advice along the way." --Entertainment Weekly "Like the podcast, the book offers funny, feminist advice for survival--both in the sense of not getting killed and just, like, getting a job and working through your personal shit so you can pay your bills and have friends." --Rolling Stone
Call Number: HQ1413.K55 A3 2019ISBN: 9781250178954Publication Date: 2019-05-28
Mind Cure by
Mindfulness and yoga are widely said to improve mental and physical health, and booming industries have emerged to teach them as secular techniques. This movement is typically traced to the 1970s, but it actually began a century earlier. Wakoh Shannon Hickey shows that most of those who first advocated meditation for healing were women: leaders of the "Mind Cure" movement, which emerged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Instructed by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, many of these women believed that by transforming consciousness, they could also transform oppressive conditions in which they lived. For women - and many African-American men - "Mind Cure" meant not just happiness, but liberation in concrete political, economic, and legal terms. In response to the perceived threat posed by this movement, white male doctors and clergy with elite academic credentials began to channel key Mind Cure methods into "scientific" psychology and medicine. As mental therapeutics became medicalized and commodified, the religious roots of meditation, like the social-justice agendas of early Mind Curers, fell by the wayside. Although characterized as "universal," mindfulness has very specific historical and cultural roots, and is now largely marketed by and accessible to affluent white people. Hickey examines religious dimensions of the Mindfulness movement and clinical research about its effectiveness. By treating stress-related illness individualistically, she argues, the contemporary movement obscures the roles religious communities can play in fostering civil society and personal wellbeing, and diverts attention from systemic factors fueling stress-related illness, including racism, sexism, and poverty.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9780190864248Publication Date: 2019-03-01
Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF 10% HAPPIER Too busy to meditate? Can't turn off your brain? Curious about mindfulness but more comfortable in the gym? This book is for you. You'll also get access to guided audio meditations on the 10% Happier app, to jumpstart your practice from day one. ABC News anchor Dan Harris used to think that meditation was for people who collect crystals, play Ultimate Frisbee, and use the word "namaste" without irony. After he had a panic attack on live television, he went on a strange and circuitous journey that ultimately led him to become one of meditation's most vocal public proponents. Harris found that meditation made him more focused and less yanked around by his emotions. According to his wife, it also made him less annoying. Science suggests that the practice can lower your blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain. So what's holding you back? In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Harris and Jeff Warren, a masterful teacher and "Meditation MacGyver," embark on a gonzo cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that keep people from meditating. It is filled with game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions--all of which are also available (for free) on the 10% Happier app. This book is a trip worth taking. Praise for Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics "If you're intrigued by meditation but don't know how to begin--or you've benefited from meditation in the past but need help to get started again--Dan Harris has written the book for you. Well researched, practical, and crammed with expert advice, it's also an irreverent, hilarious page-turner."--Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project "The ABC News anchor, a 'defender of worrying' who once had an anxiety attack on air, offers a hilarious and stirring account of his two-steps-forward-one-step-back campaign to sort 'useless rumination' from 'constructive anguish' via mindfulness, along with invaluable suggestions for following in his footsteps."--O: The Oprah Magazine
Call Number: BF637.M4 H37 2017ISBN: 9780399588945Publication Date: 2017-12-26
Why Buddhism Is True by
New York Times Bestseller From one of America's greatest minds, a journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness. Robert Wright famously explained in The Moral Animal how evolution shaped the human brain. The mind is designed to often delude us, he argued, about ourselves and about the world. And it is designed to make happiness hard to sustain. But if we know our minds are rigged for anxiety, depression, anger, and greed, what do we do? Wright locates the answer in Buddhism, which figured out thousands of years ago what scientists are only discovering now. Buddhism holds that human suffering is a result of not seeing the world clearly--and proposes that seeing the world more clearly, through meditation, will make us better, happier people. In Why Buddhism is True, Wright leads readers on a journey through psychology, philosophy, and a great many silent retreats to show how and why meditation can serve as the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age. At once excitingly ambitious and wittily accessible, this is the first book to combine evolutionary psychology with cutting-edge neuroscience to defend the radical claims at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. With bracing honesty and fierce wisdom, it will persuade you not just that Buddhism is true--which is to say, a way out of our delusion--but that it can ultimately save us from ourselves, as individuals and as a species.
