Finding Help: A Reference Guide for Personal Concerns

A demand for books and referrals on a wide variety of personal needs led to this collection of more than 500 books, hotlines, associations, and other avenues of support. Giblin, associate dean of the College of Education at Northeastern Illinois University, is a registered clinical psychologist. Bales is a counselor with the dean of students at Northeastern Illinois. Their tone is persistently upbeat; despite difficulties, change and loss can be important for growth.

Chapters on stress, marriage and divorce, aging, sex, emotion and sleep, physical and mental disabilities, life-threatening problems, violence and abuse, and death and dying offer an overview of each situation and a rationale for the resources chosen. Each chapter is subdivided. The chapter on emotion and sleep, for instance, deals with fears, anxiety and panic attacks, depression, sleep problems, and schizophrenia. Several chapters have separate bibliographies for children and young adults. Books annotated are popular works available in public libraries and bookstores. The brief essays that precede the bibliographies as well as the annotations are informative. Searchers will learn that they are not alone and that help is available.

The Self-Help Directory: A Sourcebook for Self-Help in the United States and Canada, by Joe Donovan [RBB F 1 94], defines self-help more broadly and concentrates on groups and clearinghouses rather than books. Bill and Linda Katz's Self-Help: 1,400 Best Books on Personal Growth (Bowker, 1985), though dated, lists many useful titles on topics that go beyond relationships and crises, such as drugs, education, and fertility.

Every person in the course of a lifetime will experience some of the difficulties considered in Finding Help, so the usefulness and appeal of this book is certain. Recommended for public libraries.