Five top inspiring books on mental health

Sarah Rayner is the British author of five novels and one non-fiction book, Making Friends with Anxiety.

For the Picador Blog she tagged five inspiring books on mental health, including:

Sane New World by Ruby Wax

If you've not encountered how mindfulness techniques can help with depression before, this book is a good place to start. It explains the concepts simply and wittily, and provides useful exercises at the end to help put the theory into practice. There are, it's true, other more fulsome tomes on mindfulness out there, and more searing accounts of going through breakdown too, but they don't detract from this book, which, as a cross between the two genres – part self-help tome, part memoir – aims to do something different.

The short chapters make it easy to assimilate, and Ruby's willingness to expose her own vulnerabilities makes it feel as if you're in the company of a friend as you read. Moreover, because Ruby Wax is a household name, there's every chance Sane New World will find its way into the hands of people who might not otherwise read about depression, and that can be no bad thing. I have enormous respect for Ruby and admire what she's done (and continues to do) to raise awareness of mental illness by admitting she’s had problems herself. To my mind that takes even greater courage than stand-up comedy, and I'm sure I'm not alone in being grateful for her bravery.

Read about another book on the list.

Also see: Eight great YA novels involving characters who struggle with mental illness and Five best novels that focus on mental disorders.

--Marshal Zeringue