The Best Books About Mental Health And Mental Illness
‘What are the best books about Mental Health and Mental Illness?” We looked at 242 of the top mental health and illness books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question.
We found a wide array of both nonfiction and (mostly) fiction books about mental health and illness in the 22 lists we used in creating this article. All together there were 242 different titles that showed up, 46 of which appeared multiple times. Those top 46 are ranked by the number of times they appear below with images, summaries and links to learn more/purchse. The remaining books that appeare a single time are listed alphabetically at the bottom of the page along with the sources we used.
Happy Scrolling!
Top 46 Mental Health Books
(Fiction & Nonfiction)
46 .) A Historical Reader: The New York Times and Madness, 1851-1922 by William Jiang
Lists It Appears On:
- Mind Body Network
- Mental Health Books
The entire raison d’être for this mental health historical reader of the “paper of record”, The New York Times, is to give the reader a window on the past and to include the reader on a journey of a time long ago. What people come away with when, they see the original articles written by and about Sigmund Freud or his famous “psychanalysis” as well as the many other issues we see in these pages, transports us to another time and place.
45 .) A New Earth: Create a Better Life by Eckhart Tolle
Lists It Appears On:
- Psych Central
- High Existence
With his bestselling spiritual guide The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle inspired millions of readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived “in the now.” In A New Earth, Tolle expands on these powerful ideas to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.
44 .) A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Buzzfeed
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.
43 .) Electroboy by Andy Behrman
Lists It Appears On:
- Masters In Health Care
- Psych Central
Electroboy is an emotionally frenzied memoir that reveals with kaleidoscopic intensity the terrifying world of manic depression. For years Andy Behrman hid his raging mania behind a larger-than-life personality. He sought a high wherever he could find one and changed jobs the way some people change outfits: filmmaker, PR agent, art dealer, stripper-whatever made him feel like a cartoon character, invincible and bright. Misdiagnosed by psychiatrists and psychotherapists for years, his condition exacted a terrible price: out-of-control euphoric highs and tornadolike rages of depression that put his life in jeopardy.
42 .) Fountain House: Portraits of Lives Reclaimed from Mental Illness by Mark Glickman and Mary Flannery
Lists It Appears On:
- Mind Body Network
- Mental Health Books
In Fountain House: Portraits of Lives Reclaimed, twelve Fountain House members and staffers share their personal stories of struggling with the pain and confusion of their illness. Each of these stories highlights the personal challenges faced by people with severe mental illness as well as the successful models they’ve discovered for living with their illness.
41 .) Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life by Melody Moezzi
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Nami
Both an irreverent memoir and a rousing call to action, Haldol and Hyacinths is the moving story of a woman who refused to become a victim. Moezzi reports from the frontlines of an invisible world, as seen through a unique and fascinating cultural lens. A powerful, funny, and moving narrative, Haldol and Hyacinths is a tribute to the healing power of hope and humor.
40 .) Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
Lists It Appears On:
- Buzzfeed
- Book Riot
This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two,” which have been hailed as some of the most insightful meditations on the disease ever written.
39 .) Just Checking: Scenes From the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive by Emily Colas
Lists It Appears On:
- Masters In Health Care
- Buzzfeed
“This raw, darkly comic series of astonishing vignettes is Emily Colas’ achingly honest chronicle of her twisted journey through the obsessive-compulsive disorder that came to dominate her world. In the beginning it was germs and food. By the time she faced the fact that she was really “”losing it,”” Colas had become a slave to her own “”hobbies”” — from the daily hair cutting to incessant inspections of her children’s clothing for bloodstains.
A shocking, hilarious, enormously appealing account of a young woman struggling to gain control of her life, this is Emily Colas’ exposé of a soul tormented, but balanced by a buoyance of spirit and a piercing sense of humor that may be her saving grace.”
38 .) Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk
Lists It Appears On:
- Mind Body Network
- Mental Health Books
Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln’s adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the president’s character and his leadership. Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health from the time he was a young man. Shenk draws from historical record, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of his unhappiness.
