At the late age of twenty-eight and after nineteen rejections, he is finally accepted to Harvard Medical School, where he gains purpose, a life, and some control over his condition. It begins at a posh New England prep school—and with a prescription for the Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin. Flagrantly manic and terrified that medications would cause her to lose creativity, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability while retaining her passions and creativity. Her memoir, about chronic pain and search for a cure, is a must-read. Pierce-Baker traces the evolution of her son’s illness and, in looking back, realizes she mistook warning signs for typical child and teen behavior. The lessons I have learned are not limited to race, gender, or sexual orientation. At age twenty-five, he was pursuing a postgraduate degree and seemingly in control of his life. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. “Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The perspectives of his three children, his spouse, and his own distorted reality combine to offer readers a glimpse of a world that will either feel hauntingly familiar or mind-boggling. Through therapy, he’s figuring out how to get over the irrational fears that won’t take him anywhere positive. In the words of the distinguished psychologist Carol Gilligan, ‘It brings a stunningly perceptive voice into the forefront of the conversation about depression, one that is both reassuring and revelatory. The heady thrill of meeting with her psychiatrist, Dr. Adam N. Kohl―whose relationship with Cree is at once sustaining and paralyzing―comes to be the only bright spot in her days. Autobiography usually doesn’t involve a person’s inner life as much or emotional journey, as a memoir does. For most of that time, she didn’t know why. Lee kept a journal during her recovery, and wrote a viral essay about it for BuzzFeed. Sifting through the scraps of her past in seventeen formally inventive chapters, Washuta aligns the strictures of her Catholic school education with Cosmopolitan’s mandates for womanhood, views memories through the distorting lens of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and contrasts her bipolar highs and lows with those of Britney Spears and Kurt Cobain. Not a mental health memoir per-say, but this book provides an honest account from a survivor regarding trauma and mental health issues following sexual abuse. Mental health memoirs offer an eye-opening look at the lives of the mentally ill and those around them. From the Condé Nast building to seedy nightclubs, from doctors’ offices and mental hospitals, Marnell “treads a knife edge between glamorizing her own despair and rendering it with savage honesty.…with the skill of a pulp novelist” (The New York Times Book Review) what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can’t say no.” (Amazon). A powerful, funny, and moving narrative, Haldol and Hyacinths is a tribute to the healing power of hope and humor.” (Amazon). We discover the well-known who have struggled with the condition, as well as the afflicted generations of Stossel’s own family. Goodreads users have selected these as the best autobiographical tales. Ultimately a tribute to the small, daily, and positive parts of a life interrupted by bipolar disorder, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So is a wise, unsentimental, and inspiring book that will resonate with generations of readers.” (Amazon). In this riveting and intimate blend of science, history, and memoir, Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind and explains how they drive millions of us toward obsession and compulsion. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot’s mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father―an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist―who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember is Lee’s memoir about recovering from her stroke—and what came next. Here Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication. is a hilarious, raw, and unforgettable account of how a terrified young woman, literally trapped by her own imagination, evolved into a (relatively) high-functioning professional smartass.” (Amazon), “Winner of The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Grace Talusan’s memoir The Body Papers bravely explores her experiences with sexual abuse, depression, cancer, and life as a Filipino immigrant, supplemented with government documents, medical records, and family photos.” (Amazon). Since we care about all kinds of recovery, we wanted to emphasize that drugs and alcohol are not the only ways that women suffer and not everyone recovers through a 12-Step program. Revealing how even the most successful people can suffer from depression, DMC offers inspiration for everyone in pain—information and insight that he hopes can help save other lives.” (Amazon). Moezzi reports from the frontlines of an invisible world, as seen through a unique and fascinating cultural lens. . Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn’t exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. As she confronts the realities of her diagnosis, she opens up to the love that seems to have found her at an inopportune moment.” (Amazon). In Mental, Lowe shares and investigates her story of episodic madness, as well as the stability she found while on lithium. Being anxious doesn’t serve the same purpose anymore. When Susannah Cahalan was 24, she woke up strapped to a hospital bed unable to move or speak, and with no memory of what had happened. ... Davies was 51 when he finally went to the police, by which time his father’s ill health meant he would never stand trial. In (Don’t) Call Me Crazy, thirty-three actors, athletes, writers, and artists offer essays, lists, comics, and illustrations that explore a wide range of topics: their personal experiences with mental illness, how we do and don’t talk about mental health, help for better understanding how every person’s brain is wired differently, and what, exactly, might make someone crazy.” (Amazon), “In her bestselling memoir, Brooke Shields shares with the world her deeply personal experience with postpartum depression, When Brooke Shields welcomed her newborn daughter to the world, her joyful expectations were quickly followed by something unexpected–a crippling depression. This literary memoir takes readers from her childhood in India where depression is thought to be a curse to life in America where she eventually finds the light within by drawing on both her rich Hindu heritage and Western medicine to find healing.” (Amazon). Six years later she made her first suicide attempt, then wandered the streets of New York City dressed in ragged clothes, tormenting voices crying out in her mind. Foster care, sexual abuse, and overwhelming insecurity defined her early years. “With candor and humor, a manic-depressive Iranian-American Muslim woman chronicles her experiences with both clinical and cultural bipolarity. And with memoir, there’s a lot more leeway as to how you might tell the story. A creative guy who enjoyed being at home alone or with his family, DMC turned to alcohol to numb himself, a retreat that became an addiction. The wife, children, and extended family of ‘Joseph,’ lacking an understanding of his condition, are left to deal with his upsetting transformation. