Self care is important. Anyone who has mental health issues, whether it's anxiety, depression, an eating disorder, etc., will tell you it's easier to travel that impossibly difficult path when you have someone to talk to or characters to relate to. Sometimes you can't speak your truth, so it helps to hear the words from someone else's mouth, even if it's a character in a book.
TW: Some of these titles feature teens who have suffered abuse and may have attempted or considered suicide. If that may be triggering for you, we recommend skipping over this list, or doing some more research on the titles before diving in. If you'd rather not do a deep dive yourself, you can always ask library staff... we're happy to research any potential triggering content about specific titles.
Addiction (alcohol, drugs, etc.)
Kristina Georgia Snow's life is turned upside-down, when she visits her absentee father, gets turned on to the drug "crank", becomes addicted, and is led down a desperate path that threatens her mind, soul, and her life.
High school junior Becca is just a "band geek" until when her friends introduce her to molly, a form of ecstasy, and she finds herself with new friends--even a boyfriend--but soon learns there is a price to her newfound popularity.
The Art of Losing by Lizzy Mason
While struggling to cope with her alcoholic boyfriend's betrayal that put her sister in a coma, seventeen-year-old Harley reconnects with neighbor Raf, who is facing his own demons after rehab.
When a car crash sidelines Mickey just before softball season, she has to find a way to hold on to her spot as the catcher for a team expected to make a historic tournament run, and the painkillers she's been prescribed can help her get there. The pills do more than take away pain; they make her feel good. But as the pressure on her heightens, her need increases, and it becomes less about pain and more about want, which could send her spiraling out of control.
A group of teens in a Seattle-area rehabilitation center form an unlikely friendship as they begin to focus less on their own problems with drugs and alcohol by reaching out to help a new member, who seems to have even deeper issues to resolve.
In the last months of high school, charismatic eighteen-year-old Sutter Keely lives in the present, staying drunk or high most of the time, but that could change when starts working to boost the self-confidence of a classmate, Aimee.
A girl uses crystal meth to escape the pain of losing her mother and grandmother in Hurricane Katrina.
Anxiety / Panic Disorder
After coming out as nonbinary, Ben must leave home and goes to live with a sister and her husband to finish the last year of high school.
Fourteen-year-old Audrey is making slow but steady progress dealing with her anxiety disorder when Linus comes into the picture and her recovery gains momentum.
The best friend of a kid with superhuman qualities endeavors to have a life of his own that is both normal and extraordinary in the face of constant world-shaking challenges, threats against his school, and an elusive pretty girl.
With her sister no longer interested in their favorite TV show and on both of them their way to college, Cath now is on her own, but can't stop worrying about her dad.
Bipolar Disorder
Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her brother Lionel fall in love with the same girl, pushing Lionel's bipolar disorder to spin out of control and forcing Suzette to confront her own demons.
A young woman with a dangerous power she barely understands. A smuggler with secrets of his own. A country torn between a merciless colonial army, a terrifying tyrant, and a feared rebel leader.
Can seventeen-year-old Jonah save his family restaurant from ruin, his mother from her sadness, and his danger-seeking girlfriend Vivi from herself?
Connor and Izzy, two teens who met at a summer art camp in the Pacific Northwest where they were counsellors, share a series of emails in which they confide in one another, eventally causing Connor to become worried when he realizes that Izzy's emotional highs and lows are too extreme.
Depression
"I wasn't depressed because I was gay. I was depressed and gay." Shaun David Hutchinson was nineteen, confused, and struggling to understand and accept who he was. The voice of depression told him that he would never be loved or wanted, while messages from society told him that being gay meant love and happiness weren't for him. In this memoir, Shaun takes readers through the journey of what brought him to the edge, and what has helped him truly believe that it does get better.
A sixteen-year-old boy wrestling with depression and anxiety tries to cope by writing poems, reciting Walt Whitman, hugging trees, and figuring out why his sister has been kicked out of the house.
Inspired in part by the author's own experience with depression, this is the rare young adult novel that focuses not on the events leading up to a suicide attempt, but the recovery from one, about living when life doesn't seem worth it, and how we go on anyway.
Eating Disorders
Eighteen-year-old Lia comes to terms with her best friend's death from anorexia as she struggles with the same disorder.
