Earlier this year, I had the chance to speak with Vincent Atchity, CEO of Mental Health Colorado, about mental health and independent book publishing. Atchity is an advocate for public health and health equity and has worked statewide and nationally as leader of the Equitas Project to disentangle mental health and criminal justice.

David Dahl (DD): What does independent book publishing have to do with mental health?

Vincent Atchity (VA): Our mental health is something that we can participate in composing—by adding or subtracting a variety of different elements. We all have a hard drive (our brain, nervous system, and physical structure), and our health of mind is hugely dependent upon the quality of the software that we load into our hard drive to optimize all of our operating systems potentials.

If we’re overloading our hard drive with software of poor quality or shallow, repetitive content, then our capacity for experiencing great mental health as individuals is going to be less than it would be if we were loading rich content into our hard drives all the time.

Our well-being as humans can draw so much value from how we participate in composing that well-being for ourselves and for each other—through the quality of the material that we are giving ourselves to work with and how we practice checking and correcting for when our diet is too scarce or lean or poor in nutrients. 

I’m a fan of independent book publishers and of independent cultural production across all formats and consider these products to be vital to a healthful diet for my sense of well-being and indispensable to the most healthful possible future of humanity.

DD: I really agree, diversification is enriching. And independent book publishing—it’s not that we merely pay lip service to diversity; diversity is constitutive of our identity. I know Benjamin Franklin is a key figure here. You have a number of things to say about Franklin, both as a publisher and in regards to mental health in the United States.

VA: Franklin has always been my favorite iconic founder of the country, and I associate his prominence in that foundational work with his identity as a publisher, printer, and civic leader. He, in conversation and written exchange with his peers, was building this great project of humanity—free, self-governed humans who were conceptualizing a new nation and trying to set a reliable course to fulfilling its potential.

After all, our first amendment is tied to freedom of the press and freedom of expression, and a lot of that is tied to Franklin’s understanding of how transformative, freeing, and liberating the free press and the free exchange of ideas are for humans.

DD: It’s worth mentioning that the creation of libraries started in Philadelphia, and Franklin had a role in that.

VA: That’s right, He started the first public libraries, and he was also behind the start of volunteer fire departments. There’s probably something to be said about the intersection of someone who works in a space filled with paper and protecting things from fire.

But the library is key, and it’s funny, in a sad kind of way, that libraries remain at the forefront of cultural divisiveness insofar as they represent these foundational principles of making information as readily accessible as possible, and how they are continuously embattled by the totalitarian and paternalistic forces that would censor things and limit people’s access to information.

That’s another intersection with independent book publishing, because if it were not for broadened access through independent book publishers, we’d have a very thin diet of homogeneous stuff being fed to us. Without libraries and independent publishing, we’d all be stuck with a very limited diet of whatever’s within easiest reach.

DD: Monoculture is equally bad for your mind—only having a narrow channel of commercial corporate publishing, a behemoth presenting us with the totality of what we get to read. Is your work at Mental Health Colorado related?

VA: Part of the message for people’s mental health is that everybody needs to learn that it is a dietary question, especially during distressing times. We now live in this world where we’re assaulted all day long by news streams and media. If we have no filter, or no sort of editorial judgment to limit or direct the stream of our attention, we can be bombarded in an unhealthful way. Over the course of the day, our health and well-being depend on our ability to narrow our focus and consume things deliberately. On one hand, we want to be well-informed, and on the other hand we want to be healthy and fuel positive outcomes.  So, we have to know that we’re going to take in high-quality information in order to be well-informed, and then we’re going to turn that stream off and consume a much broader plate of things that enrich us in positive ways and keep us going.

DD: I really appreciate that—the relation of your diet and what else you are consuming around you in the world. Independent book publishing provides a banquet of different kinds of material that allows for self-expression and expression of the community. It allows us to connect with other people, which is also healthy.

