For more than 70 years, the United States has recognized Mental Health Awareness Month, which occurs each year in May. The campaign aims to raise awareness about mental health, combat the stigma surrounding mental illness, provide support to those affected, educate the public, and make mental health a priority.
These five books can be read to have a positive impact on mental health:
- The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs
Authors: Christina Maslach (Author), Michael P. Leiter (Author)
Summary:
Burnout is among the most significant on-the-job hazards facing workers today. It is also among the most misunderstood. In particular, we tend to characterize burnout as a personal issue–a problem employee should fix themselves by getting therapy, practicing relaxation techniques, or changing jobs. Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter show why this is not the case. Burnout also needs to be managed by the workplace. Citing a wealth of research data and drawing on illustrative anecdotes, The Burnout Challenge shows how organizations can change to promote sustainable productivity. Maslach and Leiter provide useful tools for identifying the signs of employee burnout, most often exhaustion, cynicism, and ineffectiveness. They also advise managers on assembling and interpreting worker self-evaluation surveys, which can reveal workplace problems and potential solutions. And when it comes to implementing change, Maslach and Leiter offer practical, evidence-driven guidance. The key, they argue, is to begin with less-taxing changes that employees nonetheless find meaningful, laying the groundwork for more thorough reforms in the future. Experts estimate that more than $500 billion and 550 million workhours are lost annually to on-the-job stress, much of it caused by dysfunctional work environments. As priorities and policies shift across workplaces, The Burnout Challenge provides pragmatic, creative, and cost-effective solutions to improve employee efficiency, health, and happiness.
Print Book: English, 2024
Edition: English, 2022
Publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Genre: Informational works
Physical Description: viii, 261 pages: illustrations; 22 cm
Subjects: Burn out (Psychology); Industrial management; Informational works; PSYCHOLOGY / General; Success in Business
2. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Author: Oliver Burkeman (Author)
Summary:
A lively philosophical guide to time and time management, setting aside superficial efficiency solutions in favor of reckoning with and finding joy in the finitude of human life”–
Print Book: English, 2023
Edition: First paperback edition, 2021
Publisher: Picador, New York, 2023
Physical Description: 287 pages; 21 cm
Subjects Covered: Happiness; Time Management; Work-life balance
3. HBR Guide to Better Mental Health at Work
Author: Harvard Business Review Press (Issuing body)
Summary:
Though the pandemic increased the visibility of our whole selves, making virtual vulnerability a more regular workplace occurrence, the stigma surrounding mental illness remains. It’s easy to ask for time off when you break a leg; it’s difficult to share with your boss and colleagues if you’re suffering from a depressive episode. And, how do those conversations go if you’re the boss? You want to say and do the right thing to support your people and your organization and avoid legal issues. Research shows that 1 in 4 adults will have a mental health issue in their lifetime, and yet we’re still ill-equipped at work to address this common experience. The HBR Guide to Better Mental Health at Work collects advice from a variety of experts on addressing an array of mental health issues in the workplace, from supporting someone in a panic attack to navigating sensitive conversations to creating systemic and structural supports for all employees. Whether you suffer from a chronic condition or you manage someone who does, you’ll find practical advice on creating and upholding policies, providing resources, support, and accommodations, and steps you can take to reduce the stigma and improve mental health in the workplace. You’ll learn how to: talk about mental health at work, make a disclosure, take a disability leave, cope more effectively with feelings of anxiety and depression, manage a chronic condition and your career-successfully, give support without overstepping, create a more empathetic culture, and launch an employee resource group to provide support and connection.
Print Book: English, 2022
E-Book: English, 2022
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, Massachusetts
Series: Harvard business review guides
Physical Description: xiii, 240 pages; 23 cm.
Subjects: Employees Mental Health; Personnel Direction; Personnel Management; Psychology, Pathological; Quality of work life; Psychological aspects; Stigma (Social psychology); Work Psychological aspects
4. Mindful Tech: How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives
Author: David M. Levy (Author)
Summary:
From email to smartphones, and from social media to Google searches, digital technologies have transformed the way we learn, entertain ourselves, socialize, and work. Despite their usefulness, these technologies have often led to information overload, stress, and distraction. The author offers a guide to being more relaxed, attentive, and emotionally balanced while online. In a series of exercises designed to help readers observe and reflect on their use, the author asks readers to observe themselves while emailing and multitasking and also to experiment with unplugging from their devices.
Print Book: English, 2017
Edition: English, 2016
Publisher: Yale University Press, New Haven
Physical Description: xix, 230 pages; 22 cm
Subjects: Cell Phone Use; Internet users Conduct of life; Mindfulness (Psychology); Social media; Technology Philosophy; Living fast and slow; Digital dependency and addiction
5. Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill
Author: D. J. Jaffe (Author)
Summary:
This well-researched and highly critical examination of the state of our mental health system by the industry’s most relentless critic presents a new and controversial explanation as to why, despite spending $147 billion annually, 140,000 seriously mentally ill people are homeless, 390,000 are incarcerated, and even educated, tenacious, and caring people can’t get treatment for their mentally ill loved ones. DJ Jaffe blames the mental health industry and government for shunning the 10 million adults who are the most seriously mentally ill–mainly those who suffer from schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder–and, instead, working to improve “mental wellness” in 43 million others, many of whom are barely symptomatic. Using industry and government documents, scientific journals, and anecdotes from his thirty years of advocacy, he documents the insane consequences of these industry-driven policies: psychiatric hospitals that once served the seriously ill have been closed; involuntary commitment criteria have been narrowed to the point where laws now require violence rather than prevent it; the public is endangered; and the mentally ill and their families are forced to suffer. Insane Consequences proposes smart, compassionate, affordable, and sweeping reforms designed to send the most seriously ill to the head of the line for services rather than to jails, shelters, prisons, and morgues. It lays out a roadmap to replace mission-creep with mission control and return the mental health system to a focus on the most seriously mentally ill. It is not money that is lacking; it’s leadership. This book is a must read for anyone who works in the mental health industry or cares about the mentally ill, violence, homelessness, incarceration, or public policy.
Print Book: English, 2022
Edition: English, 2017
Publisher: Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York
Physical Description: 363 pages; illustrations; 24 cm
Subjects: Commitment of Mentally Ill; Health Care Reform
MEDICAL Public Health; Mental Health Services; Mentally Ill Persons; mentally ill Care; Mentally ill Commitment and detention; mentally ill women
