Mental Health

The Moniteau County Library’s non-fiction collection has several books that provide information about mental health. While some might consider this a taboo subject, many are dealing with this illness: 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. struggle with mental illness.

Here are some facts about mental illness that might encourage you to discuss these issues with those around you.

  1. Only 40% of adults seek treatment or help.

  2. 90% of people who die by suicide showed symptoms

  3. 7.7% of youth have no access to healthcare services

  4. 75% of ADHD starts by age 8

  5. 50% of mental health disorders begin before the age of 14

  6. 75% of mental health disorders begin before the age of 24

  7. 1 in 25 Americans experience serious mental illness, like schizophrenia and bipolar

  8. Those who have severe mental disorders die 10 to 20 years earlier

  9. 18.1% of Americans experience anxiety disorders

  10. 2.6% of Adults live with bipolar disorder

Books

  • Treating and preventing adolescent mental health disorders : what we know and what we don't know : a research agenda for improving the mental health of our youth

  • If your adolescent has an anxiety disorder : an essential resource for parents

  • If your adolescent has an eating disorder : an essential resource for parents

    • Presents a comprehensive guide for parents that helps them to recognize eating disorders in adolescent children, and describes the various symptoms of anorexia and bulimia and how to treat them

  • Andy Warhol was a Hoarder : Inside the Minds of History's Great Personalities

  • If Your Adolescent Has Depression or Bipolar Disorder : An Essential Resource for Parents

    • Offers parents of teens suffering from mood disorders, including depression and bipolar disorder, valuable advice and resources on how they can help their child cope with and manage their diagnosis and treatment.

  • I Am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help! : How To Help Someone With Mental Illness Accept Treatment

    • Offers information and advice to mental health practitioners, law enforcement professionals, family members, and others on how to help people with mental illness accept treatment through a program of listening, empathizing, agreeing, and partnering, or LEAP.

  • Defying Mental Illness : Finding Recovery with Community Resources and Family Support

    • The book is about recovery, so it focuses on strengths that endure despite the presence of symptoms. It includes what a person needs to know to get started with recovery, what family members need to know to support revocery, and what faith-based and community groups need to know to help people they serve.

  • The Family Intervention Guide to Mental Illness : Recognizing Symptoms & Getting Treatment

    • Provides guidance for determining whether a family member or friend is suffering from a mental illness and discusses treatment and how loved ones can help the person recover.

  • The Great Pretender : The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness


    • For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness--how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people--sane, normal, well-adjusted members of society--went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever. But, as Cahalan's explosive new research shows, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors, and what does it mean for our understanding of mental illness today?

  • How to Change Your Mind : What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

    • When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research.

Jessica George