TW: Mentions of suicide, eating disorders, violence, sexual assault, addiction, racism, and more. Please proceed with caution and care.
In case you weren’t aware, May is Mental Health Awareness Month and, well, can we all just give a round of applause for that? Even the existence of such a month is important. Because, unfortunately, there is still a stigma surrounding mental health.
For some of us, talking about mental health and mental illness is hard. But we are stronger together, and one of the most empowering things about speaking up is the knowledge that you are not alone, no matter how you may feel otherwise. Like the concept behind Inside Out, we need all the emotions to exist, not just the so-called happy and cheerful ones. Being “on” all the time can burn you out faster than anything.
Books About Mental Health and Mental Illness
TO REMIND YOU THAT YOU’RE NOT ALONE
1. The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar by Sonido Reyes
Seventeen-year-old Cesar Flores is finally ready to win back his ex-boyfriend. Since breaking up with Jamal in a last-ditch effort to stay in the closet, he’s come out to Mami, his sister, Yami, and their friends, taken his meds faithfully, and gotten his therapist’s blessing to reunite with Jamal.
Everything would be perfect if it weren’t for The Thoughts—the ones that won’t let all his Catholic guilt and internalizations stay buried where he wants them. The louder they become, the more Cesar is once again convinced that he doesn't deserve someone like Jamal—or anyone really.
Cesar can hide a fair amount of shame behind jokes and his “gifted” reputation, but when a manic episode makes his inner turmoil impossible to hide, he’s faced with a stark choice: burn every bridge he has left or, worse—ask for help. But is the mortifying vulnerability of being loved by the people he’s hurt the most a risk he’s willing to take?
2. How Girls Are Made by Mindy McGinnis
Fallon is a fixer. From planning prom to organizing her college applications, she’s got it all figured out…except for when her younger sister comes to her with very basic questions about sex. Shocked that she knows so little—and her fellow classmates even less—Fallon decides some practical education is in order. And Fallon isn’t above practicing a little civil disobedience by creating a secret underground off-campus group.
Shelby is a fighter. Having her nose broken is nothing new in her semiprofessional career…but this time it’s her boyfriend who threw the punch. Now her phone is blowing up with texts from a new guy who tells her she’s perfect, she’s special, she’s everything he’s ever wanted…except for a few small details. Shelby’s happy to adjust for him, because isn’t that what a healthy relationship is about?
Jobie is a failure. She doesn’t have enough followers and her posts never go viral, no matter how hard she crushes challenges and applies exactly the right filter. But a friendly DM from a good girl just like her points her in the direction of a whole new audience of admirers. Guys who just want to talk. Guys who give her the attention she’s always wanted.
The lives of all three girls intersect in Fallon’s secret class, rumors of which have parents up in arms. Fallon needs to keep herself anonymous, Shelby needs to keep her new boyfriend happy, and Jobie needs to keep her followers…who keep asking for more. Each girl finds herself trapped in an inescapable situation—that will leave one of them dead.
3. The Survivor Wants to Die at the End by Adam Silvera
📚 This is the third book in: the Death-Cast Universe
Paz Dario stays up every night, waiting for the Death-Cast call that would mean he doesn’t have to keep faking his way through this lonely life. After a devastating day, Paz decides he’s done waiting around for Death-Cast. If they say he’s not dying, he’ll just have to prove them wrong. But right before Paz can die, a boy saves his life.
Alano Rosa is heir to the Death-Cast empire that encourages everyone to live their best lives, but he doesn’t feel in control of his own existence thanks to his father. And with a violent organization called the Death Guard threatening Alano, his End Day might be closer than he thinks. It’s time to live.
Fate brings Paz and Alano together, but it’s now up to the boys to survive the tragic trials ahead so no one dies at the end.
This book contains themes that some readers may find difficult.
4. Fitting Indian by Jyoti Chand, illustrated by Tara Anand
All Nitasha’s parents want is for her to be the perfect Indian daughter—something she is decidedly not. Everything she does seems to disappoint them, especially her mom. They just don’t get that she’ll never be like her doctor older brother. To make matters worse, she’s never quite felt like she belongs at school either, and lately, her best friend, Ava, and her crush, Henry, seem to be more interested in the rich new girl than in her.
Alcohol takes the edge off, but when that doesn’t work, Nitasha turns to cutting. She can’t stop asking herself: Will she ever be enough for her friends or her family? Or even for herself?
This authentic and powerful teen graphic novel shines a light on how harmful the stigma of mental illness is and how lifesaving a community that is honest about mental health can be.