Call Number: BQ4050 .W75 2017ISBN: 9781439195451Publication Date: 2017-08-08
8 Rules of Love by
The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Think Like a Monk offers a revelatory guide to every stage of romance, drawing on ancient wisdom and new science. Nobody sits us down and teaches us how to love. So we're often thrown into relationships with nothing but romance movies and pop culture to help us muddle through. Until now. Instead of presenting love as an ethereal concept or a collection of cliches, Jay Shetty lays out specific, actionable steps to help you develop the skills to practice and nurture love better than ever before. He shares insights on how to win or lose together, how to define love, and why you don't break in a break-up. Inspired by Vedic wisdom and modern science, he tackles the entire relationship cycle, from first dates to moving in together to breaking up and starting over. And he shows us how to avoid falling for false promises and unfulfilling partners. By living Jay Shetty's eight rules, we can all love ourselves, our partner, and the world better than we ever thought possible.
Call Number: BF575.L8 S558 2023ISBN: 9781982183066Publication Date: 2023-01-31
The Bell Jar by
A Special Hardcover Edition to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Publication of Sylvia Plath's Remarkable Novel "It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." -- USA Today The shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman battling mental illness and societal pressures written by iconic American writer Sylvia Plath. Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under--maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her neurosis becomes palpably real, even rational--as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.
Call Number: PS3566.L27 B4 1996bISBN: 0060174900Publication Date: 2013-06-11
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick "Beautifully written and incredibly funny, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is about the importance of friendship and human connection. I fell in love with Eleanor, an eccentric and regimented loner whose life beautifully unfolds after a chance encounter with a stranger; I think you will fall in love, too!" --Reese Witherspoon No one's ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . . The only way to survive is to open your heart.
Call Number: Popular Reading Collection ; PR6108.O55 E43 2017ISBN: 9780735220683Publication Date: 2017-05-09
Fight Club by
The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club. In his debut novel, Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation's most visionary satirist. Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret boxing matches in the basement of bars. There two men fight "as long as they have to." A gloriously original work that exposes what is at the core of our modern world.
Call Number: PS3566.A4554 F54 1996ISBN: 9780393327342Publication Date: 2005-10-17
Mrs. Dalloway by
The authorized, original edition of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece and one of the most "moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century" (Michael Cunningham), with a foreword by Maureen Howard. In this vivid portrait of a single day in a woman's life, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of preparation for a party while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house for friends and neighbors, she is flooded with remembrances of the past--the passionate loves of her carefree youth, her practical choice of husband, and the approach and retreat of war. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices that brought her there, hesitantly looking ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old. From the introspective Clarissa, to the lover who never fully recovered from her rejection, to a war-ravaged stranger in the park, the characters and scope of Mrs. Dalloway reshape our sense of ordinary life and reshaped English literature as we know it. "Perhaps her masterpiece...Exquisite and superbly constructed...Required like most writers to choose between the surface and the depths as the basis of her operations, she chooses the surface and then burrows in as far as she can." -E. M. Forster
Call Number: Online & PR6045.O72 M7 2005ISBN: 9780547662404Publication Date: 2005-08-01
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by
Reasons: sexually explicit, glorification of criminal activity, promotion of secular humanism, violence
Call Number: PS3561.E8 O5ISBN: 9780670023233Publication Date: 1962
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Call Number: Curriculum Collection PS3553.H3469 P47 2012ISBN: 9781451696202Publication Date: 2012-08-14
Danny and the Blue Cloud by
"Danny the bear has a blue cloud of depression hanging over his head; he gets help with his blue cloud from Barnaby the rabbit"
Call Number: Curriculum Collection PZ7.1.F65 Dan 2016ISBN: 9781433821035Publication Date: 2016-03-01
The Summer of Diving by
A New York Times Book Review Best Children's Book of 2022 The award-winning and beautiful story of a child coping with her father's absence. The book tackles a difficult subject with great tenderness, validating a child's experience of a parent suffering from depression. "This poignant, gentle book . . . will be immensely helpful to anyone caring for the child of someone with major depression. It fills an important gap in literature for young children."-Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon (winner of the National Book Award) and Far From the Tree Zoe's dad isn't home. She still sees him in photographs, laughing and playing tennis, but for now she can only visit him in a building where everyone looks sad and the walls are an ugly pink color. Some days Zoe's dad is too sad to see her, but she goes to the hospital anyway. While waiting she meets Sabina who invites her to swim across the world. Zoe's not sure it's possible, but Sabina tells her, "A girl can do everything she wants." Even though Sabina sometimes dives deep into her own thoughts, the two of them swim around the world many times that summer, until eventually Zoe's dad is ready to come home. The Summer of Diving is a book full of imagination and hope with a tender child's-eye understanding of the world. Stridsberg's story and Lundberg's lush and colorful paintings reflect and validate a child's feelings of loss and longing for closeness when a parent's joy for living temporarily fades.
