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Books on Mental Health
No matter who you are or what day it is, mental health is important. This round-up of books includes diverse stories and voices that remind us there is no “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to mental health challenges and that no matter what you are facing, you are never alone.
All Books in this Collection
Showing 33–48 of 72 results
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Horrible Dance
$21.95A brilliant poetic debut about gender-based violence that dismantles received definitions of both gender and violence, Horrible Dance is an accomplished addition to transfeminist thought and theory.
By turns darkly comic, emotionally connected, playful, incisive, lyrical and irreverent, Lake’s poems navigate a harrowing personal and political terrain with understated, expansive wisdom. Lake persistently returns us to the search for love that lies at the core of relational trauma, even as she shows us how catastrophically such a search can be derailed.
This is a rare text able to hold the full velocity of a survivor’s hurt and rage alongside a clear-eyed understanding of the extent and complexity of harm. In their honest accounting of a wide array of bad encounters, these poems point us, again, toward compassion, tenderness, and solidarity.
can you forgive mefor how you hurt me so bad –“On Shame”
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If Clara
$19.95In If Clara, nobody stands on firm ground. Daisy, a writer confined to her home, her leg in a cast from hip to ankle, receives a parcel containing the manuscript of a novel about a Syrian refugee and is asked to pose as its writer. Julia, the curator at the Kleinzahler Gallery, has no idea that her sister, Clara, has written a novel. However, she does know that Clara suffers from a debilitating mental illness, is unpredictable, and lapses easily into hostility. Maurice’s life is changed by an art installation involving a pair of binoculars welded to the wall through which visitors are invited to observe passersby outside. An ultralight aircraft’s collision with a quiet lawn brings them all together. If Clara explores the emotional weight of friendship, the complexity of family, and people inextricably entwined.
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Ignite
$18.00A finalist for the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, Ignite is a collection of elegiac and experimental poetry powder-kegged with questions about one man’s lifelong struggle with schizophrenia. Born into a strict Mennonite family, Abe Spenst’s mental illness spanned three decades in and out of mental institutions where he underwent electric shock treatment and coma-induced insulin therapy. Merging memory and medical records, Kevin Spenst recreates his father’s life through a cuckoo’s nest of styles that both stand as witness and waltz to the interplay between memory, emotion and all our forms of becoming.
Praise for Ignite:
“… with a fearless layering of voice, Ignite is upfront and unswerving. A novel-esque torrent tracing a troubling history of illness, part confrontation and part chronicle, this collection is daring with its dark narrative. Here is a willingness for, and enviable strength in, extending poetic range. Ignite heals and ascends. There are books that need to be written and this is one of them. This is a collection which gives more and more with every read.” (Sandra Ridley, judge, Alfred G. Bailey prize)
“An outstanding follow-up to Spenst’s excellent first collection. (Winnipeg Free Press)”
A selection of poems from Ignite won the Lush Triumphant Award for Poetry.
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In Praise of Retreat
$24.95For readers of Walden, Wild, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, A Book of Silence, A Gift from the Sea and other celebrations of the inner adventure.
An utterly engaging dive into our modern ways of retreat — where we go, why we’re drawn, and how it’s urgent
From pilgrim paths to forest cabins, and from rented hermitages to arts temples and quiet havens for yoga and meditation, In Praise of Retreat explores the pleasures and powers of this ancient practice for modern people. Kirsteen MacLeod draws on the history of retreat and personal experiences to reveal the many ways readers can step back from society to reconnect with their deepest selves — and to their loftiest aspirations in life.
In the 21st century, disengaging, even briefly, is seen by many as self-indulgent, unproductive, and antisocial. Yet to retreat is as basic a human need as being social, and everyone can benefit, whether it’s for a weekend, a month, or a lifetime. Retreat is an uncertain adventure with as many peaks and valleys as any mountain expedition, except we head inward, to recharge and find fresh energy and brave new ideas to bring back into our everyday lives.
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it was never going to be okay
$18.95it was never going to be okay is a collection of poetry and prose exploring the intimacies of understanding intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness, while addressing urban Indigenous diaspora and breaking down the limitations of sexual understanding as a trans woman. As a way to move from the linear timeline of healing and coming to terms with how trauma does not exist in subsequent happenings, it was never going to be okay tries to break down years of silence in simpson’s debut collection of poetry:i am fivemy sisters are saying boyi do not know what the word means but—i am bruised into knowing it: the blunt b,the hollowness of the o, the blade of y
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Jettison
$20.00Nathaniel G. Moore follows up his 2014 ReLit Award win for Savage with a diverse collection of short fiction, his first, Jettison, featuring stories which dangle somewhere between horror and romance.
