Are U Ok? A Guide to Caring for Your Mental Health

Morton, a marriage and family therapist whose YouTube channel has more than 550,000 subscribers, offers an intuitive handbook that empowers readers to tend to their own mental health. She covers enacting meaningful change, identifying complex feelings, seeking help, types of therapy (including medications), and recognizing the signs of a toxic relationship, among other topics. Throughout, Morton includes anecdotes from anonymous patients and shares her own experiences navigating difficult passages in her life. Chapters provide practical tools for handling anxiety, depression, and other mental health difficulties (including journaling and other exercises), while also offering powerful insights and mottos: “It’s a process, not perfection.” She discusses the need for individuals to reach out to a professional therapist and lists signs that might encourage readers who haven’t seen a therapist to seek one out. She also emphasizes the importance of accepting discomfort en route to getting better, as change comes only through disrupting familiar yet destructive behaviors. All are deserving of help, Morton asserts, and the potential for positive change and contentment is real. This is less a resource for diagnosis (there is brief discussion of particular conditions)than an exploration of the constellation of mental health issues. (Dec.)