Genre: Non-fiction, Psychology,
Page Count: 300+
Published: 2013 (Tarcher Perigree)
Potential Triggers: Abuse, Neglect,
Mental Health Topics: Adolescent Minds,
This book is a bit on the line when it comes to being mental health related. It's about the mind, yes, but is it about mental health?
...sorta?
Brainstorm focuses mainly on the "storm" within our minds and the development of the adolescent mind. I wouldn't read this book if I was looking for something explaining a certain disorder, but it's a good book to read when you're looking into the science of the mind. Instead of focusing on the impulsivity of teens, it focuses on the reasoning behind the impulses and how they are, in fact, logical in some way.
One thing that Dr. Siegel did in this book—similar to his other books—is he used examples in his book to show his points. Primarily, he used the example of a girl named Kelley, who was in a stable relationship with those around her and had no mental disorders. While that was cool to see, I'm imagining that it could be a bit disheartening for people who aren't in a stable relationship and do have mental disorders.
That said, while Dr. Siegel didn't use the examples of other relationship examples, he did include descriptions of what they may be like and what you might see if you are in ___ kind of relationship, rather than a stable one. I found it really interesting how each relationship was different in so many ways and you could clearly see those differences.
Probably my favorite part about this book—not that the rest of it wasn't good—was these cute little illustrative comics that were interspersed throughout the book. Each time I'd come across one, I'd get kinda excited and just study it. Some of them were rather corny, but some of them were really eye-opening and thought-provoking. Whenever people are present, they're little stick figures, so they aren't fancy, but the content of the "comics" is what really makes them shine.
Overall, this book was longer than Mindsight, which some of you may have already seen my review on, but it was just as interesting. If anything, it was actually easier to read! Dr. Siegel wrote Brainstorm with adolescents in mind, hoping that they'd want to read the book and try to understand their own minds. Though a lot of it is still geared towards adults, that really made the book a lot easier to read for me.
For all the psychology geeks out there, I would definitely recommend this book (I even told a friend about one of the diagrams in it and he thought it was genius lol). And even for the non-psychology geeks, if you're interested in learning about your brain, this book would be a great place to start.