Nonfiction:
Mindfulness for Teen Worry: Quick and Easy Strategies to Let Go of Anxiety, Worry, and Stress by Jeffrey Bernstein
Mindfulness is a powerful tool for coping with anxiety and everyday stresses. This workbook can help you master this skill.
The Self-Compassionate Teen: Mindfulness & Compassion Skills to Help You Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice by Karen Bluth
Self-compassion is all about being your own best friend and treating yourself with the same kindness you’d give your closest friend. With this guide, learn how to practice the critical skill of self-compassion and how it can help tame that inner critic.
Depression: Insights and Tips for Teenagers by Christine Cognevich
Depression is common for teenagers, but it often makes a person going through it feel like they are all alone – and does not have to be accepted as a fact of life. This guidebook to depression, which includes personal anecdotes, will teach you how to identify it and strategies to cope with it.
Where to Start: A Survival Guide to Anxiety, Depression, and Other Mental Health Challenges by Mental Health America
Written by trusted nonprofit Mental Health America, this book is a great roadmap for understanding and navigating the most common mental health challenges affecting young people and how to find help. Engaging illustrations and jargon-free language make it highly accessible to readers.
Beneath the Surface: A Teen’s Guide to Reaching Out When You or Your Friend is in Crisis by Kristi Hugstad
This guide will help you recognize the signs of crisis in your friends, or even yourself, and where to get the help needed when dealing with everything from depression and anxiety to bullying and peer pressure.
Find Your Fierce: How to Put Social Anxiety in its Place by Jacqueline Sperling
In this empowering guide, learn about what social anxiety is and different coping strategies that are shown to be helpful in combatting it.
Stress Less: A Teen's Guide to a Calm Chill Life by Michael A. Tompkins
Stress can be experienced in many areas of your life, everything from school and friends, to family, and relationships. This guide breaks down all of these sources of stress you may experience and teaches you different coping skills to handle them.
Fiction:
Boy at the Window by Lauren Ellzey
Daniel Kim is a 16-year-old Korean-American who struggles with reality. He escapes to a place called Neverland to cope, but finds himself staying for a week at a mental health hospital and starting a new high school where he meets Jiwon, who will change his life forever.
The Weight of Zero by Karen Fortunati
Seventeen-year-old Catherine Pulaski has bipolar disorder. In her depressive episodes, Zero watches over her, threatening to consume everything. This is the story of how Catherine triumphs over Zero and takes back her life.
How It Feels to Float by Helena Fox
Seventeen-year old Biz is an Australian teenager who is an expert at floating. She floats through life perfectly okay on the surface, but beneath it all she is grappling with PTSD and other mental health challenges following the death of her father.
Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
Darius Kellner is an Iranian-American teen who feels like he does not belong in either of these worlds. On top of this, Darius struggles with clinical depression. During a trip to Iran to meet his mother’s extended family for the first time, Darius meets Sohrab, and his life changes forever.
We Are Okay by Nina LaCour
Marin Delaney, who struggles with anxiety, left everything from her California life behind to attend school in New York City, including the hazy memories of her past. During winter break while she is the only person left on campus, she will have to re-confront these memories when someone from her old life shows up.
We Are All So Good at Smiling by Amber McBride
This novel-in-verse tells the story of two Black teenagers struggling with depression who relate over their shared traumas. Motifs from fairy tales are intertwined throughout, drawing readers into this haunting story.
Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
Challenger Deep is considered to be the deepest point on Earth, and Caden Bosch’s ship is headed there. Caden is a star high school student who also has schizophrenia. The accurate portrayal of this illness will inspire compassion and understanding.
Chaos Theory by Nic Stone
Shelbi is a high-achieving high school student who keeps to herself and also struggles with mental illness. Andy is the son of a politician who experiences grief and addiction. When the two meet, the very things that brought them together also threaten to pull them apart.
Graphic Novels:
Side Effects by Ted Anderson, illustrated by Tara O'Connor
Hannah is a new college student and away from home for the first time. The weight of all the expectations, not having her usual support network, and navigating relationships and her sexuality leads her to seek psychological help. She is prescribed medication for anxiety, which has some unexpected side effects, among them telepathy.
Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green
The author’s own struggle with an eating disorder is hauntingly captured through hand-drawn illustrations and text in this auto-biographical graphic novel.
The Dark Matter of Mona Starr by Laura Lee Gulledge
Mona Starr experiences depression, which she calls the “Matter.” The Matter is sometimes all-consuming, making her feel like she will never be good enough. This graphic novel follows Mona on her journey to fight back the Matter with the help of therapy, a support network of friends, and art.
In Limbo by Deborah Lee
In this moving graphic memoir, the author tells her story of growing up in two different worlds. Deborah immigrated to the United States from Korea as a child and got used to the feeling of “Otherness.” As a result, her mental health plummets in her teenage years, but this is the story of how she learns to cope with it.
