'I'm a trauma expert - if you can't go to therapy go read these nine books'

Earlier this year, the US Surgeon General Advisor Dr. Vivek Murthy declared that the country is facing a lonliness epidemic.

Mental health across the board has reached historic lows and service centers report being overwhelmed by the sheer volume and lack of resources available to provide to patients. A staggering report conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Health found that one in five adults experieced a mental illness in 2021 with one in 20's experience being described as "serious."

It also found that 7.6 percent experience a co-occuring substance abuse disorder. It is estimated that at least 150,000 people since 2018 have died every year under these conditions, which physicians have dubbed as "deaths of despair."

Youth mental health is similiarly in peril with parents increasingly worried in particular about the negative effects of social media on their children. Youth also report external factors such as climate change contributing to their lingering depression and anxiety.

Mental Health America found that nearly a third of adults with mental illness report not being able to receive the treatment they need. Of that group, 42 percent said it was because they could not afford it.

"Yeah a lot of people can't afford good therapy - it's true. It's expensive," said renowned physician and trauma expert Gabor Maté. "There's [also] a lot people who get therapy but are not geting appropriate therapy."

However, Maté urges people to not let these very real barriers stop you from seeking our healing. His solution? Reading.

"If you can't go to therapy - go to the library [and] read some books," the Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor says. "All of these books will have some advice about how to help yourself."

He provided a list of five books he highly recommends that discuss trauma and healing, as well as humbling touting his scholarship, which includes another five books. Here are the 9 best books you can read about healing trauma.

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1."The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma," by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. (2014)

"A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing in this New York Times bestseller," the book's description says.

The author has spent over three decades working with survivors. He explains that at the time of release that veterans and their families have had to deal with the painful aftermath of combat, one in five Americans has been molested, one in four grew up with alcoholics, and one in three couples have engaged in physical violence.

In the book, he explains "how recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust."

He also explores "innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—offering new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity."

2. "No bad parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model," by Richard Schwartz, Ph.D. (2021)

In this book, Dr. Dick Schwartz explores a newly-popularized for of therapy model called Internal Family Systems (IFS).

The book's advertisment posits: "Is there just one 'you'? We’ve been taught to believe we have a single identity, and to feel fear or shame when we can’t control the inner voices that don’t match the ideal of who we think we should be. Yet Dr. Richard Schwartz’s research now challenges this 'mono-mind' theory."

“All of us are born with many sub-minds―or parts,” he says. “These parts are not imaginary or symbolic. They are individuals who exist as an internal family within us―and the key to health and happiness is to honor, understand, and love every part.”

3. "Walking the Tiger: Healing Trauma," by Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. (1997)

The book is slated as "a new and hopeful vision of trauma," viewing "the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity."

"It asks and answers an intriguing question: Why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed."

"Waking the Tiger normalizes the symptoms of trauma and the steps needed to heal them. People are often traumatized by seemingly ordinary experiences. The reader is taken on a guided tour of the subtle, yet powerful impulses that govern our responses to overwhelming life events. To do this, it employs a series of exercises that help us focus on bodily sensations. Through heightened awareness of these sensations trauma can be healed."

4. "What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing," by Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., and Oprah Winfrey (2021)

"Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question."

"Here, Winfrey shares stories from her own past, understanding through experience the vulnerability that comes from facing trauma and adversity at a young age. In conversation throughout the book, she and Dr. Perry focus on understanding people, behavior, and ourselves. It’s a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it’s one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future―opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way."

4. "The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook -- What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing," by Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., and Maia Szalavitz

"How does trauma affect a child's mind—and how can that mind recover?"

"Child psychiatrist Dr. Bruce D. Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers, and victims of family violence. In the classic The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Dr. Perry tells their stories of trauma and transformation and shares their lessons of courage, humanity, and hope. Deftly combining unforgettable case histories with his own compassionate, insightful strategies for rehabilitation, Perry explains what happens to children’s brains when they are exposed to extreme stress—and reveals the unexpected measures that can be taken to ease such pain and help them grow into healthy adults."