37 .) Lucky by Alice Sebold
Lists It Appears On:
- All Womens Talk
- Masters In Health Care
In a memoir hailed for its searing candor and wit, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was utterly transformed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus. What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold’s indomitable spirit-as she struggles for understanding (“After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes”); as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker’s arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hard-won: “You save yourself or you remain unsaved.”
36 .) Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- All Womens Talk
“When Marya Hornbacher published her first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have the piece of shattering knowledge that would finally make sense of the chaos of her life. At age twenty-four, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disorder.
In Madness, in her trademark wry and utterly self-revealing voice, Hornbacher tells her new story. Through scenes of astonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside her own desperate attempts to counteract violently careening mood swings by self-starvation, substance abuse, numbing sex, and self-mutilation. How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madness that all but destroys her, and what it is like to live in a difficult and sometimes beautiful life and marriage — where bipolar always beckons — is at the center of this brave and heart-stopping memoir.”
35 .) Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Lists It Appears On:
- Buzzfeed
- Book Riot
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
34 .) Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Masters In Health Care
Elizabeth Wurtzel writes with her finger in the faint pulse of an overdiagnosed generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain, Xanax, and pierced tongues. In this 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.
33 .) Shadows in the Sun: Healing from Depression and Finding the Light Within by Gayathri Ramprasad
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Nami
This memoir traces Gayathri’s courageous battle with the depression that consumed her from adolescence through marriage and a move to the United States. It was only after the birth of her first child, when her husband discovered her in the backyard “clawing the earth furiously with my bare hands, intent on digging a grave so that I could bury myself alive,” that she finally found help. After a stay in a psych ward she eventually found “the light within,” an emotional and spiritual awakening from the darkness of her tortured mind.
32 .) She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
Lists It Appears On:
- Bustle
- Book Riot
“In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years.
Meet Dolores Price. She’s 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she’s determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.”
31 .) Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry by Jeffrey A. Lieberman and Ogi Ogas
Lists It Appears On:
- Mind Body Network
- Mental Health Books
“Psychiatry has come a long way since the days of chaining “”lunatics”” in cold cells. But, as Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, reveals in his eye-opening book, the path to legitimacy for “”the black sheep of medicine”” has been anything but smooth.
Dr. Lieberman traces the field from its birth as a mystic pseudo-science to its late blooming maturity–beginning after World War II–as a science-driven profession that saves lives. With fascinating case studies and portraits of the field’s luminaries–from Sigmund Freud to Eric Kandel–SHRINKS is a gripping read, and an urgent call-to-arms to dispel the stigma of mental illnesses by treating them as diseases rather than unfortunate states of mind.”
30 .) Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- The Guardian
Based on award-winning author Sonya Sones’s own true story, this novel explores the chilling landscape of mental illness, revealing glimmers of beauty and of hope along the way. Told in a succession of short and powerful poems, it takes us deep into the cyclone of the narrator’s emotions: despair, anger, guilt, resentment, and ultimately, acceptance.
29 .) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Lists It Appears On:
- Sofeminine
- The Better India
“Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.
This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.”
28 .) The Man Who Couldn’t Stop by David Adam
Lists It Appears On:
- Huffington Post
- Book Riot
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. 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. Told with fierce clarity, humor, and urgent lyricism, The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is a haunting story of a personal nightmare that shines a light into the darkest corners of our minds.
27 .) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
Lists It Appears On:
- Five Books
- Huffington Post
Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
26 .) The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Bustle
It’s the early 1980s. In American colleges, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes—the charismatic and intense Leonard Bankhead, and her old friend the mystically inclined Mitchell Grammaticus. As all three of them face life in the real world they will have to reevaluate everything they have learned.
25 .) The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Huffington Post
The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policy makers and politicians, drug designers, and philosophers, Andrew Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease as well as the reasons for hope. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications and treatments, and the impact the malady has on various demographic populations—around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by biological explanations for mental illness. 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. His contribution to our understanding not only of mental illness but also of the human condition is truly stunning.
