In this episode, a look at what you need to know when buying a book to help you with your anxiety. Welcome to the Anxiety Road podcast. This is the involuntary journey finding treatment options and resources for people that have an anxiety condition or disorder. This podcast is treatment agnostic. My name is Gena Haskett. I don't know about you, but I feel like an involuntary guest at the Headbanger's Ball. It's been a week, such turbulence, and it doesn't matter when you hear this
episode. In the United States of America, there is something jumping each and every day of the week. Part of your treatment is to reduce your media consumption. There comes a point where you just have to say enough's enough. I've got other things to do. I don't need to sit here and read this. It's kind of hard to do, but it might be necessary for our continuing treatment of our mental health situation because it is a bit too much information.
This week, I want to focus on how to understand the anxiety book marketplace. There are a lot of crappy books related to anxiety treatment. Some from grifters out to make a quick dollar and some from major publishers promoting the next fad cure. I want to share some simple things to look for when deciding on purchasing a book for anxiety. I plan on seeking and talking about the better books on anxiety resources in future
podcasts. If you're new here, this is the show that looks at medical, behavioral health, relaxation, and x equals the unknown, treatment options and resources. But first, in app that attacked? In the past, I stated that there was no FDA approved app for anxiety treatment. That changed in September 2024. The United States Food and Drug Administration has approved of an app
called Daylight Rx. It is a digital 90-day program for people with generalized anxiety disorder using cognitive behavioral therapy as the treatment mode. From what I can glean from the website, the company is called Big Health and they provide services for employers, insurance companies,and people involved in packaging health and medical benefits. There isn't much independent information about the app. I viewed the press release and I went to the vendor's
website. The company also has another FDA approved app called Sleepio for people with insomnia. Again, limited information outside of the website. This is not an app for you or that it's available for you to get via any of the app stores. It's not available to the general public. It's probably going to be used by employers providing mental health options to their staff or an insurance company would use this as the first line of treatment for those people who have
generalized anxiety disorder. So we may have to wait a while until there's enough of a population that has a response. Outside of the control of the company to get an understanding of how it works and what it can do for you and is it worth your time? So to get started I do need to describe some of the types of anxiety books that are currently available in the marketplace. And one of them I had do have to be vendor specific, the online vendor amazon.com
because. Some of the scammier ones are going to be located at that particular book buying website, but I would think that any other online bookseller is going to have some of the same problems. So there is a type of book called private label release, also known as PRL
content. The company writes content and then licenses it to other people to use on their websites, their blogs, whatever they happen to have, to make it appear that there's something on that particular website or blog or podcast that a person would want to look at or listen to. Now this has been going on since the establishment of the printing press.
There has always been a quiet little company that will write content, pay their writers three cents for five hundred words,and then have other people buy that content and claim that they composed it themselves. PLL content has no mama or papa, but a heck of a lot of identical twins romping around that people will use to establish their credibility. In 2024, there are AI generated books on hundreds of topics. There is software that can create the text, cover, and the book in about
15 minutes. You just give it some keywords and a prompt, and then it's a hop, skip, and a jump to an audio version. Lower than lowlife scumbags are sending dozens of these books to Amazon.com and other online book vendors. And then they have people posting AI generated reviews. Both the crappy books and the phony reviews are not that hard to spot. I have to give Amazon credit here. They do know of this problem and they are doing certain things to fix it and yanking the books down when they can.
But it was not that hard for me to find the sloppy anxiety books without a lot of effort. There's there's a lot of them out there. So what are some of the clues?Well, the PLR content books tend to be, but not always, inexpensive. Prices range from 99 cents to right about $10. The focus of these people are that they want volume sales, they want to recoup their minimum investment of buying PLR content, and they really want to attract people who are looking for a quick, cheap fix.
Another indication is having a text-only cover, a stock photo image, or an AI-generated art cover. The page count generally is between 80 to 150 pages in print, but these books generally tend to be an e-book. Not to say that they wouldn't be willing to mail you a print copy, but the PRL vendors can sell and deliver an e-book faster than mailing a print copy. which they will overcharge you to make up
for the printing and the shipping. As to quality, we know that AI-generated materials are scraped from many sources. We also know that AI generators don't always know the answer, and sometimes those gizmos make it up. You don't want a made-up answer to your anxiety or depression questions. I suspect that there's no vetting of the material in the book, whether AI was used or not. Another thing I would look at is the reviews. And I'm not talking about reading each and every review because
there could be hundreds of them. But there will be similarities in the response, the length of the reviews, and the use of English or whatever language you are visiting the site, how the words fit together. The AI generated reviews try to put words in the right order to suggest approval. It's the written equivalent of an AI image with six curly fingers holding a cigarette. You may not be able to pinpoint it, but you know something isn't right.
