It's Not You, It's the World

What if our mental health struggles aren’t signs that we’re broken, but proof that we’re responding normally to a world in crisis?

Today, one in two of us will be diagnosed with a mental health condition by the age of 40. Rather than viewing this as individual failure, clinical professor and psychiatrist Joanna Cheek argues that our symptoms are often brilliant alarms – our defence systems working exactly as they should in response to threatening circumstances.

It’s Not You, It’s the World is the essential guide for anyone feeling depressed, anxious, enraged or overwhelmed by adapting to a chaotic world. Drawing on extensive cross-cultural research, years of clinical experience, and her own journey as a patient, Dr Cheek demonstrates how self-improvement alone neglects the source of our suffering. To truly heal, we must address the imbalances in our wider systems that keep making us all sick.

With a foreword by Gabor Maté, this survival guide offers practical mental health tools to care for both ourselves and our communities.