This is a book about how to optimise your mental health. Written with kindness and sympathy, it is a practical guide to emotional well-being, calm and psychological maturity. Alain de Botton explores how we can cope with a variety of mental challenges, from the mild to the severe.

It considers how and why we can get overly anxious or low; how we can best understand our pasts and how they shape us; and how we can build resilience, so as to live wisely alongside certain difficulties. At heart this is a book about psychological happiness – about discovering equilibrium and meaning, and finding our way to connection and joy.