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. “As one third of the legendary rap group Run D.M.C., Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniels—aka Legendary MC, The Devastating Mic Controller, and the King of Rock—had it all: talent, money, fame, prestige. Susanna Kaysen, writing for the first time about depression since Girl, Interrupted, criticizes herself and others for making too much of the illness. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. Grubbs ended up donating her own kidney to her now-husband, and throughout the process witnessed first-hand many racial disparities that African-American patients and donors face. “Silver Award recipient of IBPA’s prestigious Benjamin Franklin book award in the category of psychology, Losing Dad, Paranoid Schizophrenia: A Family’s Search for Hope is the compelling true story of a family’s struggle with the sudden onset of their father’s severe mental illness. That’s what happened to critical care physician Rana Awdish. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esmé Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the “collected schizophrenias” but to those who wish to understand it as well. He also provides essential information on resources for getting help. As soon as I heard about Grubbs’ book, I added it to my reading list. By age nine, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school while watching The Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. “‘Despair is always described as dull,’ writes Daphne Merkin, ‘when the truth is that despair has a light all its own, a lunar glow, the color of mottled silver.’ This Close to Happy―Merkin’s rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression―captures this strange light. From her days as a thirteen-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall’s journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.” (Amazon), “David Adam―an editor at Nature and an accomplished science writer―has suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences. So much more than a self-portrait, they lay bare the stories we didn't even know we needed to hear. Saks discusses frankly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, the voices in her head telling her to kill herself (and to harm others), as well as the incredibly difficult obstacles she overcame to become a highly respected professional. passionate?—to different people. When you buy through these links, Book Riot may earn a commission. Searching to make sense of the popular concept of the crazy artist, she finds inspiration from the lives and work of other artists and writers who suffered from mood disorders, including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O’Keeffe, William Styron, and Sylvia Plath. Stossel vividly depicts anxiety’s human toll—its crippling impact, its devastating power to paralyze. Lacing Bob’s narrative with chapters providing greater contextualization, Sandy also shares background information about their family, the culturally explosive time and place of their uncle’s formative years, and the vitally important questions surrounding schizophrenia and mental healthcare in America more broadly. In this way the reader is able to viscerally experience the incredible speeding highs of mania and the crushing blows of depression, just as Cheney did. “At seventeen Lori Schiller was the perfect child-the only daughter of an affluent, close-knit family. She didn’t experience any “typical” stroke symptoms like a slurred speech, or drooping on one side of her face, so it took her a couple of days to seek medical attention—and months to recover. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve. Part memoir, part informational, chronically ill contributors from all backgrounds have literally poured their blood, sweat and tears into sharing their experiences and best advice. And you should consider reading them. Ironically, Charlamagne’s fear of failure—of falling into the life of stagnation or crime that caught up so many of his friends and family in his hometown of Moncks Corner—has been the fuel that has propelled him to success. A hair-raising stint in ‘The Mental Marriott,’ with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. In this personal account, she tells how she did it, taking us not only into her own shattered world, but drawing on the words of the doctors who treated her and family members who suffered with her.” (Amazon), “Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and step into a netherworld where up is down and food is greed, where death is honor and flesh is weak? Her crisis of American Indian identity bleeds into other areas of self-doubt; mental illness, sexual trauma, ethnic identity, and independence become intertwined. We see the world as Cree did―turned upside down, the richness of life muted and dulled, its pleasures perverted. I’ve been a fan of Janet Mock since…forever. On the outside she was thin and blond, glamorous and successful. Blood, Bones and … Larry McMurtry recounts the despair that descended after his quadruple bypass surgery. Her bewilderment about this sudden loss of control is magnified by the intensity of her feelings for Nico, a French soldier she met in Port-au-Prince and with whom she connected instantly and deeply. She begins to probe the depths of her illness, exploring our culture’s history with PTSD, delving into the latest research by the country’s top scientists and therapists, and spending time with veterans and their families. Built on the bones of fundamental identity questions as contorted by a distressed brain, My Body Is a Book of Rules pulls no punches in its self-deprecating and ferocious look at human fallibility.” (Amazon), “My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is an honest and heartfelt look at one young woman’s exploration of her sexuality, mental well-being, and growing up in our modern age. Recounting this series of hospitalizations, as well as her visits to myriad therapists and psychopharmacologists, Merkin fearlessly offers what the child psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz calls ‘the inside view of navigating a chronic psychiatric illness to a realistic outcome.’ The arc of Merkin’s affliction is lifelong, beginning in a childhood largely bereft of love and stretching into the present, where Merkin lives a high-functioning life and her depression is manageable, if not ‘cured.’ ‘The opposite of depression,’ she writes with characteristic insight, ‘is not a state of unimaginable happiness . Her famous memoir of her bouts with depression and skirmishes with drugs, Prozac Nation is a witty and sharp account of the psychopharmacology of an era for readers of Girl, Interrupted and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.” (Amazon). It wasn’t until I went to group therapy that I really understood the power of finding solidarity and understanding with other members of the mentally ill community. Then in 2009 Bob mailed Sandy his autobiography. When Terese Mailhot was hospitalized and diagnosed with PTSD and bipolar II disorder, someone gave her a notebook where she could record all her thoughts. She grew up poor and hungry in the inner city. When Awdish was seven months pregnant, a benign tumor in her liver ruptured, causing massive blood loss, multi-organ failure, a stroke, and a miscarriage. “Comedian, writer, blogger, radio and podcast host, and YouTube sensation, Sara Benincasa bravely and outrageously brings us ‘Dispatches from My Bedroom’ with Agorafabulous! Daphne Merkin has been hospitalized three times: first, in grade school, for childhood depression; years later, after her daughter was born, for severe postpartum depression; and later still, after her mother died, for obsessive suicidal thinking. She interviews scientists, psychiatrists, and patients to examine how effective lithium really is and how its side effects can be dangerous for long-term users—including Lowe, who after twenty years on the medication suffers from severe kidney damage. Start 2021 with a brand new reading tracker, inspired by the Bullet Journal. Not since Saint Augustine cried, ‘Give me chastity, Lord-but not yet!’ has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity. Happy reading! Losing Dad poignantly shows the effects of inadequate treatment for those living with a severe mental illness in America.” (Amazon), “Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. Her memoir details the long, complicated path to her diagnosis—and what happened next. But when she attempted suicide and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, there were no flowers. Personal narratives matter—whether they come in the form of a published book, an Instagram post, a series of Tweets, a viral essay, or something else entirely. This Fragile Life weaves a fascinating story of mental illness, race, family, the drive of African Americans to succeed, and a mother’s love for her son.” (Amazon). A crucial book for all those who might sometimes feel at war with themselves or their bodies. “Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Susannah tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.” (Amazon). Kimberley Rae Miller grew up hiding her parents’ hoarding from her friends and acquaintances, and her memoir details exactly what that was like. Listed in no particular order, and never meant to discount the brave contributions of other writers, the following 20 reads make a great place to start learning about mental illness from a first-person perspective. A startlingly honest, elegantly rendered depiction of depression, Willow Weep for Me calls out to all women who suffer in silence with a life-affirming message of recovery. A story of survival, pain, and transformation, Sick candidly examines the colossal impact of illness on one woman’s life by not just highlighting the failures of a broken medical system but by also boldly challenging our concept of illness narratives.” (Amazon). Here, 16 must-read health memoirs. As the year draws to a close, a number of authors and publishers are welcoming 2021 with a slew of new novels and memoirs for avid book lovers around the world. Lorde writes about the importance of her support system, and her complicated feelings about post-surgical counseling and using a prosthetic breast. We say: Tara Westover's compelling coming-of-age memoir was a popular fixture on "Book of the Year" lists back in 2018, from The Guardian to The New York Times, The Economist and Vogue.Documenting her escape from a strict Mormon household in Idaho, Educated is an inspiring ode to the power of education and self-determination. SELF may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. “To understand mental health, we need to talk openly about it. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Elizabeth Ward, the Chief of Psychiatry for Correctional Health Services in New York City, wrote this book about life inside the forensic psychiatry unit of Bellevue Hospital. Written with an acute understanding of the ways in which her condition has evolved as well as affected those around her, This Close to Happy is an utterly candid coming-to-terms with an illness that many share but few talk about, one that remains shrouded in stigma. With uncommon humanity, candor, wit and erudition, award-winning author Solomon takes readers on a journey of incomparable range and resonance into the most pervasive of family secrets. At twenty-six, Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America—and that’s all most people knew about her. in cultural anthropology... Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life, In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope, Hundreds of Interlaced Fingers: A Kidney Doctor's Search for the Perfect Match, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, Sometimes Amazing Things Happen: Heartbreak and Hope on the Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Prison Ward, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More, The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying, All in My Head: An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, and Only Slightly Enlightening Headache. It is a thoughtful meditation on how doctors can empathize with patients, and,! Book Riot may earn a commission jump into another life and death gives voice to stories... That came in the form of three pink pills—lithium infographics on her bedroom wall a must-read can... 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