5. Shut Up, This is Serious by Carolina Ixta
Belén Dolores Itzel del Toro wants the normal stuff: to experience love or maybe have a boyfriend or at least just lose her virginity. But nothing is normal in East Oakland. Her father left her family. She’s at risk of not graduating. And Leti, her super-Catholic, nerdy-ass best friend, is pregnant—by the boyfriend she hasn’t told her parents about, because he’s Black, and her parents are racist.
Things are hella complicated.
Weighed by a depression she can’t seem to shake, Belén helps Leti, hangs out with an older guy, and cuts a lot of class. She soon realizes, though, that distractions are only temporary. Leti is becoming a mother. Classmates are getting ready for college. But what about Belén? What future is there for girls like her?
From debut author Carolina Ixta comes a fierce, intimate examination of friendship, chosen family, and the generational cycles we must break to become our truest selves.
6. Estela, Undrowning by René Peña-Govea
Estela Morales is one of the only Latinas who tested into San Francisco’s most exclusive public high school. In her senior year, Estela just wants to keep her head down, eke out a passing grade from her racist Spanish teacher, and get into her dream college.
But after placing second in the Latiné Heritage Poetry Contest behind a non-Latino student, Estela is thrust into citywide debates about merit, identity, and diversity.
Things only get messier when her family is threatened with eviction. As Estela’s friends organize against bigotry and her landlady increases the pressure, Estela is suffocating and finds release only in poetry and in a breathless new romance. When tensions finally reach their breaking point, Estela must find a way to undrown the community she loves—and herself.
7. I’ll Pretend You’re Mine by Tashie Bhuiyan
Summer Ali has been making a name for herself in the music industry for years, slowly but surely climbing the charts—but the world doesn’t know her stage parents are the ones who molded her entire public persona. Finally eighteen, Summer breaks free of their control and focuses on creating her own path.
Upon running into writer’s block, Summer grows eager to take any opportunity to shake things up—even if it means agreeing to a PR stunt with child-actor-turned-playboy, Jules Moradi, famous for his tabloid escapades. At first, Jules keeps his distance, maintaining professional boundaries. But as time passes, his walls come down, and Summer uncovers who he is beyond his reputation, and it’s someone more like her than she ever realized.
As the lines blur between fake and real, Summer begins questioning who she is and what she wants—and if her dreams are worth sacrificing her heart.
8. Donut Summer by Anita Kelly
“Relaxing” and “getting a tan” may be on most teens’ summer to-do lists, but for chronically freckled and deeply anxious Penny Dexter? Not a chance. Socking money away for college? Of course. Babysitting her siblings? Sure. Becoming a climate scientist and saving the world? She wishes.
At least she can tackle the tuition money with the seasonal gig she landed at Delicious Donuts. But when she finds out that her genderqueer nemesis, Mateo della Penna, will also be working behind the counter, Penny’s summer of mindless labor instantly vanishes before her eyes. Mateo is ridiculous and artsy, and their favorite kind of donut is Boston Crème (gross!). But the duo’s two-and-a-half-year feud will have to take a backseat when the donut shop is threatened by a corporate takeover.
As their small town faces big pressure, and anxiety threatens everything Penny’s worked for, there’s still one person who remains by her side. And though their taste in donuts is questionable, Mateo’s presence manages to keep Penny calm and focused. Could it be that Penny’s found the perfect, most infuriating person to change the world with?
9. The Atlas of Us by Kristin Dwyer
Atlas has lost her way.
In a last-ditch effort to pull her life together, she’s working on a community service program rehabbing trails in the Western Sierras. The only plus is that the days are so exhausting that Atlas might just be tired enough to forget that this was one of her dad’s favorite places in the world. Before cancer stole him from her life, that is.
Using real names is forbidden on the trail. So Atlas becomes Maps, and with her team—Books, Sugar, Junior, and King—she heads into the wilderness. As she sheds the lies she’s built up as walls to protect herself, she realizes that four strangers might know her better than anyone has before. And with the end of the trail racing to meet them, Maps is left counting down the days until she returns to her old life—without her new family, and without King, who’s become more than just a friend.
10. If I Can Give You That by Michael Gray Bulla
Seventeen-year-old Gael is used to keeping to himself. Though his best friend convinces him to attend a meeting of Plus, a support group for LGBTQIA+ teens, Gael doesn’t plan on sharing much. Where would he even start?
Between supporting his mother through her bouts of depression, dealing with his estranged father, and navigating senior year as a transgender boy at a conservative Tennessean high school, his life is a lot to unload on strangers.
