Authors:  Carlin Barnes, MD and Marketa Wills, MD, MBA

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-5107-4594-0

As Drs. Barnes and Wills point out at several junctures throughout their secular handbook, we all know someone who exhibits one or more signs of some sort of mental health issue. That’s but one of many truths that lend this volume even more value than other books on the topic. After all, so many of the others are weighted down with clinical notes, dispassionate idioms, and dry analyses.

Not this one. This one is for us.

To know that we are likely acquainted with someone afflicted with a mental health disorder is valuable simply because many of us lack the knowledge, support system, or even the guts to face it in our own families or with our closest friends. This book allows us to take that first step—to begin to understand, acknowledge, and accept it—in as temperate and graspable a way as possible.

Although (as is stated in a disclaimer) there may be a need for professional intervention, “Understanding Mental Illness” is an exceedingly friendly and conversant first step to take.

In fact, maybe the title should have been somewhat less obvious as to its subject matter, for those who may feel the need to hide their interest, for a short while, at least, until they are more emotionally prepared to put it out in the open. But that suggestion about its title (which is only partially tongue-in-cheek) should not take away from the overall positive assessment. The book does indeed qualify as one of the best introductions to all of the issues that many of us don’t even realize can affect our family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, even ourselves—among them disorders related to mood, personality, anxiety, eating, substance abuse, age, PTSD, panic, childhood trauma, and many others.

There are at least four elements built in that make this unassuming guidebook worthwhile. For one, the authors write as if they’re in the room with us, purposely not trying to impress us with professional loquaciousness. For another, they share a little bit about themselves—what it was that prompted them to go into the field in the first place. Thirdly, they provide examples from real life to which most of us can easily relate. And finally, weaved throughout are lines and thoughts and anecdotes that, by turns, are illuminating, surprising, quirky, or simply comforting. “Not everyone subscribes to the same idea of normal” is one such line, which is followed by a fuller explanation. “Newsflash: the head is connected to the rest of the body” is another, which is a preamble to an important point the authors go on to make. “As many as one in every five children will experience some type of mental health problem each year” can be added to the list, as can a paragraph that describes “a condition known as Facebook depression.” We’re probably all familiar with it, but just didn’t know it was a thing!

There is also a handy list of mental health resources (organizations and helplines) and even a few pages where readers can write their own notes. For those of us just starting to explore this complex journey, that may be a very handy way for us to begin to identify some of the things we’re looking for and to remember what we may want to do to follow it up.

If you’ll forgive a cliché, you can’t judge a book by its cover—and neither can we always judge our loved ones and friends solely by their faces and demeanors. There could be mental health issues lurking underneath. For all its other successes, in one respect, Understanding Mental Illness effectively destroys that cliché. How? Because anyone can more or less tell this book by its cover, because of its name and the drawing below it. Even though you may have preferred otherwise.