Four years after Theo's best friend, Donovan, disappeared at age thirteen, he is found and brought home and Theo puts her health at risk as she decides whether to tell the truth about the abductor, knowing her revelation could end her life-long dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer.
Documents the author's teenage struggles with anorexia, sharing her and her mother's perspectives regarding a five-year period marked by anxiety and self-destructive efforts to manage the disorder, offering an intimate look at a deadly disease.
Enduring regimented and intrusive treatment at an eating-disorder center, seventeen-year-old Stevie is haunted by guilt for her brother's fatal accident and secretly plans to commit suicide on the anniversary of his death
Seventeen-year-old Lisabeth has anorexia, and even turning into Famine--one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--cannot keep her from feeling fat and worthless.
When her parents check sixteen-year-old Janie into Golden Slopes to help her recover from her bulimia, she discovers that she must talk about things she has admitted to no one--not even herself.
A bullied teen with an eating disorder believes he's developed super powers via starvation.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Having experienced compulsive behavior all her life, Lo's symptoms are getting her into trouble when she witnesses a murder while wandering dangerous quarters of Cleveland, Ohio, collecting things that do not belong to her, obsessing about her brother's death.
Seventeen-year-old Norah Dean is struggling to overcome agoraphobia and OCD, until the very charming Luke, moves in next door and forces her to confront the life she's avoided living.
Aza Holmes, a high school student with obsessive-compulsive disorder, becomes focused on searching for a fugitive billionaire while navigating daily existence within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
Consumed by a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can't turn off, a girl coping with Purely-Obsessional OCD learns to accept herself and take control of her life through her experiences in poetry club.
PTSD
Hayley Kincaid and her father move back to their hometown to try a "normal" life, but the horrors he saw in the war threaten to destroy their lives.
Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz's crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction--if they don't kill each other first.
When Travis returns home from Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother has stolen his girlfriend and car, and he has nightmares of his best friend getting killed but when he runs into Harper, a girl who has despised him since middle school, life actually starts looking up.
Although they have never gotten along well, seventeen-year-old Levi follows his older brother Boaz, an ex-Marine, on a walking trip from Boston to Washington, D.C. in hopes of learning why Boaz is completely withdrawn.
Schizophrenia
Seventeen-year-old Kidd Ellison runs away to work for the summer at a beach campsite in California where his hard work and good looks lead to friendship and love but painful past memories surface in menacing ways.
When schizophrenic Adele, who possesses a paranormal gift, is implicated in an investigation that involves the murder of her ex-best friend Tori, Adele must work with Tori's ghost to find the killer.
A teenager recovering from a schizophrenic breakdown is driven to the point of obsession to find his missing younger brother and becomes wrapped up in a romance that may not be the real thing.
Caden Bosch lives in two worlds. One is his real life with his family, his friends, and high school. There he is paranoid for no reason, thinks people are trying to kill him, and demonstrates obsessive compulsive behaviors. In his other world, he's part of the crew for a pirate captain on a voyage to the Challenger Deep, the ocean's deepest trench. There he's paranoid, wary of the mercurial captain and his mutinous parrot, and tries hard to interpret the mutterings of his fellow shipmates as they sail uncharted waters toward unknown dangers. Slowly, Caden's fantasy and paranoia begin to take over, until his parents have only one choice left.
General Mental Illness / Other / Unspecified
When she learns that her mother is sick in Ohio, Mim confronts her demons on a thousand-mile odyssey from Mississippi that redefines her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.
This collection from suicide-awareness organization Project Semicolon features stories and photos from those struggling with mental illness. With a combination of raw, honest art and narratives, this
Underwater by Marissa Reichardt
Ever since the mass shooting at her California high school, junior
Morgan Grant has become increasingly agoraphobic until even the idea of
stepping outside her door can bring on a panic attack, a situation not
made any easier by the fact that her parents are divorced--but when Evan
moves in next door she finds herself attracted to him and begins to
find herself longing for the life she has been missing.
After her best friend, Agnes, goes into a coma as a result of a game of Truth or Dare, rising senior Hannah's secrets begin to escape while she is locked in a psychiatric hospital.
Agoraphobic sixteen-year-old Solomon has not left his house in three years, but Lisa is determined to change that-- and to write a scholarship-winning essay based on the results.
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