But after meeting easygoing Declan, Gael is welcomed into a new circle of friends who make him want to open up. As Gael’s friendship with Declan develops into something more, he finds himself caught between his mother’s worsening mental health and his father’s attempts to reconnect.
After tragedy strikes, Gael must decide if he can risk letting the walls around his heart down and fully opening up to those who care for him.
11. The Cartographers by Amy Zhang
Ocean Sun has always felt an enormous pressure to succeed. After struggling with depression during her senior year of high school, Ocean moves to New York City, where she has been accepted at a prestigious university. But Ocean feels so emotionally raw and unmoored (and uncertain about what is real and what is not) that she decides to defer and live off her savings until she can get herself together. She also decides not to tell her mother (whom she loves very much but doesn’t want to disappoint) that she is deferring—at least until she absolutely must.
In New York, Ocean moves into an apartment with Georgie and Tashya, two strangers who soon become friends, and gets a job tutoring. She also meets a boy—Constantine Brave (a name that makes her laugh)—late one night on the subway. Constant is a fellow student and a graffiti artist, and Constant and Ocean soon start corresponding via Google Docs—they discuss physics, philosophy, art, literature, and love. But everything falls apart when Ocean goes home for Thanksgiving, Constant reveals his true character, Georgie and Tashya break up, and the police get involved.
Ocean, Constant, Georgie, and Tashya are all cartographers—mapping out their futures, their dreams, and their paths toward adulthood in this stunning and heartbreaking novel about finding the strength to control your own destiny. For fans of Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay and Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad Is Untrue.
12. Nothing Burns as Bright as You by Ashley Woodfolk
Two girls. One wild and reckless day. Years of tumultuous history unspooling like a thin, fraying string in the hours after they set a fire.
They were best friends. Until they became more. Their affections grew. Until the blurry lines became dangerous.
Over the course of a single day, the depth of their past, the confusion of their present, and the unpredictability of their future is revealed. And the girls will learn that hearts, like flames, aren’t so easily tamed.
It starts with a fire.
How will it end?
13. The Silence That Binds Us by Joanna Ho
Maybelline Chen isn’t the Chinese Taiwanese American daughter her mother expects her to be. May prefers hoodies over dresses and wants to become a writer. When asked, her mom can’t come up with one specific reason for why she’s proud of her only daughter. May’s beloved brother, Danny, on the other hand, has just been admitted to Princeton. But Danny secretly struggles with depression, and when he dies by suicide, May’s world is shattered.
In the aftermath, racist accusations are hurled against May’s parents for putting too much “pressure” on him. May’s father tells her to keep her head down. Instead, May challenges these ugly stereotypes through her writing. Yet the consequences of speaking out run much deeper than anyone could foresee. Who gets to tell our stories, and who gets silenced? It’s up to May to take back the narrative.
Joanna Ho masterfully explores timely themes of mental health, racism, and classism.
14. An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi
It’s 2003, several months since the US officially declared war on Iraq, and the American political world has evolved. Tensions are high, hate crimes are on the rise, FBI agents are infiltrating local mosques, and the Muslim community is harassed and targeted more than ever. Shadi, who wears hijab, keeps her head down.
She’s too busy drowning in her own troubles to find the time to deal with bigots.
Shadi is named for joy, but she’s haunted by sorrow. Her brother is dead, her father is dying, her mother is falling apart, and her best friend has mysteriously dropped out of her life. And then, of course, there’s the small matter of her heart—
It’s broken.
Shadi tries to navigate her crumbling world by soldiering through, saying nothing. She devours her own pain, each day retreating farther and farther inside herself until finally, one day, everything changes.
She explodes.
15. Radio Silence by Alice Oseman
What if everything you set yourself up to be was wrong?
Frances has always been a study machine with one goal: elite university. Nothing will stand in her way. Not friends, not a guilty secret—not even the person she is on the inside.
But when Frances meets Aled, the shy genius behind her favorite podcast, she discovers a new freedom. He unlocks the door to Real Frances and for the first time she experiences true friendship, unafraid to be herself. Then the podcast goes viral and the fragile trust between them is broken.
Caught between who she was and who she longs to be, Frances’s dreams come crashing down. Suffocating with guilt, she knows that she has to confront her past…
She has to confess why Carys disappeared…
Meanwhile at university, Aled is alone, fighting even darker secrets.
It’s only by facing up to your fears that you can overcome them. And it’s only by being your true self that you can find happiness.
Frances is going to need every bit of courage she has.
Know of a great book that grapples with mental health? Let us know in the comments!