The next type of book I want to talk about is personal narrative books. A personal narrative book, that's a book where there is a person who has a problemand wants to share the experience and their solutions with you. There's nothing wrong with that. One of the most impactful books I read about anxiety was Scott Stossel's book, My Age of Anxiety. There's a range of quality in these types of anxiety narrative books.
I think one way to express it is the difference between a prescriptive versus a descriptive. Personal narrative book. Prescriptive narrative books tell you a story about an experience with having an anxiety condition, and then they tell you that if you do certain sets of things, you can be cured, freed, and delivered from your troubles. A lot of these books talk about changing your thought patterns. Think of it like a powerful entity and reframe your
existence. such as think like a CEO, think like a panther, think like an alpha being. Some of them take the pray it away approach, or others adhere to a specific protocol of action in order to be freed from your symptoms. Descriptive narrative books tell you a story, tell you what they did to get better,They may have some resources, but basically that's about it. They don't try to tell you what it is that you need to do. They tell you what they did.
Both styles of books are valid. I'd be a little more cautious about the personal narrative ones that offer the cure. I will say that if you've done your homework on learning about your condition. That will act as a guide or a navigation device in figuring out if the book is right for you. Then there are the self-help, support, and workbooks. Most of us on the anxiety road gravitate to these kinds of books. They're short, to the point, and offer us support and a specific set of things to
do to get better. Again, there is a spectrum of content. What makes these books different from prescriptive narrative books?Is that most, but not all of the people writing them have credentials. They are counselors, therapists, doctors, or someone who has gone through a verifiable training in that topic. Another thing is writing isn't their only job. They have or had clinical practices. They were associated with a university or a healing center. They have letters after their names I can
recognize. LMFT, MD, PhD. In these books, I'm looking for accessible writing, providing education about the topic and clear, helpful suggestions on what I can do when I'm feeling bad. There are also books that target specific topics like OCD, PTSD, emetophobia, or other conditions. Often these books talk about the condition, treatment options, and have a
companion workbook. Now there are also stand-alone anxiety workbooks that provide some education, but the goal is to lead you to a process of dealing with your anxiety problems. Now those are the basics. There are infinite combinations of anxiety books. There are personal narratives that are written by licensed professionals, which makes the book a prescriptive narrative and self-help book. And there are academic books written for
people in the profession. You'll know them when you see them because they're very wordy, generally expensive, and not necessarily accessible to the general public, meaning you'd need a medical dictionary to understand the terminology in the book. Now normally I provide resources, but I'm just going to give you some suggested books. Um Some I've bought, some of them I have read an excerpt from, and I will talk about
probably in a later podcast. So as an example of a descriptive personal narrative resource, I would highly recommend Scott Stossel's My Age of Anxiety. Now this is alsoAvailable as an audiobook and Scott Stossel has had an amazing experience with his anxiety. It's very strong, it's very pronounced, and it's just an astounding book. Then for self-help and support, the example that I'm going to select is called, and this is a relatively new book, You Will Get Through This, A Mental
Health Toolkit. Help for Depression, Anxiety, Grief, and More by Julie Radico, Charity O'Reilly, and Nicole Helverson. And I will have a link to their publisher's website. And then for the combo personal narrative and self-help and support, there is a book called Stuck to Unstuck: Break Free from the OCD and Anxiety Loop Using the AAA Response and Take Back Your
Life. By Matthew and I believe his last name is pronounced Codde C-O-D-D-E and he has a website called restoredminds.com where he has his podcast, the book and other information that you might want to take a look at. So that's what I have for this time and I will catch up with you next time on the Anxiety Road. The intro and outro music this week is from Logan at Music for Makers.com. You can visit anxietyroadpodcast.com for links
and other information resources. You can listen, download, or follow the podcast via a number of iOS and Android podcasting applications. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Ghana. Pandora or on the web at listennotes.com. This podcast is intended for information and education purposes only. Nothing in the program is intended to be a substitute for professional psychological, psychiatric or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.