Ojai, CA (February 24, 2025) — Dr. Julia Krankl, a Harvard and UCLA-trained psychiatrist and winemaker, has announced the publication of her book, The 21st Minute: Everything You Wish Doctors Explained about Mental Health. Krankl, who is also a TEDx speaker, trauma resilience specialist and physician educator, wrote The 21st Minute to offer readers fifteen practical ways to improve mental health that don’t involve taking a pill or doing formal therapy. Readers will be empowered to become the hero of their mental wellness journey using tools that work.
Being a winemaker informs Krankl’s work as a psychiatrist, and she cites numerous examples of how winemaking has helped her understanding of mental health. “After years of practicing mindfulness and meditation, it finally clicked. Despite years of psychiatry training, including specialized mindfulness meditation training, it was actually my unexpected second career in winemaking that taught me how to incorporate mindfulness and meditation into my daily life. The winemaking process has reminded me about the importance of spending time outdoors, using your hands and senses, being intentional, and most importantly—being mindful” she says in the book.
She continues, “From sommeliers to novice wine geeks, one of the best parts of enjoying wine is slowing down to evaluate and appreciate the wine in your glass. For most wine lovers, this goes far beyond being an alcoholic beverage and much farther down the path of mindfulness. Perhaps in the chaos of our modern world, we are all searching for a little mindfulness, and many of us are finding this in the slow food movement, gardening, home-cooked meals, sourdough starters, and attentive wine tasting…When you drink wine mindfully, just a few sips can take many minutes and leave you with a profound sense of satisfaction and interest. While I’d never recommend using wine to solve or escape life’s problems, I do believe that the culture around tending to a vineyard, winemaking, and wine tasting naturally involves practicing mindfulness, which is enormously beneficial. Understanding what it took to get the wine in your glass brings a profound sense of gratitude for Mother Nature, the farmer, and the vintner.”
One in six American adults take psychiatric medication and yet, doctors are only allotted twenty-minute appointments that are spaced out by months at a time. This book starts at minute twenty-one and is filled with everything patients wish their doctor had time to explain about mental health. Nearly sixty million American adults struggle with mental illness but half are not receiving any treatment and only a quarter of them have access to psychotherapy. With demand for treatment far outpacing supply, our current mental health crisis requires a new approach that goes beyond the limitations of the health care system.
“Dr. Krankl’s book, The 21st Minute, is, on the surface, about extending psychiatric care beyond the unfortunately brief twenty-minute ‘med visit.’ But it is really about a much broader and deeper topic—how to live a more psychologically healthy life…This is truly a book for everyone—psychiatric patients, mental health professionals, and everyone interested in a more fulfilling life,” says Michael Gitlin, MD, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, co-author of Clinician’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder.
All proceeds from the sale of The 21st Minute will be donated to mental health nonprofits.