VA: I like the mass market and appreciate being in touch with a variety of different genres, but it’s all about the balance. We may love our Jack Reacher novels, but if all we ever read were Jack Reacher novels, we would be malnourished. It’s important to read widely.

DD: This is a good place to introduce the Platonic epistemology that emerges from the Phaedrus. The general idea is that as you learn things, your whole world increases.

VA: One of the words that gets tossed around a lot in the world of mental health advocacy is neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain to adapt and continue growing in different ways through life. Cultivating neuroplasticity is like yoga. You move your brain through all kinds of different positions, and it changes and gets more flexible and contributes to healthful growth.

DD: Breadth of reading leads to meeting other kinds of people, meeting new kinds of people, and connecting with people more richly with this deeper knowledge.

VA: That’s another thing that the Greeks were doing an interesting job of during their theatrical production: putting a spotlight on figures who are marginal to the mainstream of society and problematic on account of their marginal state and showing the dramatic tension around that marginal figure. When can the marginal figure move from being perceived only as a threat to being healthfully incorporated into the society,  leading to growth in the society and a change for the better? When society fails to incorporate the marginal figure, there are tragic outcomes, both for the figure and for the society that is dooming itself by its inability to be nourished and renewed through the integration of difference. Books can do exactly that, right? They introduce the stranger in an intimate kind of way so that what was a stranger is no longer the stranger by the time you’ve read their story. They’re part of you, and that’s a growth experience.

DD: I think that’s very resonant with the work of independent book publishers. There is a web of relations of texts and people, and we’re all related in this network in a profound way. Independent book publishers have to come up with comparison titles to bring their books to market, and they often will say "there’s no other book like it." Well, no, that is preposterous. We live in this world. We couldn’t be bringing a book to market if there weren’t other books like it, and we have to celebrate how these other books have readers. So, I think the knowledge and the communality really go together and are inseparable.

Can you talk about the impulse to share and it’s relation to mental health and community?

VA: We don’t experience mental health in a vacuum. Thanks to books and printing, since Gutenberg, we have this profusion of access to all the different possible voices. We don’t have to listen to the voice in the room. We can listen to the voice that we want to listen to. And we can leverage our writing technology and our printing technology to get platform and make our unique experience accessible to others. You know, what you have to say may not be the voice for the majority in the room. Yours may be the voice that is needed by someone or another person who may only come along in a generation or something like that, and being able to share through books means you can leave your unique experience in a form that will remain accessible beyond your time and space.

DD: Something exciting that IBPA is involved in is expanding the BISAC codes, which is coding for libraries for book categories. Several of our fantastic independent publishers are expanding the real words of indigenous peoples in these programs. I’m coming to you from the unceded land of the Ohlone and the Coast Miwok people. It’s important to have those real words there, and expanding the kind of knowledge to have those words in our coding for libraries is exciting and a movement that’s happening right now in the industry.

Do you have any final words for the members of the IBPA, for their mental health and their work?

VA: There is no over-stating the value of independent book publishing to the health of individuals, families, and communities in America and in all the human settlements around the planet that value their own and each other’s humanity and wish to thrive and prosper.

Folks aren’t working in independent book publishing if they don’t already feel some strong sense of mission affinity. So that’s good. What they’re doing is vital to the principles that we like about the founding of America. In terms of believing that the first amendment is the first amendment for a good reason and believing that when you give people freedom of expression what you’re doing is encouraging an inevitable progression toward an improved humanity. Being part of that historical trajectory is such a such an important public trust.

So, I’d say that it’s not just all the great creative or business reasons to be an independent book publisher, but it’s also an important public trust, and people ought to feel good about that. And in addition to that, as far as their own mental health is concerned, all the other true things apply. Watch your diet. Consume the stuff that is helpful for you, and ingest things that are going to make you grow. Don’t ingest excessive amounts of the things that make you feel like you’ve been poisoned. And spend more time outdoors.

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