Spring Roundup

My recommendations for mental health info, resources, and more

Happy April, readers.

I’ve officially hit the six-month mark with this column, and thought it was a good time to share my recommendations for other Substack newsletters, books, and podcasts on all things mental health.

My recommended Substack publications on mental health issues:

After Babel by Jon Haidt, a social psychologist and professor who writes extensively about culture, current events, and connections to mental health issues.

Mental: fighting the fragmentation of mental health one policy at a time by Ben Miller, a psychologist and self-described “health policy wonk.”

Mental Hellth by P.E. Moskowitz, which includes interviews with mental health professionals, current info on psychiatric meds, journalism stories, personal essays, and more.

The Unexpected Shape with Esmé Weijun Wang. Weijun Wang is an award-winning writer of both fiction and nonfiction and writes openly—and beautifully—about her own journey living with schizophrenia.

My recommended books on mental health issues:

Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness by Alisa Roth (2020)

Journalist Alisa Roth, an experienced journalist, goes deep inside the criminal justice system to show how and why it has become a warehouse where inmates are denied proper treatment, abused, and punished in ways that make them sicker.

Bedlam: An Intimate Journey Into America’s Mental Health Crisis by Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, MD (2019)

Rosenberg gives readers an inside look at the historical, political, and economic forces that have resulted in the greatest social crisis of the twenty-first century. It’s also a guidebook for how we move forward with care and compassion, with resources that have never before been compiled, including legal advice, practical solutions for parents and loved ones, help finding community support, and information on therapeutic options.

The Collected Schizophrenias: essays by Esmé Weijun Wang (2019)

I’m huge fan of this book and teach it every year in my MFA essay collections course. Always a popular assigned reading with my students.

It’s an intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness. Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the “collected schizophrenias” but to those who wish to understand it as well.

My recommended podcasts on mental health issues:

Three Moms In the Trenches

This podcast was created by and is hosted by three mothers located on the east coast, west coast, and in the Midwest, each have an adult son with schizophrenia, and each has written acclaimed books about it. They say it like it is with the goal to help other families, practitioners, and those with SMI (serious mental illness) feel less alone...and learn in the process.

Make Them Hear You and Black Mental Health Podcast

Both of these podcasts discuss the critical importance of empowering people of color from the SMI community to tell their stories; both series look at race as one of the many barriers to treatment of SMI.

Latinx Therapy

A weekly podcast that discusses mental health topics related to Latinas, Latinos and Latinx individuals in efforts to demystify myths and diagnoses.

You can also listen to my podcast interview last fall with the indomitable Julie Gammack on her Iowa Potluck Substack publication.

Kali White VanBaale podcast

Have a favorite book, podcast, or even documentary film on mental health issues?

Feel free to drop your own recommendations and resources in the comments!

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