Love Working with Children and Youth with Complex Needs? Readers share 100 books like Working with Children and Youth with Complex Needs...

This book, by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD (Viking, September 2014), a bestseller, is probably the most renowned book on childhood trauma. His book changed my life and the way I look at healing from childhood trauma. \

Bessel has received praise from laypeople and professionals for this highly readable book. In it, Kolk emphasizes how the brain understands trauma and how, through different strategies, the brain can rewire itself to filter out thoughts and feelings associated with trauma.

Neuro-feedback, mindfulness, yoga, and play are included in the book to give the reader different methods for how to change the way the brain holds onto trauma. I have raved about Kolk’s title and the authenticity of his writing.  

After reading this book, I changed my entire view on how the brain works and how easily those around us can shape us. Dr Perry talks about some of the worst cases of childhood trauma and neglect.

In one story, a boy was raised as a dog, so he grew up believing he was one. This shows how our environment shapes us during our formative years. We are the products of our upbringing; for some, that’s great, but for others, we grow up to tell stories about ourselves that aren’t ours.

So, people never go on to do what they want to in life because they were told they couldn't, and they should have lived their whole lives believing that that statement is true, that the programming they’ve got is reality, which they need to live by.

This is a compassionate look at addictions, covering neuroscience and how peoples’ lack of attachments can set them up for life-long struggles. The rationale for an anti-oppressive harm reduction approach helps build relationships, expand our understanding of addictions, and reduce the shame and guilt that come with trauma.

This book did more to push me to think about my practice and start truly understanding how trauma impacts the brain and how meaningful relationships can act to soothe people who are isolated, lonely, and disconnected.

For many people struggling in their lives, their template of the world is that people cannot be trusted. This is profoundly sad, so Maté offers insight into seeing the parts of the world we don’t even want to acknowledge in a different way. This offers hope.

I was fortunate to be involved with this book project (and write the foreword) with a number of very passionate people committed to supporting youth and giving them a voice.

The youth courageously wrote their stories so readers can learn from them, especially workers who are involved with providing support and helping youth. The youth share their experiences of growing up in the child welfare system, the good, the bad, and the ugly. They talk about what they learned and what they would like to see change and provide words of wisdom that can be valuable for workers to think about and reflect upon.

The stories demonstrate that youth want connections with healthy adults, but they are also a call to action for workers to get to know their youth, understand them, be genuine, and not judge them for circumstances beyond their control. This is a very heartfelt collection of… show more.

This book is written specifically for clinicians, therapists, life coaches, and other mental and community health professionals who work with adult daughters estranged from their mothers.

It is an excellent resource for anyone who knows, cares about, or loves an adult daughter who is estranged from her mother. While it’s almost a cliche for therapists to ask a client to talk about their relationship with their mother, there were few clinical guidelines or practical resources for these helping professionals.

The book thoroughly explores the aptly named Estrangement Energy Cycle through the experiences of several of the author's clients and offers therapeutic tools and practices that are easy for anyone to use.

I am absolutely enamored with the illustrations by Janan Cain in this book. They give me the same whimsical feeling I would get as a child reading A Bad Case of the Stripes. There is a softness in the colors and visual elements that really lends itself to the content of the book. Each emotion is touched on without judgment, just presenting its qualities. It is almost like a dictionary of feelings, which can be helpful for parents starting discussions around emotions. I could also see this book being so helpful for neuro-divergent children in acting out and identifying their feelings and the way other feelings present in others. 

This book, authored by a pioneer in the understanding of the BPD concept, is directed to professionals. However, for the lay reader, many concepts will be enlightening. The book emerged from a realization that most mental health professionals were unfamiliar with highly specialized treatment programs but could provide “good enough” treatment. The book demystifies the disorder and offers pragmatic approaches to treatment, with emphasis on the need for partnership between therapist and patient.

M. is an autistic teen girl who desperately wants to be just like everyone else. Who longs to know the proper things to say and do.

And this was me. I was an undiagnosed autistic girl who longed to know the “right” ways to be/talk/act/feel, who never could quite de-code social situations or feel like I fit in.

Written collaboratively with the autistic girls who attend the Limpsfield-Grange School and their teacher, Vicky Martin, this book captured something special about the tricky social dilemmas of young teendom, something that resonated so deeply in me – I loved its truth-telling, and how funny and sad it was in turns – that’s how I write, too.

The late Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation is brilliantly constructed, intelligent, gritty, direct, even sardonic at times. She was a no-bullshit writer, a forerunner in the field of literary nonfiction, one of the first writers of her generation to tell the truth about mental illness and bulldoze the taboo of stigma related to this otherwise unpalatable topic.  

In this memoir, she takes us by the hand and pulls us tenderly at times, and forcefully at other times, into her intimate world of mental illness. Even as a little girl away at camp she struggles with depression and contemplations of life and death; she attempts suicide for the first time at camp. Later, as an award-winning Harvard student, we see her deteriorate further into madness, until at last she is prescribed Prozac, and things turn around. While the meds help her, she also had foresight into the dangers of pharmaceutical companies, and… show more.

Grief, unfortunately, is a part of life. Western culture has a habit of ignoring and minimizing grief in detrimental ways. When we gently turn toward the difficult stuff in life, we can “feel and deal” in ways that benefit mental health. There are many books about grieving the death of a loved one (a list for another day, perhaps), but few acknowledge the other intense and life-altering kinds of loss and change that children are grieving. Dr. Coombes’ book is much more inclusive–plus, it delivers a treasure trove of activities to help children (and adults) navigate this challenging part of being human. The delightful doodles will appeal to upper elementary and quite a few tweens and teens.