Mental Health Month Reads with the Washington Mystics

This summer, DC Public Library is teaming up with the Washington Mystics to recommend great reads that you can check out with your library card! Each month we will be posting Read Feed entries that spotlight titles around a theme. May’s theme is Health and Wellness. In honor of Mental Health Awareness month we have selected some adult nonfiction titles that can help you adjust your habits, start a meditation practice, improve your self-talk and much more. 

Chatter: The Voice in our Head, Why it Matters, and How to Harness It, by Ethan Kross
In Chatter, acclaimed psychologist Ethan Kross explores the silent conversations we have with ourselves. Interweaving groundbreaking behavioral and brain research from his own lab with real-world case studies--from a pitcher who forgets how to pitch, to a Harvard undergrad negotiating her double life as a spy--Kross explains how these conversations shape our lives, work, and relationships. He warns that giving in to negative and disorienting self-talk--what he calls "chatter"--can tank our health, sink our moods, strain our social connections, and cause us to fold under pressure.

Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, by Gretchen Rubin
Most of us have a habit we'd like to change, and there's no shortage of expert advice. But as we all know from tough experience, no magic, one-size-fits-all solution exists. It takes work to make a habit, but once that habit is set, we can harness the energy of habits to build happier, stronger, more productive lives. In Better Than Before, acclaimed writer Gretchen Rubin identifies every approach that actually works. She presents a practical, concrete framework to allow readers to understand their habits--and to change them for good.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb
From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world--where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she). This book is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.

Braving the Wilderness, by Brené Brown
Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives -- experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame, and empathy. Now Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization. Brown argues that we're experiencing a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe about ourselves and each other.

10% Happier, by Dan Harris
After his nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America, Dan Harris knew he had to make some changes. He realized that the source of his problems was the very thing he always thought was his greatest asset: the incessant, insatiable voice in his head, which had propelled him through the ranks of a hypercompetitive business, but had also led him to make the profoundly stupid decisions that provoked his on-air freak-out. Eventually Harris stumbled upon an effective way to rein in that voice -- meditation, a tool that research suggests can do everything from lower your blood pressure to rewire your brain. Harris takes readers on a ride from the outer reaches of neuroscience to the inner sanctum of network news to the bizarre fringes of America's spiritual scene, and leaves them with a takeaway that could actually change their lives.