A Closer Look at Mental Health
A mental health library made of short booklets.
Psychoeducation booklets that explain difficult feelings in plain, human language, from anxiety and mood to relationships and addiction. They do not diagnose. They help you understand, and build a better relationship with yourself.
Begin here
Guides
What a Psychological Problem Is
A short booklet that proposes understanding psychological problems without equating them with illness or dismissing them, explaining in plain language the difference between symptoms and signs, the importance of functioning, and when to seek support.
Read →How Should I Read These Booklets?
A reading guide for the Ruh Sağlığına Yakından Bakmak series, explaining how to use the booklets as psychoeducational texts rather than diagnostic checklists. It addresses the risks of self-diagnosis, labeling, and diagnosing others, and supports recognizing warning signs and seeking help.
Read →When Should I Seek Professional Support?
A short booklet on the threshold for seeking support in the face of psychological difficulties, why reaching out early is protective, and the common thoughts that delay people from asking for help.
Read →What to Do in a Psychological Emergency
A plain and practical guide to prioritizing safety, taking the right steps, and reaching appropriate help during a mental health crisis.
Read →What Does Starting Therapy Mean?
Prepared for people who are thinking of starting psychotherapy, this booklet plainly explains what may be discussed in the first session, how therapy may progress, the distinction between a psychologist and a psychiatrist, and core topics such as confidentiality and goal-setting.
Read →A Guide for Loved Ones
Prepared for those who want to support a loved one going through mental health difficulties, this guide plainly explains supportive language, healthy boundaries, and what to do in moments of crisis.
Read →Not Confusing Diagnoses
A booklet that aims to teach differential thinking by exploring the questions of context, fear, belief, and behavioral loop that separate commonly confused mental states from one another.
Read →Google, Artificial Intelligence and Mental Health
A short booklet on how to approach mental health information more safely in the age of the internet and artificial intelligence, learning to use digital sources together with clinical reasoning and ethical limits.
Read →Self-Help Worksheets
A guide booklet of six worksheets designed to help readers of the psychoeducation series look at themselves in a more structured way.
Read →A Mental Health Glossary
A concise glossary that explains the core concepts appearing throughout the mental health series in plain, clinically careful language, inviting the reader to use concepts as tools for meaning rather than as labels.
Read →Anxiety
Social Anxiety Disorder (Social Phobia)
A short booklet on social phobia through the lens of the fear of being visible, the expectation of negative evaluation, and the inward turn of attention.
Read →Generalized Anxiety Disorder
A short booklet on when anxiety protects us and when it turns into a wearing loop, with a plain look at intolerance of uncertainty and the cycle of seeking reassurance.
Read →Specific Phobia
A short booklet on how intense fear of specific objects and situations is learned, how it persists, and how it can be worked through with gradual exposure, written in plain language.
Read →Flight Phobia
A short booklet that approaches flight phobia not as a simple reasoning error but as a loop built together by the body, the mind, learning history, the sense of control, and safety behaviors.
Read →Exam Anxiety
A short booklet explaining how exam anxiety works, what can be done before and during an exam, and how families can offer support, in plain and practical language.
Read →Mood
Bipolar Disorder
A short booklet that distinguishes bipolar disorder from everyday mood shifts, describes manic, hypomanic, and depressive episodes in plain language, and explains why continuity of treatment matters.
Read →Chronic Depression
A short booklet that explains in plain language what chronic depression looks like as a pattern, why it can feel like personality, the CBASP framework, and ways of working with hopelessness.
Read →Obsessive compulsive spectrum
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
A short booklet on OCD that frames the disorder through the mind's threat perception and search for safety alongside cleaning and checking, and explains the logic of obsession, compulsion, and the cycle in plain language.
Read →Hoarding Disorder
A short booklet on what lies beneath the clutter in hoarding disorder, how living spaces gradually narrow, the beliefs behind the inability to let go, and what happens in treatment.
Read →Trauma and dissociation
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
A short booklet that separates the word trauma from its everyday use, and looks plainly at PTSD symptoms, the nature of traumatic memory, factors that affect recovery, and treatment approaches.