“Jaws” explores a father’s desire to over-share the erotic origins of his children’s “Aunt” Louise; “Blade Runner” uncovers the darkest and most hilarious aspects of dating by delineating the psych ward politics surrounding a male mental patient with five girlfriends who takes apart his bed when they visit; in “A Higher Power,” readers are introduced to a brave woman in recovery who shares a story about a time when all she could think about was Prime Minister Paul Martin and would do anything to crash charity dance-a-thons he might be attending; in “Son of Zodiac,” Moore captures the ache of a life-spanning meltdown in the painfully polite confessions of a man who believes his father was the Zodiac Killer. Be grateful as you witness a portrait of vulgar torment when a young woman is given an English professor action figure for Christmas (“Professor Buggles”).
Each of these stories is an all-inclusive getaway to hilarity and emotional atonement. Jettison is an all-you-can-eat buffet of literary invention: you’ll be so glad you got an invite.
Praise for Jettison:
“wickedly fun to read” (Winnipeg Free Press) -
Light on a Part of the Field
$21.95In his evocative debut novel, Light on a Part of the Field, Kevin Holowack introduces us to a family grappling with artistic ambition, mental illness, and rifts that may not be possible to mend. Set in BC and Alberta in the 1960s and 1970s, this is a novel of finely observed vignettes offering a refracted look at art and family in the modern West.A young artist, Ruth, and her obsessive husband, an aspiring poet, are struck by lightning, an experience that throws their lives into a universe of intense beauty and angst. Years later, Ruth lives on a farm her husband bought before his mysterious disappearance, and she creates idyllic but naïve paintings to cope with her confusion and loss. Then, without warning, her eldest daughter Gayle is love-struck by a travelling stranger and runs off to Edmonton where she too must contend with poverty, sickness, and her father’s upsetting legacy. Meanwhile, farm-bound Ruth becomes more frantic in her work and begins longing for human contact as her house and animals disintegrate around her.As Gayle and Ruth seek new ways of connecting in order to remedy their unsettling family legacy, they begin a complicated process of renewal and must decide whether they can reconcile despite all the pain they have caused one another.
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Mad Sisters
$24.95A poignant memoir of a caregiver’s lifelong struggle to break through the barrier of her sibling’s mental illness in search of sisterhood.
Through evocative personal stories, Susan Grundy compassionately explores the devastating consequences of her older sister’s severe mental illness. Her diagnosis of schizophrenia at age thirteen eventually leads their disheartened parents to move away to start a new life and to the jarring progression of Susan from a free-spirited little sister into a trapped caregiver.
Susan, candidly and with brave honesty, describes the caregiver push-pull whirlpool where she alternates between fury at her sister’s resentful and jealous moods and being flooded with sympathy and guilt – why her and not me? But still, Susan is unable to step away. This memoir, slipping back and forth in chronology, underlines how the past infuses the present. The sisters’ journey is woven with resilience and humour and radiates with the potential for well-being and hope despite the collateral damage of a mental illness.
Mad Sisters passionately sounds the alarm about the ongoing lack of resources in the mental health care system. This memoir heartbreakingly sheds light on the burdened family caregiver – the “invisible healthcare partner.” Susan spotlights the less common theme of the sibling caregiver and the resulting complexity of skewed family roles. -
No Credit River
$22.95“It is a confusing thing to be born between generations where the one above thinks nothing is trauma and the one below thinks everything is trauma.”
From acclaimed novelist and television writer Zoe Whittall comes a memoir in prose poetry that reconfirms her celebrated honesty, emotional acuity, and wit. Riving and probing a period of six years marked by abandoned love, the pain of a lost pregnancy, and pandemic isolation, No Credit River is a reckoning with the creative instinct itself.
Open and exacting, this is a unique examination of anxiety in complex times, and a contribution to contemporary autofiction as formally inventive as it is full of heart.
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Not of Reason
$22.95Rita Moir’s mother and sister underwent heart surgery in the same week; a year later her sister was dead and her elderly mother lived many more years. Not of Reason: A Recipe for Outrunning Sadness is a family memoir centred on the deaths of the author’s sister and mother and the final restoration of what is considered “the natural order.”