24 .) The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness by Lori Schiller
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Masters In Health Care
At seventeen Lori Schiller was the perfect child — the only daughter of an affluent, close-knit family. 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. Lori Schiller had entered the horrifying world of full-blown schizophrenia. She began an ordeal of hospitalizations, halfway houses, relapses, more suicide attempts, and constant, withering despair. But against all odds, she survived. Now 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.
23 .) The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Lists It Appears On:
- Buzzfeed
- Book Riot
“One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction—at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.”
22 .) The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- The Brainworm
First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters–beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys–commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family’s fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life.
21 .) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Book Riot
“The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright’s eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his “”charming”” friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison.
Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.”
20 .) Veronika Decides To Die by Paulo Coelho
Lists It Appears On:
- The Better India
- The Brainworm
Twenty-four-year-old Veronika seems to have everything—youth and beauty, boyfriends and a loving family, a fulfilling job. But something is missing in her life. So, one cold November morning, she takes a handful of sleeping pills expecting never to wake up. But she does—at a mental hospital where she is told that she has only days to live.
19 .) All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Sofeminine
- Buzzfeed
“Theodore Finch is fascinated by death. Every day he thinks of ways he might kill himself, but every day he also searches for—and manages to find—something to keep him here, and alive, and awake.
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her small Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school—six stories above the ground— it’s unclear who saves whom. Soon it’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink. . “
18 .) An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Masters In Health Care
- Five Books
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. An Unquiet Mind is a memoir of enormous candor, vividness, and wisdom—a deeply powerful book that has both transformed and saved lives.
17 .) Darkness Visible by William Styron
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Masters In Health Care
- Psych Central
A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron’s true account of his descent into a crippling and almost suicidal depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression’s psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.
16 .) It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
Lists It Appears On:
- Pulse
- Book Riot
- Young Minds
“Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan’s Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life-which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job-Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That’s when things start to get crazy.
At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn’t brilliant compared to the other kids; he’s just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away. The stress becomes unbearable and Craig stops eating and sleeping-until, one night, he nearly kills himself.
Craig’s suicidal episode gets him checked into a mental hospital, where his new neighbors include a transsexual sex addict, a girl who has scarred her own face with scissors, and the self-elected President Armelio. There, isolated from the crushing pressures of school and friends, Craig is finally able to confront the sources of his anxiety.”
15 .) Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Huffington Post
- Bustle
Tracing a day in the life of society hostess Clarissa Dalloway, Virginia Woolf triumphantly discovers her distinctive style as a novelist. First published in 1925, MRS DALLOWAY is her first complete rendering of what Woolf described as the ‘luminous envelope’ of consciousness: a dazzling display of the mind’s inside as it plays over the brilliant surface and darker depths of reality.
14 .) My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind by Scott Stossel
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Huffington Post
- Nami
Drawing on his own longstanding battle with anxiety, Scott Stossel presents a moving and revelatory account of a condition that affects some 40 million Americans. Stossel offers an intimate and authoritative history of efforts by scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand anxiety. We discover the well-known who have struggled with the condition, as well as the afflicted generations of Stossel’s own family. Revealing anxiety’s myriad manifestations and the anguish it causes, he also surveys the countless psychotherapies, medications, and often outlandish treatments that have been developed to relieve it.
13 .) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Lists It Appears On:
- Bustle
- Huffington Post
- Sofeminine
The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children’s voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden’s voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.
12 .) The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Huffington Post
- Bustle
In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The narrative of Woolf’s last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the fictional stories of Samuel, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.
11 .) The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Lists It Appears On:
- Sofeminine
- The Better India
- The Guardian
The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky,Perks follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.
10 .) The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Sofeminine
- Book Riot
First published in 1892, The Yellow WallPaper is written as the secret journal of a woman who, failing to relish the joys of marriage and motherhood, is sentenced to a country rest cure. Though she longs to write, her husband and doctor forbid it, prescribing instead complete passivity. Narrated with superb psychological and dramatic precision, this short but powerful masterpiece has the heroine create a reality of her own within the hypnotic pattern of the faded yellow wallpaper of her bedroom—a pattern that comes to symbolize her own imprisonment.
