It's Not You, It's the World
Joanna Cheek
Available as Hardback, eBook
12 February 2026
A ground-breaking book about how we stay sane in an insane world from psychiatrist and researcher Dr Joanna Cheek, with a foreword by Gabor Maté
What if our mental health struggles aren’t signs that we’re broken, but proof that we’re responding normally to a world in crisis?
One in two of us will be diagnosed with a mental health condition by the age of 40. Rather than viewing this as individual failure, clinical professor and psychiatrist Joanna Cheek argues that our symptoms are often brilliant alarms – our defence systems working exactly as they should in response to threatening circumstances.
It’s Not You, It’s the World is the essential guide for anyone feeling depressed, anxious, enraged or overwhelmed by adapting to a chaotic world. Drawing on extensive cross-cultural research, years of clinical experience, and her own journey as a patient, Dr Cheek demonstrates how self-improvement alone neglects the source of our suffering. To truly heal, we must address the imbalances in our wider systems that keep making us all sick.
With a foreword by Gabor Maté, this survival guide offers practical mental health tools to care for both ourselves and our communities.
“This book more than instructs about healing: it makes healing into a practicable aim and endeavour”
Gabor MatÉ
See more reviews
“The real reason emotional suffering is skyrocketing isn’t because we’re flawed or broken – it’s because we’re responding to a deeply unwell world. In this brilliant, wise, and profoundly compassionate book, Dr Joanna Cheek guides us to see the wider ecology driving our distress”
Tara Brach, Author Of ‘radical Acceptance’
“A book that manages to be both deeply useful and profoundly interesting … A must-read for anyone interested in minds and their environment. I loved it”
Matt Haig
“This wise book is a timely reminder of our fundamental need for connection and compassion. By grounding our mental health in our social environment, Dr Cheek’s incisive insights can help us all make more sense of our lives”
David Robson
“Kudos to Dr Cheek for showing us the science behind our global dysfunction, and the research-led responses needed to heal ourselves and our world … Her courage and wisdom shine through these pages!”
Jack Kornfield, Author Of ‘a Path With Heart’
Joanna Cheek
Dr Joanna Cheek is a board-certified psychiatrist and psychotherapist trained in dozens of modalities, researcher, meditation teacher, journalist, and Clinical Professor at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine. She co-created the national-award-winning Mind Space collective, offering publicly-funded mental health workshops to teach effective mental health strategies through connection and care to tens of thousands of community members and physicians who, like us all, experience the mental health symptoms that arise from living in a disordered world.