A far from comprehensive list of reading recommendations for therapists and social workers broken down by general subject.
Mental Health Memoirs
Alligators Don't Know They're Monsters: A Memoir About Mental Illness by Ellen Campbell Roberge
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson
The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness by Amanda Bennett
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir by Laura Flynn
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn Saks
The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut
Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life by Christie Tate
The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought by David Adam
The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder Through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating by Kiera Van Gelder
The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives by Vanessa Hazzard and Iresha Picot
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Syron
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia by Sandra Allen
Lights On, Rats Out: A Memoir by Cree Lefavour
Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl by Stacy Pershall
Manic: A Memoir by Terri Cheney
Trauma Memoirs
Wholly Unraveled: A Memoir by Keele Burgin
If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
A Child Called “It”: One Child's Courage to Survive by Dave Pelzer
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Three Little Words: A Memoir by Ashley Rhodes Courter
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson
Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo
Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story by Mac McClelland
The Body Papers by Grace Talusan
Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot
Medical Memoirs
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
A Matter of Death and Life by Marilyn and Irvin Yalom
Addiction Memoirs
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor Mate
High Achiever: The Incredible True Story of One Addict's Double Life by Tiffany Jenkins
Double Double: A Dual Memoir of Alcoholism by Ken Grimes
The Recovering by Leslie Jamison
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
We All Fall Down: Living With Addiction by Nic Sheff
Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp
Junky by William S. Burroughs
The Night of the Gun by David Carr
Fiction
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles
There There by Tommy Orange
A Council of Dolls by Mona Power
A Trick of the Light by Lois Metzger
The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas
Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Therapist Memoirs/Stories
The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients by Irvin Yalom
Loves Executioner by Irvin Yalom
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook by Bruce D. Perry
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
I Hate You- Don't Leave Me by Jerold Kreisman
Staring at the Sun by Irvin Yalom
Days in the Lives of Social Workers: 62 Professionals Tell "Real-Life" Stories From Social Work Practice by Linda May Grobman
On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy by Carl Rogers
Letters to a Young Therapist by Mary Pipher
Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery by Catherine Gildiner
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt Against out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life by Allen Frances
Personal Growth/Self Help/Therapy Interventions
Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts by Guy Winch
Tapping In: A Step-by-Step Guide to Activating Your Healing Resources Through Bilateral Stimulation by Laurel Parnell
Parts Work: An Illustrated Guide to Your Inner Life by Tom Holmes
The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence by Gavin de Becker
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz
No Bad Parts by Richard Scwartz
Forest Bathing by Dr. Qing Li
You Are the One You've Been Waiting For by Richard Schwartz
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson
Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors by Janina Fisher
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris
It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn
Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience by Kent Kiehl
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brene Brown
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey
Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and In Your Life by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard
Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive by Marc Brackett
Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky
The Power of Empathy: A Practical Guide to Creating Intimacy, Self-Understanding and Lasting Love by Arthur Ciaramicoli
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You FInd- and Keep- Love by Amir Levine
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron
Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Sue Johnson
The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement by Jean Twenge and Keith Cambell
Social Justice/Commentary
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Do Better:Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing From White Supremacy by Rachel Ricketts
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts
The Bully Society: School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America's Schools by Jessie Klein
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy by Rinku Sen
White Fragility by Robin Diangelo
I Never Thought of it That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times by Monica Guzman
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Mathew Desmond
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice by Staci Haines
Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in People by Anne Bishop
The Road Not Taken by Michael Reisch
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Mate
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
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