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It's Not You, It's the World

Brief Description
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... Read More
Format: Hardback
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A ground-breaking book about how we stay sane in an insane world from psychiatrist and researcher Dr Joanna Cheek, with a foreword by Gabor MatΓ©

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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 Mate, this survival guide offers practical mental health tools to care for both ourselves and our communities.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781837263394

Publisher: Canongate Books

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 12 February 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Canongate Books

Edition: Main

Illustration: b/w graphs, charts and illustrations throughout

Contributors:

  • Foreword by Gabor MatΓ©
  • Foreword by Gabor Mate

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 27.0mm

Width: 159.0mm

Height: 240.0mm

Weight: 524g

Pages: 320

About the Author

Dr Joanna Cheek is a board-certified psychiatrist and psychotherapist trained in dozens of modalities, researcher, meditation teacher, journalist, and Clinical Professor at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Medicine. She co-created the national-award-winning Mind Space collective, offering publicly-funded mental health workshops to teach effective mental health strategies through connection and care to tens of thousands of community members and physicians who, like us all, experience the mental health symptoms that arise from living in a disordered world.

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