Read →Dissociation
A short booklet on dissociative experiences across a continuum from everyday stress responses to clinical disorders, examining the protective yet wearing function of dissociation in plain language.
Read →Personality patterns
Personality Problems
A short booklet that approaches the concept of personality disorder in a less stigmatizing language, presents personality patterns as a map rather than a label, and explains how these patterns are shaped and how change is possible.
Read →Borderline Personality
A short booklet that explains borderline personality without stigma, covering the causes of emotional fluctuation, abandonment sensitivity, relationship cycles, and why change is possible.
Read →Obsessive-Compulsive Personality
A short booklet that distinguishes the obsessive-compulsive personality pattern from OCD, examining the point at which order and perfectionism become a loss of flexibility, how the pattern develops, and how change becomes possible.
Read →Dependent Personality
A short booklet that plainly explains the difference between healthy attachment and dependent personality patterns, how the loss of autonomy becomes painful, and what therapy aims to achieve.
Read →Paranoid Personality
A short booklet that explains the paranoid personality pattern without confusing it with paranoia, delusional disorder, or paranoid schizophrenia, and examines in plain language when suspicion begins to narrow life and relationships.
Read →Narcissistic Personality
A short booklet on narcissistic personality as a clinical pattern rather than a social media insult, with a plain look at grandiosity, the need for admiration, and the relational costs of impaired empathy.
Read →Avoidant Personality
A short booklet that explains the avoidant personality pattern in plain language, in relation to and distinction from social anxiety, showing how the fear of rejection and inadequacy can narrow a person's life.
Read →Histrionic Personality
A short booklet that describes the histrionic personality pattern without stigmatizing language, exploring the need for attention, exaggerated emotional expression, and the meaning behind the need to be seen.
Read →Schizoid Personality
A short booklet on schizoid personality that neither pathologizes solitude nor ignores its effect on functioning, with attention to differential thinking and the role of therapy.
Read →Emotionally Sensitive Personality
A booklet that addresses emotional intensity, impulsivity, fluctuations in relationships, fear of abandonment, a sense of emptiness, and difficulty regulating emotions without stigma.
Read →Eating and body
Binge Eating Disorder
A short booklet that explains binge eating disorder without reducing it to a weight issue, focusing on the sense of loss of control, shame, emotional eating, the rigid diet cycle, and behavioral regulation.
Read →Anorexia Nervosa
A short booklet explaining the fear, the need for control, and the distorted body perception that lie behind the desire to be thin in anorexia nervosa, with a plain account of its physical risks, causes, and the importance of multidisciplinary treatment.
Read →Bulimia Nervosa
A short booklet on the repeating binge and compensation cycle of bulimia nervosa, its hidden nature, its physical and psychological risks, and the approaches to treatment.
Read →Addictions
Gambling Disorder
A short booklet on how gambling is reinforced, why stopping becomes so difficult, and when seeking help matters, explored through a behavioral addiction framework in plain language.
Read →Alcohol Use Disorder
A short booklet that treats alcohol use disorder not as a moral issue but as a pattern of addiction with biological, psychological, and social dimensions, covering symptoms, short and long-term effects, the recovery process, and treatment options in plain language.
Read →Cannabis Use Disorder
A short booklet on when cannabis use turns into a pattern of dependence, its short and long term risks, the normalisation fallacy, and treatment approaches, in plain language.
Read →Neurodevelopment
Adult ADHD
A short booklet on adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as a neurodevelopmental pattern, examining executive function, late diagnosis, and its impact on daily life.
Read →High-Functioning Autism
A short booklet on the difficulties in social communication, sensory sensitivity, and flexibility that characterize high-functioning autism, formerly called Asperger syndrome, along with the reasons for late diagnosis and what support looks like.
Read →Psychosis
Bodily symptoms
Somatic Symptom Disorder
A short booklet that examines the relationship between physical symptoms and psychological processes without stigma, covering attention loops, reassurance seeking, and the role of family response in plain language.
Read →Health Anxiety
A short booklet on the difference between reasonable health attention and anxiety that begins to run life, addressed in plain but clinically careful language.
Read →