9 .) Unholy Ghost by Nell Casey
Lists It Appears On:
- Health Central
- Masters In Health Care
- Buzzfeed
Unholy Ghost is a unique collection of essays about depression that, in the spirit of William Styron’s Darkness Visible, finds vivid expression for an elusive illness suffered by more than one in five Americans today. Unlike any other memoir of depression, however, Unholy Ghost includes many voices and depicts the most complete portrait of the illness. Lauren Slater eloquently describes her own perilous experience as a pregnant woman on antidepressant medication. Susanna Kaysen, writing for the first time about depression since Girl, Interrupted, criticizes herself and others for making too much of the illness. Larry McMurtry recounts the despair that descended after his quadruple bypass surgery. Meri Danquah describes the challenges of racism and depression. Ann Beattie sees melancholy as a consequence of her writing life. And Donald Hall lovingly remembers the “moody seesaw” of his relationship with his wife, Jane Kenyon.
8 .) Willow Weep for Me by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah
Lists It Appears On:
- Buzzfeed
- Book Riot
- Book Riot
This moving memoir of an African-American woman’s lifelong fight to identify and overcome depression offers an inspirational story of healing and emergence. Wrapped within Danquah’s engaging account of this universal affliction is rare and insightful testimony about what it means to be black, female, and battling depression in a society that often idealizes black women as strong, nurturing caregivers. 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. Meri Danquah rises from the pages, a true survivor, departing a world of darkness and reclaiming her life.
7 .) Looking for Alaska by John Green
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Penguin Teen
- The Better India
- The Guardian
Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.
6 .) The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Huffington Post
- Sofeminine
- The Better India
Meet Pat Peoples. Pat has a theory: his life is a movie produced by God. And his God-given mission is to become physically fit and emotionally literate, whereupon God will ensure him a happy ending―the return of his estranged wife, Nikki. (It might not come as a surprise to learn that Pat has spent several years in a mental health facility.) The problem is, Pat’s now home, and everything feels off. No one will talk to him about Nikki; his beloved Philadelphia Eagles keep losing; he’s being pursued by the deeply odd Tiffany; his new therapist seems to recommend adultery as a form of therapy. Plus, he’s being haunted by Kenny G!
5 .) Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Penguin Teen
- Sofeminine
- The Guardian
“Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker—his classmate and crush—who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah’s voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out why.
Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes a firsthand witness to Hannah’s pain, and as he follows Hannah’s recorded words throughout his town, what he discovers changes his life forever.”
4 .) Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
Lists It Appears On:
- Masters In Health Care
- Book Riot
- All Womens Talk
- Buzzfeed
A classic of psychology and eating disorders, now reissued with an important, and perhaps controversial, new afterword by the author, Wasted is New York Times bestselling author Marya Hornbacher’s highly acclaimed memoir that chronicles her battle with anorexia and bulimia.
3 .) Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Penguin Teen
- The Guardian
- Book Riot
Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in fragile bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. But then Cassie suffers the ultimate loss-her life-and Lia is left behind, haunted by her friend’s memory and racked with guilt for not being able to help save her. In her most powerfully moving novel since Speak, award-winning author Laurie Halse Anderson explores Lia’s struggle, her painful path to recovery, and her desperate attempts to hold on to the most important thing of all: hope.
2 .) Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- All Womens Talk
- Masters In Health Care
- Sofeminine
- The Better India
Kaysen’s memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a “parallel universe” set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
1 .) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Lists It Appears On:
- Book Riot
- Huffington Post
- Bustle
- Sofeminine
- Buzzfeed
- The Brainworm
Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.
