Six Books That Will Change How You Think About Mental Health and Psychotherapy

Structured as distinct yet interrelated case studies, including accounts of the author’s own experiences of psychological disturbance, this is required reading for anyone who wants to understand mental health in the modern era. With acuity and deep empathy, Aviv explores the fraught tension that forms when the unnameable suffering of individuals meets our society’s flawed efforts to label and treat them.

Wang’s essay collection is so much more than a memoir of mental illness. It is an incisive and often shocking tour of our modern mental health system, and the confusions and stigmas that persist toward severe conditions like schizophrenia.

Everyone should try reading Freud at least once. This edition of his influential yet incomplete analysis of “Dora” benefits from an excellent introductory essay by Ritchie Robertson, which helps put into context some of the famed psychoanalyst’s greatest innovations and gravest mistakes.

If you’re interested in better understanding how psychotherapy can work and why it’s so important as a way to address mental health problems, Grosz’s honest and unpretentious vignettes are a cut above the rest.

Probably no single book has influenced how I think about human psychology as much as this one. Winnicott is also one of those rare authors who, despite writing for a professional audience, can be easily digested by anyone curious about how we develop, struggle, and grow.

An expansive, exhaustive study that moves fluidly from the personal to the societal. Since it was first published nearly a quarter century ago, Solomon’s book has played no small part in the de-stigmatization of depression in our culture.