5 Must-Read YA Books About Mental Health

Sage is a volleyball player on track to becoming a college athlete when a devastating health diagnosis leaves her sidelined–for good. Len is a loner photographer who is reeling from a traumatic event. When the two girls connect, a tentative friendship blossoms between them. But when Len’s trauma gets serious and Sage doesn’t seem to take her health seriously, the girls have to look out for one another and discover the power of friendship.

Solomon has agoraphobia and hasn’t left his house in three years. Lisa wants to get into a great college, so she thinks if she can befriend Solomon, cure his agoraphobia, and then write about it in her admissions essay, she’ll be a shoo-in. She drags along her boyfriend Clark to help earn Solomon’s trust, but when all three develop a genuine friendship, exposing the truth about how they all met becomes more important than ever.

Grace’s mom has schizophrenia and she struggled for years before disappearing altogether, afraid she’d hurt her family. Now, Grace and her father are devoted to the lab that is researching a cure. Grace interns with the genome sequencing team, and one day she thinks that she might have found a vital discovery…but is the discovery really significant, or a sign that she’s inherited her mother’s illness?

Malaysian teen Melati Ahmad considers herself fairly normal, except for the djinn that lives inside her, convincing her that her mother will die unless she satisfies him with elaborate rituals. But then a night out to the movies turns deadly when a race riot breaks out in Kuala Lumpur and suddenly it takes all of Mel’s strength and the help of a few surprising strangers if she’s to survive the night and reunite with her mother.

Darius is an Iranian American teen living with depression, and he struggles to fit in and make friends at home, where he’s considered too Iranian. When an illness in his family means he and his parents and sister must travel to Iran unexpectedly, Darius meets his Iranian family for the first time and finds a true friend in his grandparents’ neighbor…but in Iran, his depression isn’t understood, and he is considered “too American.” Darius must find a way to reconcile his multiple identities, and make peace with who he is.