The 196 Additional Mental Illness Books (Fiction & Nonfiction)
| 14 Days of Foreplay | Monica Lieser | Good Therapy |
| 59 Seconds: Think A Little, Change A Lot | Richard Wiseman | High Existence |
| 72 Hour Hold | Bebe Moore Campbell | Book Riot |
| 8 Keys To End Bullying Strategies: For Parents & Schools | Signe Whitson | Nami |
| A Child Called It | Dave Pelzer | Psych Central |
| A Drinking Life | Pete Hamill | Masters In Health Care |
| A Gesture Life | Chang-rae Lee | Buzzfeed |
| A Little Life | Hanya Yanagihara | Book Riot |
| A Mother’s Climb Out Of Darkness: A Story About Overcoming Postpartum Psychosis | Jennifer H. Moyer | Nami |
| A Note of Madness | Tabitha Suzuma | Book Riot |
| A World Without You | Beth Revis | Penguin Teen |
| After a While You Just Get Used To It | Gwendolyn Knapp | Buzzfeed |
| After Birth | Elisa Albert | Buzzfeed |
| All Better Now | Emily Wing Smith | Penguin Teen |
| All the Things We Never Knew: Chasing the Chaos of Mental Illness | Sheila Hamilton | Book Riot |
| Americanah | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Book Riot |
| Anatomy of an Epidemic | Robert Whitaker | Pulse |
| Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves | Laurel Braitman | Good Therapy |
| Any Oliver Sacks Book | Oliver Sacks | Pulse |
| Awakening Kali | T. S. Ghosh | Book Riot |
| BEFORE I DIE | JENNY DOWNHAM | Young Minds |
| Being and Loving | Althea Horner | Psych Central |
| Beloved | Toni Morrison | Book Riot |
| Better Days, A Mental Health Recovery Workbook | Craig Lewis | Friendship Circle |
| Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We’re Not Hurting | Terrie Williams | Nami |
| Bleeding Violet | Dia Reeves | Book Riot |
| Blue Genes | Christopher Lukas | Masters In Health Care |
| Bonds that Make Us Free | C. Terry Warner | Psych Central |
| Boundaries | Henry Cloud and John Townsend | Psych Central |
| Brain Rules – 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School | John Medina | High Existence |
| Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain | Daniel J. Siegel | Good Therapy |
| By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead | Julie Ann Peters | Book Riot |
| Chasing Hope: Navigating the World of the Special Needs Child | Christine Walker | Friendship Circle |
| Chosen by a Horse | Susan Richards | Psych Central |
| Codependent No More | Melody Beattie | Psych Central |
| Constructive Wallowing: How to Beat Bad Feelings by Letting Yourself Have Them | Tina Gilbertson, MA, LPC | Good Therapy |
| Crank | Ellen Hopkins | The Guardian |
| Crazy | Han Nolan y | Book Riot |
| Crazy | Linda Vigen Phillips | The Guardian |
| Dark Nights of the Soul: | Thomas Moore | Health Central |
| Defying Mental Illness 2014 Edition: Finding Recovery with Community Resources and FamilySupport | Paul Komarek and Andrea Schroer | Friendship Circle |
| Dibs in Search of Self | Virginia Axline | Five Books |
| Disturbing the Peace | Richard Yates | Bustle |
| Don’t Panic | R. Reid Wilson | Buzzfeed |
| Dragonfish | Vu Tran | Book Riot |
| Drinking | A Love Story | Masters In Health Care |
| Driven to Distraction | Edward Hallowell and John Ratey. Joyce Marter | Psych Central |
| Em And The Big Hoom | Jerry Pinto | The Better India |
| Emotional Intelligence | Daniel Goleman | Psych Central |
| Every Last Word | Tamara Ireland Stone | Book Riot |
| Everything I Never Told You | Celeste Ng | Book Riot |
| Everything, Everything | Nicola Yoon | Book Riot |
| Facing the Fire | John Lee | Psych Central |
| Fangirl | Rainbow Rowell | Book Riot |
| FAT KID RULES THE WORLD | K.L. GOING | Young Minds |
| Find You in the Dark | A. Meredith Walters | Book Riot |
| Flowers From the Storm | Laura Kinsale | Book Riot |
| Forgive me, Leonard Peacock | Matthew Quick | The Guardian |
| Franny and Zooey | J. D. Salinger | Book Riot |
| Furiously Happy | Jenny Lawson | Book Riot |
| Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder | Rachel Reiland | Book Riot |
