Ahoy!

I’m James Withey (With-e).

Erm… so welcome to my website thingy.

I’m the author and editor of seven books about mental health. They are - drum roll if you please, or you can just cheer loudly if you want.

How to Sort Your Self Esteem

How to Smash Stress

How to Get to Grips with Grief

How to Tell Anxiety to Sod Off

How to Tell Depression to Piss Off

What I Do to Get Through

The Recovery Letters

All the books are written from my own experience of mental health and mental illness, including, depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, childhood grief and I’m a survivor of child sexual abuse. Quite a list eh?!

I write the books with humour though because who wants to read a really, really long book that makes you feel worse? I certainly don’t. They are divided into 40 accessible chapters to make reading easier - hooray!

The books are published all over the world, which is lovely - Romania, Wales, Netherlands, Korea, China, Germany, Poland, Indonesia and across the Arabic world.

I’ve appeared on BBC Radio 4 twice, also BBC World Service, Sky TV, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio Sussex and numerous podcasts including Robin Ince & Josie Long’s Cosmic Shambles.

I’ve written for the Mirror, Take a Break, Female First, Psychologies Magazine, Therapy Today and Vanity Fair. I’ve been interviewed about my books by Yahoo Lifestyle, RTE in Ireland and BBC News.

I trained as a counsellor and worked in social care for twenty years before writing books - mostly in addiction, homelessness and mental health services in Scotland. I now live in Brighton with my husband.

Finally, in case you were wondering, that is one of my cats Baxter, in the photo.