Call Number: Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) ; PZ7.1.S7955 Su 2022ISBN: 9781644211342Publication Date: 2022-06-28
If Tomorrow Doesn't Come by
We Are Okay meets They Both Die at the End in this YA debut about queer first love and mental health at the end of the world-and the importance of saving yourself, no matter what tomorrow may hold. Avery Byrne has secrets. She's queer; she's in love with her best friend, Cass; and she's suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression. But on the morning Avery plans to jump into the river near her college campus, the world discovers there are only nine days left to live: an asteroid is headed for Earth, and no one can stop it. Trying to spare her family and Cass additional pain, Avery does her best to make it through just nine more days. As time runs out and secrets slowly come to light, Avery would do anything to save the ones she loves. But most importantly, she learns to save herself. Speak her truth. Seek the support she needs. Find hope again in the tomorrows she has left. If Tomorrow Doesn't Come is a celebration of queer love, a gripping speculative narrative, and an urgent, conversation-starting book about depression, mental health, and shame.
Call Number: Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) ; PZ7.1.S7188 If 2023ISBN: 9781547611362Publication Date: 2023-05-09
How to Become a Planet by
For Pluto, summer has always started with a trip to the planetarium. It's the launch to her favourite season, which also includes visits to the boardwalk arcade, working in her mum's pizzeria, and her best friend Meredith's birthday party. But this summer, none of that feels possible. A month before the end of the school year, Pluto's frightened mum broke down Pluto's bedroom door. What came next were doctor's appointments, a diagnosis of depression, and a big black hole that still sits on Pluto's chest, making it too hard to do anything. Pluto can't explain to her mom why she can't do the things she used to love. And it isn't until Pluto's dad threatens to make her move with him to the city - where he believes his money, in particular, could help - that Pluto becomes desperate enough to do whatever it takes to be the old Pluto again. She develops a plan and a checklist: If she takes her medication, if she goes to the planetarium with her mum for her birthday, if she successfully finishes her summer school work with her tutor, if she goes to Meredith's birthday party . . . if she does all the things that "normal" Pluto would do, she can stay with her mom in Jersey. But it takes a new therapist, a new tutor, and a new (and cute) friend with a checklist and plan of her own for Pluto to learn that there is no old and new Pluto. There's just her.
Call Number: Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) ; PZ7.1.M46934 Ho 2021ISBN: 9781643750361Publication Date: 2021-05-25
Stitches by
The prize-winning children's author depicts a childhood from hell in this searing yet redemptive graphic memoir. One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had throat cancer and was expected to die. Small, a prize-winning children's author, re-creates a life story that might have been imagined by Kafka. Readers will be riveted by his journey from speechless victim, subjected to X-rays by his radiologist father and scolded by his withholding and tormented mother, to his decision to flee his home at sixteen with nothing more than dreams of becoming an artist. Recalling Running with Scissors with its ability to evoke the trauma of a childhood lost, Stitches will transform adolescent and adult readers alike with its deeply liberating vision.
Call Number: Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) ; PN6727.S54465 S75 2009ISBN: 9780393068573Publication Date: 2009-09-08
Fun Home by
A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.
Reasons: pornography
Call Number: PN6727.B3757 Z46 2007bISBN: 9780618871711Publication Date: 2007-06-05
Marbles by
Cartoonist Ellen Forney explores the relationship between "crazy" and "creative" in this graphic memoir of her bipolar disorder, woven with stories of famous bipolar artists and writers. Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Flagrantly manic and terrified that medications would cause her to lose creativity, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability while retaining her passions and creativity. Searching to make sense of the popular concept of the crazy artist, she finds inspiration from the lives and work of other artists and writers who suffered from mood disorders, including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe, William Styron, and Sylvia Plath. She also researches the clinical aspects of bipolar disorder, including the strengths and limitations of various treatments and medications, and what studies tell us about the conundrum of attempting to "cure" an otherwise brilliant mind. Darkly funny and intensely personal, Forney's memoir provides a visceral glimpse into the effects of a mood disorder on an artist's work, as she shares her own story through bold black-and-white images and evocative prose.
Call Number: HSL Leisure Collection ; NONFIC ForneyISBN: 9781592407323Publication Date: 2012-11-06
