 Hello and welcome back. Today I am talking to you about Natasha Devon's latest book, A Beginner's Guide to Being Mental. Now this is a book which I wish I could have read as a teen. I would have felt less alone, I would have felt like the different issues that I was facing and the ways in which I was thinking of feeling and the ways in which I was behaving were not just me and I would have felt empowered to seek help and to help myself if I could have read this book then. It's great for young people. Natasha is fantastic at connecting directly with children and young people. She talks in a really kind of young people focused way. She doesn't try and like be cool and down with the kids as such but she just talks in a language that they will understand they'll get. She like lots and lots of her work historically has been directly with children and young people so she kind of understands their language without being patronizing and without yeah trying to emulate them in a way which becomes super uncool when you're an adult. So yeah so it's great for young people also great for anyone who wants to understand mental health period really. So the way that the book works is Natasha has told it from a kind of a kind of dual personal and professional point of view. So Natasha is someone who is I want to say expert by experience. Now when we say expert by experience we tend to mean that someone is an expert because they have been through something and whilst that's true for Natasha and she talks about lots of her own personal experience in her book. She's very honest and very insightful of her own experiences. She also is an expert by experience in terms of just having worked with hundreds and hundreds of young people over many years. So it's kind of yeah so it's it's part professional part personal told in a really accessible way so you feel like she's chatting to you so actually listened to it on audible and it's literally like Natasha's my friend and it was literally like having my friend in the car with me as she talked you through this. She uses humour to lighten it but she doesn't shy away from any tricky topics at all so it's really good really great kind of overview and introduction to a very wide range of topics. So yeah suitable for young people suitable for people who are suffering with mental health issues at any age or other sort of well-being issues and also suitable for anyone who just wants to understand a bit more. So again if you're like a parent or a teacher and you want to understand more about the issues that we're facing in the changing world and Natasha has got a lot to say about things like kind of capitalism and social media and the media on the whole and that sort of thing as well. So yeah just a really great all-round look at life the universe and everything from the point of view of someone who has their own ill-lived experience of mental health issues and their own professional experience of working with many many thousands of kids and teachers and other people with regards to mental health. You can get an idea of the current topics I'm trying to think what else I need to tell you really basically just just buy the down book it's great. So this is all the topics that are covered trying to get that actually to focus. Yeah so there's there's a whole range of topics but really like although you can kind of get an idea from this it doesn't really begin to even touch on it. Now the other thing to know is that if you're trying to make the audible versus hard copy debate. A if you've got small hands go with the audible I'm tiny and the book feels huge but I mean I love it but like I'd get really tired reading it but if you use the audible which is great because you've got your friend talking to you so pros and cons here pros and cons but you miss out on I had no idea when I read it that it's full of illustrations by Ruby etc who is just fab and who kind of has a really clever way of taking kind of complicated concepts around like anxiety depression other kind of well-being and mental health issues just turning them into something like a really funny kind of picture that you get right away. So it's a genius pairing so yeah maybe buy the book maybe do both maybe just do both as always I do not share a book unless I've read it I have read it listen to it cover to cover. I have been sent a review copy so I didn't pay for it although I did pay for the audible version that's unusual and I don't get paid for endorsing stuff I don't ever do that just so that you know you know like to do that so yeah all the books in my bookshelf pretty much all the books in my bookshelf have been sent to me I don't pay for books very often but just because a book has been sent to me for free doesn't mean I'm going to give it a positive review I get sent a lot of books which never see the light of day again sometimes because I run out of time sometimes because I don't think they're very good so there we go so yes this one I do think is good I'm sharing ahead of other stuff in my reading pile because I loved it because Natasha is great force for good in the field and because I would think that it would be a really helpful thing for kids in this kind of like return to school then run up to Christmas type period which can be a kind of tricky time could be a great stocking filler for someone depends when you're watching this I'm really really wittering the hell on now aren't I I'll shut up good book bye