Encouraged by her mother to “opt for joy,” Moir remained grounded within her rural BC community in the Slocan Valley, becoming deeply involved in everything from her local community hall to seniors housing and her local burial society, while continuing to travel to Minnesota to help her sister and mother. Moir’s journalist’s eye for detail brings sharp clarity to this beautiful and contemplative work, from the almost unbearable story of her sister’s difficult death, to digging in her garden, learning to dance and training her dog, to a day of glory and majesty near her brother’s home on the Bay of Fundy. The movement between urban and rural life creates what award-winning memoirist Patricia Hampl describes as “a kind of musical movement, allegro/andante…beautiful, hard won, finely achieved…it took my breath away.”
In Not of Reason, award-winning writer Rita Moir explores her intense love for her sister with unwavering honesty, and wrestles with the alluring solace of religion when the natural order is knocked out of alignment. As Moir grows stronger, finding her own kind of peace and joy, the natural order, as always, restores itself.
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Nothing Without Us Too
$25.00Nothing Without Us Too follows the theme of Nothing Without Us (a 2020 Prix Aurora Award finalist), featuring more stories by authors who are disabled, d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing, Blind or visually impaired, neurodivergent, Spoonie, and/or who manage mental illness. The lived experiences of their protagonists are found across many demographics–such as race, culture, financial status, religion, gender, age, and/or sexual orientation. We want to present these stories because diversity is reality, and it belongs in literary and genre fiction.
So, whether we’re being welcomed to Sensory Hell by hotel staff, witnessing a stare-down between a convenience store worker and an arrogant vampire, or unsure if our social media account is magic, these tales can teleport us elsewhere yet resonate deep within.
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On/Me
$18.00Francine Cunningham lives with constant reminders that she doesn’t fit the desired expectations of the world: she is a white-passing, city-raised Indigenous woman with mental illness who has lost her mother. In her debut poetry collection on/me, Cunningham explores, with keen attention and poise, what it means to be forced to exist within the margins. Cunningham does not hold back: she holds a lens to residential schools, intergenerational trauma, Indigenous Peoples forcibly sent to sanatoriums, systemic racism and mental illness, and translates these topics into lived experiences that are nuanced, emotional, funny and heartbreaking all at once. on/me is an encyclopedia of Cunningham, who shares some of her most sacred moments with the hope to spark a conversation that needs to be had.
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Perfect World
$19.95Tom Brackett has created the perfect world for himself: he has a good job, a perpetually supportive wife, two kids, a mini-van, and even a golden retriever.
But then, his mental instability causes him to commit a terrifying act of violence.
Tom’s story, which is at once tragic and hopeful, shows how quickly familiar structures can crumble and raises the question of how we can possibly prepare ourselves for the loss of everything we hold dear. It dramatizes a man’s struggle to maintain control over his own life under horrific circumstances. Though offering no solution, its message is a positive one: that the struggle is worth the effort.
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Psychology and Other Stories
$19.95Psychology and Other Stories
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Quarantine of The Mind
$20.00This book is grounded in W. Strawn Douglas’ personal battle with mental illness and his experiences with it at the mental institution where he’s lived for almost three decades. Different portions of it were created in different times, with Douglas in a variety of different mindsets, and it concerns itself mainly with the hoops that the government wants people who are mentally ill to jump through in all too often vain hopes of regaining their freedom. Some of the hoops are admittedly linked to reasonable goals and ideals. Unfortunately, too many others only serve the whims of our captors, serving the traditions of abuse in the oxymoron of “forced care.”
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Quick Bright Things
$17.95“Everyone hears voices. I’m treated like I’m broken for admitting it.”
Can a weekend trip to visit family ever be smooth?
Nick was hoping for a quick dinner at his brother Reid’s house when he stopped by with his seventeen-year-old adopted son, Gerome, on their way to meet Gerome’s birth mother. Gerome was recently diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he wants to know more about his family history. Though Reid and his family wreak havoc with their well-meaning but misguided ideas about Gerome’s diagnosis, they manage to convince Nick and his son to stay the night, even after they find Gerome on the roof ready to demonstrate backflips. The dinner pit stop becomes a tense weekend-long event full of claims and questions as the family attempts to “un-crazy” Gerome, leading them all to a dangerous breaking point.
With truth, humour, and pathos, Quick Bright Things explores a family’s struggle with understanding mental health, their ways of expressing love, and what it ultimately means to be “okay.”