What if the mental health symptoms we face aren’t the actual problem? 

What if they’re signals that can help us see and solve the real problem? 

Psychiatrist, award winning professor of medicine, journalist, and leading mental health expert, 

Dr. Joanna Cheek invites us to lean into these questions

Arguing In her timely new book: 

It’s Not You, It’s the World, A Mental Health Survival Guide for Us All, 

that we’re not broken or doing it wrong when we’re stressed or struggling.

She writes:

“As our world clashes and collapses around us, it’s no surprise that one in two of us will be diagnosed with a mental health condition by the age of forty. 

It’s hard to view all our mental health symptoms as disordered if so many of us are experiencing them. 

Perhaps it’s not that something’s gone wrong in our bodies and minds, but that something’s gone right: 

These symptoms are brilliant alarms and adaptations to help us survive in a disordered world. 

Having sensitive protective functions that sound alarms or short-circuit when we’re threatened isn’t a design flaw. 

It’s a design success.”

Her words, and the deeply compassionate, expansive set of insights, tools, and practices she offers in her book, and through the powerful work she does in the world,

Invite us into a space of empowerment, connection, and hope.

It’s the type of action-oriented hope that stems from grounded possibility.

The possibility that when we care for both ourselves and our collectives, 

And learn to understand and befriend our alarms 

we can come together to solve the shared problems they’re signaling,

we can heal the systems that are making us all sick, 

And we can build a healthier future together. 

For more on Joanna, her new book, events, and other work please visit joannacheek.ca

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