New Mental Health & Well-Being Books and Videos Available Through the Gordon Library

The library has received a grant from the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) to help fund several new streaming videos, DVDs and books related to mental well-being and neurodiversity. 

Streaming videos

Age of anxiety According to the World Health Organization, anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental illnesses on the globe at the moment. Is this a disease of modernity? Or is our highly competitive and material culture itself undermining our nerves? The Age of anxiety examines what anxiety is, and how and why it is being re-defined by medical and pharmaceutical industries.

My depression uniquely illuminates the symptoms, emotions and side effects of depression using animation, comedy and music. The film helps to make a difficult and sometimes taboo topic more understandable, both for those who may be suffering from depression as well as family and friends of people with the disorder.

Crazywise  This documentary explores what can be learned from people around the world who have turned their psychological crisis into a positive transformative experience. During a quarter-century documenting indigenous cultures, human-rights photographer and filmmaker Phil Borges often saw these cultures identify "psychotic" symptoms as an indicator of shamanic potential. He was intrigued by how differently psychosis is defined and treated in the West. Through interviews with renowned mental health professionals, Phil explores the growing severity of the mental health crisis in America dominated by biomedical psychiatry. He discovers a growing movement of professionals and psychiatric survivors who demand alternative treatments that focus on recovery, nurturing social connections, and finding meaning.

DVDs

The mask you live in follows boys and young men as they struggle to stay true to themselves while negotiating America’s narrow definition of masculinity. Pressured by the media, their peer group, and even the adults in their lives, our protagonists confront messages encouraging them to disconnect from their emotions, devalue authentic friendships, objectify, and degrade women, and resolve conflicts through violence. These gender stereotypes interconnect with race, class, and circumstance, creating a maze of identity issues boys and young men must navigate to become “real” men. Experts in neuroscience, psychology, sociology, sports, education, and media also weigh in, offering empirical evidence of the “boy crisis” and tactics to combat it.

Autism goes to college Five students on the autism spectrum — Guillermo, Jasmine, Caroline, Jonathan, and Aniella — invite viewers into their dorms and classrooms to show the world how they make college work for them. They share their dreams, fears, failures, and successes with candid insights and humor. The students in the film come up against the typical challenges any other college student would encounter such as academic loads, making friends, handling roommate situations, and handling money. Disability services counselors at colleges try out a patchwork of new approaches and programs to help both students and faculty better accommodate their unique needs.

The S word A suicide attempt survivor is on a mission to find fellow survivors and document their stories of unguarded courage, insight, pain, and humor. Along the way, she discovers a national community rising to transform personal struggles into action. THE S WORD chronicles her journey and these survivors in a powerful feature documentary that puts a human face to a topic that has long been stigmatized and buried with the lives it has claimed.

Not alone Driven by a desire to understand why her best friend killed herself at 16, Jacqueline Monetta asks teens to share their struggles with mental illness and suicide attempts. Through her intimate teen-to-teen conversations, Jacqueline, and the audience learn about depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicide attempts, getting help and treating mental illness

Books

The Mindful Twenty-Something: Life Skills to Handle Stress... and Everything Else by Holly B. Rogers. The Koru Mindfulness program, developed at Duke University and already in use on numerous college campuses—including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Dartmouth, and several others—and in treatment centers across the country, is the only evidence-based mindfulness training program for young adults that has been empirically proven to have significant benefits for sleep, perceived stress, and self-compassion. 

Cracked, not broken by Kevin Hines. The fall would break his body, but not his spirit. This book chronicles the extraordinary will of the author to live mentally well in the face of his mental illness: bipolar disorder with psychotic features. With each mental breakdown, however, the author’s desire to live mentally well-- and to be a mental health advocate-- pulls him from the depths of his condition.

Modern Madness: An Owner's Manual by Teri Cheney. The author flips mental illness inside out, exposing the visceral story of the struggles, stigma, relationship dilemmas, treatments, and recovery techniques she and others have encountered.

Why People die by suicide by Thomas Joiner. In the wake of a suicide, the most troubling questions are invariably the most difficult to answer: How could we have known? What could we have done? And always, unremittingly: Why? Written by a clinical psychologist whose own life has been touched by suicide, this book offers the clearest account ever given of why some people choose to die.

Night falls fast: understanding suicide by Kay Redfield Jamison. In the United States and across the world there has been a frightening surge in suicides committed by children, adolescents, and young adults.  It is the third major cause of death in 19- to 24-year-olds, and the second in college students. Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, an internationally recognized authority on depressive illnesses and their treatment, knows this subject firsthand.  At the age of 28, after years of struggling with manic depression, she attempted to kill herself. Her survival marked the beginning of a life's work to investigate both mental illness and self-inflicted death.

We welcome feedback about these resources, and suggestions for additions to the collection at: gr-collectiondevelopment@wpi.edu