Bibliotherapy for Teens: 25 Title About Tough Topics

The idea of bibliotherapy is one that has been around for over 50 years. It is the idea that “the use of selected reading materials as therapeutic adjuvants in medicine and psychiatry; also guidance in the solution of personal problems through directed reading.” (AHIL Quarterly, Summer 1966, p. 18.) There is much talk about whether or not novels can help heal patients, but in my opinion, these books help teens deal with issues in their own life, but also could help to better understand what friends and peers are going through and maybe even ways to help before something horrible happens.
These are just a small number of titles that deal with mental illness, poverty, physical/emotional abuse, substance abuse, and characters with disabilities or who identify as LGBT. There are dozens more titles that could be added to list and I only tried to add titles that have been published with in the past few years, so please share other titles that you think would be good additions to this list below.

1. The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
2. The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin
3. When We Collided by Emery Lord
4. Bleed Like Me by Christa Desir
5. Winger by Andrew Smith
6. My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga
7. The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten
8. Faking Normal by Courtney C. Stevens
9. Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang
10. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
11. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
12. More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera
13. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
14. Gabi, a Girl In Pieces by Isabel Quintero
15. Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Abertalli
16. Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos
17. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
18. Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
19. Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina
20. Made You Up by Francesca Zappia
21. All the Rage by Courtney Summers
22. Break by Hannah Moskowitz
23. Fig by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
24. Other Broken Things by Christa Desir
25. Caged Warrior by Alan Sitomer