Ongoing since 2024
Youth Information Behaviour
The Youth Information-Seeking Study follows how 16 to 24 year olds look for answers about mental health and recovery, which sources they trust, and why they stop searching.
Our Approach & Research
We started with a question librarians kept asking us.
A teenager comes to the desk looking for a book about a parent who drinks, or a friend who stopped eating. What do you hand them, and how do you know it will help rather than hurt? Mindful Reads exists to answer that carefully.
Foundational mission
Four fields, one practical job.
Literature
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Information Science
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Well-being
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Responsible Technology
Literature gives young people characters who have been where they are. Information science tells us how they actually search, what they trust, and where they give up. Well-being research keeps us honest about what reading can and can't do. Responsible technology means any tool we build explains itself and keeps no profile of the reader.
Alongside clinical care
Why reading support complements therapy instead of competing with it.
Many young people never reach a clinician. Many who do wait months. A good book in that gap won't treat anything, but it can name a feeling, show that others have lived it, and make the next conversation easier to start.
So we stay in our lane. Our facilitators are trained to notice when someone needs more than a reading group and to refer them on. Clinicians review our safety guidance. We never describe our programs as treatment.
Our core pillars
Six commitments that shape every program.
01
Stories
Fiction, poetry, memoir and essays chosen for honesty and craft, with a range of voices young readers recognize.
02
Information
Clear metadata, content advisories and plain-language notes, so readers know what they're opening before they open it.
03
Well-being
Support for reflection and connection, with firm limits. We point to clinical care rather than standing in for it.
04
Research & Development
Every program is studied. We publish what we find, including the parts that didn't work.
05
Learning & Training
Librarians, teachers and youth workers get the same training and toolkits, so a session feels safe wherever it runs.
06
Partnerships
We build with libraries, schools and universities, and with young people who have lived experience of recovery.
Research & Development
What we're studying now.
Each area has a short public brief. Full papers go to open-access journals once peer review is done.
Multi-site pilot
Bibliotherapy & Non-Clinical Practice
A study of Stories for Recovery across library and school sites, measuring sense of connection, confidence in asking for help, and reading habits after the program ends.
Design research
Explainable AI in Discovery
Testing whether young readers trust a recommendation more when it shows its reasoning, and how to sort a catalogue without building a profile of the reader.
Institutional partners
Public Library Networks
38 branches, 4 countries
University Research Centres
Information science and education
School Districts
Secondary and further education
Youth Organizations
Community and peer-led groups
Leadership & Advisory Board
Librarians, researchers, teachers and young readers.
AO
Dr. Amara Osei
Co-founder & Research Director
Information scientist who studies how teenagers search for health information. Leads the Youth Information-Seeking Study.
HM
Helen Marsh
Co-founder & Head of Curation
Fifteen years as a young adult librarian. Built the tagging system and reads every work before it enters the library.
RD
Rafael Duarte
Programs & Training Lead
Former secondary school English teacher. Wrote the six Stories for Recovery modules and runs facilitator cohorts.
PR
Dr. Priya Raman
Clinical Safety Advisor
Clinical psychologist working with adolescents. Reviews our safety guidelines and referral scripts each year.
JW
Jonah Whitfield
Responsible Technology Advisor
Designs recommendation tools that show their reasoning. Holds us to our no-tracking rule.
YA
Youth Advisory Council
12 members, ages 17–24
Paid advisors with lived experience. They review reading lists, test every new feature, and can veto a title.
Nothing about young people without young people.
Our Youth Advisory Council is paid for its time and sits in on curation, program design and research planning. If they say a book doesn't ring true, it doesn't go in the library.