| Hamlet | William Shakespeare | Book Riot |
| Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfilment | Tal Ben-Shahar | High Existence |
| Hardcore Zen: | Brad Warner | Health Central |
| Hausfrau | Jill Alexander Essbaum | Buzzfeed |
| Highly Illogical Behavior | John Corey Whaley | Penguin Teen |
| Hold Still | Nina LaCour | Penguin Teen |
| How Proust Can Change Your Life | Alain De Botton | High Existence |
| Hurry Down Sunshine | Micheal Greenberg | Masters In Health Care |
| I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help | Xavier Amador | Nami |
| I Never Promised You a Rose Garden | Joanne Greenberg | Bustle |
| I Was Here | Gayle Forman | Penguin Teen |
| I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN | JANDY NELSON | Young Minds |
| Imagine Me Gone | Adam Haslett | Book Riot |
| Impulse | Ellen Hopkins | Book Riot |
| Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story | Mac McClelland | Buzzfeed |
| Keep Me Still | Caisey Quinn | Book Riot |
| Landmark Cases in Forensic Psychiatry | Elizabeth Ford & Merrill Rotter | Pulse |
| Lay My Burden Down: Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis Among African-Americans | Alvin Poussaint and Amy Alexander | Buzzfeed |
| Leadership and Self-Deception | C. Terry Warner | Psych Central |
| Let the Tornado Come | Rita Zoey Chin | Book Riot |
| Lit | Mary Karr | Buzzfeed |
| Look Straight Ahead | Elaine M. Will | Book Riot |
| Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl | Stacy Pershall | Book Riot |
| Lowboy | John Wray | Huffington Post |
| Made You Up | Francesca Zappia | Book Riot |
| Male Pelvic Fitness: Optimizing Sexual and Urinary Health | Andrew Siegel | Good Therapy |
| Man’s Search for Meaning | Viktor Frankl. | Psych Central |
| Manic: A Memoir | Terri Cheney | Book Riot |
| Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me | Ellen Forney | Book Riot |
| More Happy Than Not | Adam Silvera | Book Riot |
| Mosquitoland | David Arnold | Penguin Teen |
| Musical Chairs | Jen Knox | Masters In Health Care |
| My Heart and Other Black Holes | Jasmine Warga | Book Riot |
| No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society | Five Books | |
| Nobody Is Ever Missing | Catherine Lacey | Buzzfeed |
| Not Alone: Reflections on Faith and Depression | Monica A. Coleman | Book Riot |
| OCD Love Story | Corey Ann Haydu | Buzzfeed |
| On Depression | Nassir Ghaemi | Pulse |
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest | Ken Kesey | The Brainworm |
| Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self | Sara Shandler | Book Riot |
| Ordinary Peopl | Judith Guest | Bustle |
| Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Mental Illness | Rebecca Shannonhouse (ed.) | Book Riot |
| Overcoming Anxiety and Depression on the Autism Spectrum: A Self-Help Guide Using CBT | Lee A. Wilkinson, PhD | Friendship Circle |
| Paperweight | Meg Haston | Book Riot |
| Personality Disorders In Modern Life | Theodore Milton | Pulse |
| Polarity | Max Bemis | Book Riot |
| Portraits of the Mind | Carl Schoonover | Five Books |
| Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories about Mental Illness | Daryl Cunningham | Book Riot |
| Psychobabble: Exploding The Myths of The Self-Help Generation | Stephen Briers | High Existence |
| Psychological Masquerade | Robert Taylor | Pulse |
| Quiet: The Power of Introverts In a World That Can’t Stop Talking | Susan Cain | High Existence |
| Reasons To Stay Alive | Matt Haig | Book Riot |
| Running with Scissors | Augusten Burroughs | Masters In Health Care |
| SAVING DAISY | PHIL EARLE | Young Minds |
| Schizo | Nic Sheff | Penguin Teen |
| SHOOT THE DAMN DOG | All Womens Talk | |
| Sickened | Julie Gregory | Masters In Health Care |
| Skin Game | Caroline Kettlewell | Masters In Health Care |
| Skinny | Donna Cooner | Book Riot |
| Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry | Bebe Moore Campbell | Nami |
