14 Books to Help Students Understand Mental Health Issues

Two years after being airlifted out of war-torn Vietnam, Matt Pin is haunted by what he left behind. Now, inside a caring adoptive home in the United States, a series of profound events force him to choose between silence and candor, blame and forgiveness, fear and freedom.

In a tale brimming with adventure while exploring themes of war, race, poverty, and mental health, a chance meeting between two boys leads them to discover that they have more in common than meets the eye, after they each encounter a strange presence in the forest.

To keep food on the table, Charlie takes a job tracking down fugitives in Possum Moan, SC. Torn between his guilty conscience and his survival instinct, Charlie struggles to do what's right as the novel takes on themes of slavery, injustice, and courage. 

The summer Hattie turns 12, her predictable small-town life is turned on end when her Uncle Adam, who has been institutionalized for schizophrenia, returns home for the first time in over ten years. 

With perceptiveness and compassion, Sharon Draper portrays an African American teenager who feels driven to consider suicide in the wake of a devastating tragedy.

Katie's life is falling apart; her best friend thinks she's a freak, her mother controls every aspect of her life, and her estranged grandmother has dementia and needs lots of care. When her grandmother moves in, secrets and lies are uncovered, and Katie makes discoveries about her family and herself.

Ellie believes that going to boarding school in California, surrounded by ocean and open spaces, will cure her claustrophobia. At her new school, she reconnects with her childhood best friend, Eliza Hart. But when Eliza is found dead, Ellie is determined to find out what happened to her, even though she is a suspect.  

Inspired in part by the author's own experience with depression, this rare young adult novel focuses not on the events leading up to a suicide attempt, but the recovery from one—about living when life doesn't seem worth it, and how we go on anyway

The author of this graphic memoir recalls the impact of addiction on his family and how art resolved his pain.