MINDFIRE

Berk, a writer, actor, activist, and social media influencer, offers a memoir of managing and living with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The author, who also wrote the bestselling memoir My Real-Life Rom-Com (2023), offers a work about the mental health challenges that she’s faced since 2020, and specifically identifies her struggles as being connected to coming of age during the initial years of the Covid-19 pandemic. As such, this book is also a remembrance of that time and all the accompanying disruptions of everyday life, including common rites of passage for teenagers and young adults. Berk traces her journey from the diagnosis of her disorder in 2020 through its treatment and management, emphasizing that if a total cure for OCD is not possible, it is a condition that can be managed enough to live a full life. She also wisely clarifies for the reader what OCD is and isn’t and how it can be confused with the less-severe obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. The book features intermittent sidebars titled “Therapists’ Couch,” offering definitions of key terms, and “Self-Care Corner,” featuring tips for managing OCD or generalized anxiety disorder and maximizing one’s quality of life. Overall, Berk offers a wise and earnest account of the unseen struggles behind her celebrity. At times, the book may remind some readers of the work of Sophie Riegel, the author of three books on mental health from a Gen-Z perspective. However, Berk also displays courage and maturity in her approach to the perils of social media prominence, and the online abuse that she sometimes encountered from strangers. Such moments will make her accomplishments seem even more impressive, even to readers who may not relate to other aspects of fame.

A revealing and generationally focused remembrance.