Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks for those suggestions. What about books less obviously about mental health and more about the brain? My son is intellectually curious. I'm thinking, for example, of book like *Flow* and *Thinking Fast and Slow* and *Dopamine Nation.*

Anonymous wrote:My son, 21, seems to have inherited my family's depression gene. He doesn't want to seek therapy and it's not at the stage of needing medication. But he's open to reading books about how the brain works, mental health, maybe some philosophical books about how to live a happy life, that kind of thing. Not fiction, but books based on science. Any recommendations? (Pls don't suggest therapy or drugs, I already know about those routes and he's not interested.)

Anonymous wrote:It's a risky suggestion in some ways, because it's trendy right now among people who aren't doing a good job of teaching it, but he might want to think about Stoicism. It's got a lot in common with CBT. If he's unwilling to do therapy it might be helpful in getting some of those concepts in his brain, and the central insights, especially the dichotomy of control are helpful. That said you want to be careful, a lot of what's out there right now is garbage. Massimo Pigliucci's Think Like a Stoic is a good contemporary introduction, and the primary sources are good too. A lot of people find Marcus Aurelius's Meditations helpful, and Epictetus's Enchiridion is great too.

Anonymous wrote:Tell him to get 2 jobs, he won’t have time to be depressed.