5. "The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, & Healing in a Toxic Culture," (2022) by Gabor Maté, M.D. and Daniel Maté

"In The Myth of Normal, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems are actually seeing an upsurge in chronic illness and general ill health. Prescription drug usage, high blood pressure, mental illness, and so many other troubling issues are on the rise."

"Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how the toxicity of today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance."

"Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Co-written with his son Daniel, The Myth of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet."

6. "In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction," by Gabor Maté, M.D. (2008)

"From street-dwelling drug addicts to high-functioning workaholics, the continuum of addiction cuts a wide and painful swath through our culture."

"Blending first-person accounts, riveting case studies, cutting-edge research and passionate argument, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction takes a panoramic yet highly intimate look at this widespread and perplexing human ailment."

"Countering prevailing notions of addiction as either a genetic disease or an individual moral failure, Dr. Gabor Maté presents an eloquent case that addiction – all addiction – is in fact a case of human development gone askew."

"Dr. Maté, who for twelve years practiced medicine in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside – North America’s most concentrated area of drug use, begins by telling the stories of his patients, who, in their destitution and uniformly tragic histories, represent one extreme of the addictive spectrum. With his trademark compassion and unflinching narrative eye, he brings to life their ill-fated and mostly misunderstood struggle for relief or escape, through substance use, from the pain that has tormented them since childhood. He also shows how the behavioural addictions of society’s more fortunate members – including himself – differ only in degree of severity from the drug habits of his Downtown Eastside patients, and how in reality there is only one addiction process, its core objective being the self-soothing of deep-seated fears and discomforts."

7. "Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers," by Gabor Maté, M.D. (2004)

"In the book Hold On To Your Kids, International authority on child development Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D., joins forces with bestselling author Gabor Maté, M.D., to tackle one of the most disturbing trends of our time: children today increasingly look to their peers for direction—their values, identity, and codes of behavior. This 'peer orientation' undermines family cohesion, interferes with healthy development, and fosters a hostile and sexualized youth culture. Children end up becoming overly conformist, desensitized, and alienated; being 'cool; matters more to them than anything else."

"Hold On to Your Kids explains the causes of this crucial breakdown of parental influence—and demonstrates ways to 'reattach' to sons and daughters, establish the proper hierarchy in the home, make kids feel safe and understood, and earn back your children’s loyalty and love. By helping to reawaken parenting instincts innate to us all, this book will empower parents to be for their children what nature intended: a true source of contact, security, and warmth."

8. "When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress," by Gabor Maté, M.D. (2003)

"An international bestseller translated into fifteen languages, When the Body Says No promotes learning and healing, providing transformative insights into how disease can be the body’s way of saying no to what the mind cannot or will not acknowledge."

"Can a person literally die of loneliness? Is there a connection between the ability to express emotions and Alzheimer’s disease? Is there such a thing as a 'cancer personality'?"

"Drawing on scientific research and the author’s decades of experience as a practicing physician, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress — published in the U.S. with the subtitle Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection — provides answers to these and other important questions about the effect of the mind-body link on illness and health and the role that stress and one’s individual emotional makeup play in an array of common diseases."

9. "Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder" by Gabor Maté, M.D. (1999)

"Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder – published in the U.S. as Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates And What You Can Do About It – is written from the inside by a doctor who himself has Attention Deficit Disorder. It offers a completely new perspective on ADD and a new approach to helping children and adults living with the problems Attention Deficit Disorder presents."

"It demonstrates that ADD is not an inherited illness, but a reversible impairment, a developmental delays; explains that in ADD, circuits in the brain whose job is emotional self-regulation and attention control fail to develop in infancy—and why; shows how 'tuning out' and distractibility are the psychological products of life experience, from in utero onwards; allows parents to understand what makes their ADD children tick, and adults with ADD to gain insights into their emotions and behaviors; expresses optimism about neurological development even in adulthood; and presents a program of how to promote this development in children and adults alike."