Your Brain Needs a Hug: Life, Love, Mental Health, and Sandwiches

With her trademark self-deprecating humor, writer and broadcaster Earl (My Mad Fat Diary) offers her teenage audience a comprehensive overview of mental health conditions and treatments. She also addresses common YA challenges, some age-old (communicating with parents) and some new (navigating social media). Conveying wisdom gleaned from her own experience, Earl shares her struggles with anxiety, phobias, eating disorders, OCD, psychosis, self-harm, and depression, telling stories of the people and processes that have helped her heal. Gentle advice to any reader currently experiencing similar distress (“Please stop self-harming. Do something else instead. Here are some suggestions”) is followed by concrete recommendations, such as, “Talk to someone” and “Write down how you feel.” Earl astutely balances her ability to laugh at herself with compassion for the pain she and others experience; for example subtitling her chapter on phobias “It’s A Laburnum Tree!!! Get Away From It!!” Entertaining graphics and charts illustrate key ideas, including slogans (“You are enough”), self-help strategies, and advice on when to seek professional help. Perceptive and accessible, this guide will prove a valuable resource for both people experiencing a wide array of mental-health challenges and those who want to help them. Ages 15–up. (Aug.)