Washoe County Library System

Jennifer Heisz shares paradigm-shifting research on how exercise affects the brain, finding that intervals of intense workouts, or even leisurely walks, help stop depression and dementia, lessen anxiety and ADHD, and encourage better sleep, creativity, and resilience. Physical inactivity is the greatest risk factor contributing to dementia and anxiety-it's as much a factor as genetics. In addition, exercise's anti-inflammatory properties make it the...

"A compassionate and eye-opening examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody's Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma-from the eighteenth century, through America's major wars,...

Teenaged Cara, solitary and bullied in high school, is delighted to reconnect with her childhood best friend Zoe whose support and friendship help Cara gain self-confidence, even as her classmates start dying.

The anguished, volatile intensity we associate with the artistic temperament, often described as "a fine madness," has been thought of as a defining aspect of much artistic genius. Now, Kay Jamison's brilliant work, based on years of studies as a clinical psychologist and prominent researcher in mood disorders, reveals that many artists who were subject to alternatingly exultant and then melancholic moods were, in fact, engaged in a lifelong struggle...

As a young girl, Maggie Rowe took the idea of salvation very seriously. Growing up in a moderately religious household, her fear of eternal damnation turned into a childhood terror that drove her to become an outrageously dedicated Born-again Christian ?regularly slinging Bible verses in cutthroat scripture memorization competitions and assaulting strangers at shopping malls with the ?good news” that they were going to hell. Finally, at nineteen,...

"From the bestselling author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, a fierce, gripping novel about Native life, motherhood and mental health that follows a young Mohawk woman who discovers that the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences. On the surface, Alice is exactly where she should be in life: she's just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her ever-charming husband Steve--a white academic whose area of...

Lucy Peevey, twelve, and her best friend, Cam, are perfecting the robot that could win a competition, a scholarship, and a way out of Sunnyside Trailer Park when Lucy's mother goes off her medication and her manic-depressive disorder goes out of control.

"Portrays those who have struggled with their mental health. This book offers deeply compelling stories about the bravery and resilience of those living with a variety of mental illnesses and addictions"--

The author describes her two-year stay at a psychiatric hospital renowned for its famous clientele and for its progressive methods of treatment. "WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR The ward for teenage girls in the McLean psychiatric hospital was as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses...

In the vein of poetry collections like Milk and Honey and Adultolescence, this compilation of short, powerful poems from teen Instagram sensation @poeticpoison perfectly captures the human experience. In Light Filters In, Caroline Kaufmanknown as @poeticpoisondoes what she does best: reflects our own experiences back at us and makes us feel less alone, one exquisite and insightful piece at a time. She writes about giving up too much of yourself to...