The Essential Social Skills Handbook for Teens by Richard Meadows

 The Essential Social Skills Handbook by Richard Meadows is a self-help book for all teenagers but particularly those who may be dealing with poor mental health and may suffer from social anxiety, anxiety, depression and so on. This book takes the reader on a journey to develop a number of skills from communication to goal setting to allow them to thrive. The book is full of practical advice, particularly on social anxiety which there's a whole chapter dedicated. You may think you don't have social anxiety or any of these things but this book is still a very good read and you may even surprise yourself.

I like this book for a few reasons. Firstly, a central topic in this book is mental health and psychological issues which are commonly suffered by teenagers, including anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and so on. Anyone with poor mental health may feel alone and not feel like they can talk about their illness. This book changes this and really emphasises how many of these mental illnesses experienced are more common and many teenagers experience them. This alone is a great confidence boost. The book also has lots of great advice for the reader to use to really take control of their life and do new things which they may have originally been held back from.

A few things which I did not like about this book, firstly, despite this book being written for teenagers across the world, it is very American. For instance, there are lots of websites and phone numbers for mental health support but this is just for America and there are some terms and acronyms which may not be known by many non-Americans so this can make it slightly harder and less valuable to read in some areas. Also, the advice given in this book is great but it is written for a neurotypical audience. A neurodivergent audience with conditions such as Autism, Schizophrenia and other mental health conditions will have the same anxieties as normal teenagers but these will be heightened and they will also have additional symptoms. This will make the advice given really hard to follow and so may not be suitable for all individuals. Finally, whilst reading the book I was questioning the audience this was written for. There is some language which I feel would make this book more relevant to pre-teens or early teens which is good, but this book would also be good for older teens and even young adults so I hope some of the language used does not put the target market off reading this book.

Altogether, I rate this book 4 stars as it is a really good book to help teenagers not just with their anxiety but in many aspects of their life. The teenage years are not easy, as is acknowledged in this book, but the advice presented here can make this stressful period of life just that bit easier and more manageable. I would therefore recommend this book for all teenagers, young adults and parents so everyone can support each other but also improve themselves. I would like to thank NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book in return for an honest book review.