Scrofano, D. (2015). Not as
crazy as it seems: Discussing the new YA literature of mental illness in your
classroom or library. Young Adult Library Services.
Summary
Diane Scrofano underlines
the importance of including literature that focus on the topic of mental illness
into your classroom or library’s collection if your patrons are young adults.
The reason for this, she argues, is because the age of onset, for a majority of
the lifetime cases of mental illness, are those from 14-24 years old. She
writes how, unfortunately, having a mental illness continues to have a stigma
attached to it. Because of this, many teens affected by mental illness have no
source of literature that they can see themselves (or their family/friends) on
the written page and have their experience be validated.
Evaluation
Diane Scrofano
makes a compelling case for including literature on mental illness into our
libraries’ collections. I recently attended the YALLWEST book festival in Santa
Monica this past April and one of the author panels was “I’m a Basketcase.” It
was an awesome panel in which these best-selling authors that you would think
have their ducks all in order shared their fears and personal experiences with
mental illness. I thought it was really brave of them to do that, especially
with all of the stigma associated with being mentally ill. I feel that the more
that mental illness becomes part of the dialogue in regards to human rights, in
the same vein that cultural diversity is, it will only help us to serve the
developmental needs of our teens better.
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