| Sparks Off You | Anita Felicelli | Book Riot |
| SPEAK | LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON | Young Minds |
| Stalking Irish Madness | Patrick Tracey | Masters In Health Care |
| Standing In The Shadows: Understanding And Overcoming Depression In Black Men | John Head | Nami |
| STARGIRL | JERRY SPINELLI | Young Minds |
| Still Alice | Lisa Genova | The Brainworm |
| Stop Walking on Eggshells | Paul Mason | Buzzfeed |
| Stranger | Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith | Book Riot |
| Stupid Children | Lenore Zion | The Brainworm |
| Swallow Me Whole | Nate Powell | Book Riot |
| Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide | Darryl “DMC” McDaniels | Book Riot |
| Tender is the Night | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Bustle |
| The 5 Love Languages | Gary Chapman | Psych Central |
| The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook | Edmund J. Bourne | Psych Central |
| The Awakening | Kate Chopin | Book Riot |
| THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING | ROBYN SCHNEIDER | Young Minds |
| The Behavior Code Companion: Strategies, Tools, and Interventions for Supporting Students With Anxiety-Related or Oppositional Behaviors | Jessica Minahan | Friendship Circle |
| The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide | David Miklowitz | Book Riot |
| The Body Keeps the Score | Bessel van der Kolk | Good Therapy |
| The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating | Kiera Van Gelder | Book Riot |
| The Chocolate Debacle | Karen Winters Schwartz | Nami |
| The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives | ed. Vanessa Hazzard | Book Riot |
| The Color Purple | Alice Walker | Book Riot |
| The Consolations of Philosophy | Alain De Botton | High Existence |
| The Dark Side of the Light Chasers | Debbie Ford | Psych Central |
| THE DAY THE VOICES STOPPED | All Womens Talk | |
| The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post | Book Riot | |
| The Fog Of Paranoia: A Sister’s Journey Through Her Brother’s Schizophrenia | Sarah Rae | Nami |
| The Girl From Human Street | Roger Cohen | Nami |
| The Glass Castle | Jeannette Walls | Buzzfeed |
| The Gospel According To Josh: A 28-Year Gentile Bar Mitzvah | Josh Rivedel | Nami |
| The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science | Jonathan Haidt | High Existence |
| The Invisible Front: Love And Loss In An Era Of Endless War | Yochi Dreazen | Nami |
| The Last Time We Said Goodbye | Cynthia Hand | Book Riot |
| The Love That Keeps Us Sane: Living the little way of St. Therese of Lisieux | Health Central | |
| The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie | Jennifer Ashley | Book Riot |
| The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth | Book Riot | |
| The Memory of Light | Francisco X. Stork | Book Riot |
| The Museum of Intangible Things | Wendy Wunder | Book Riot |
| The Nest | Kenneth Oppel | Book Riot |
| The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy | Louis Cozolino | Pulse |
| THE OUTSIDERS | S.E. HINTON | Young Minds |
| The Passion of Alice | Stephanie Grant | Bustle |
| The Power of Now | Eckhart Tolle | Psych Central |
| The Price Of Silence: A Mom’s Perspective On Mental Illness | Liza Long | Nami |
| The Road Less Traveled | M. Scott Peck | Psych Central |
| The Saint’s Guide to Happiness | Robert Ellsberg | Health Central |
| The Salt Eaters | Toni Cade Bambara | Book Riot |
| The Seven Beliefs: A Step-By-Step Guide To Help Latinas Recognize And Overcome Depression | Belisa Lozano-Vranich and Jorge R. Petit | Nami |
| The Surrendered | Chang | Book Riot |
| The Things They Carried | Tim O’Brien | Buzzfeed |
| The Trauma of Everyday Life | Mark Epstein | Good Therapy |
| The Truth about Alice | Jennifer Mathieu | The Guardian |
| The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath | Sylvia Plath | Book Riot |
| The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B | Teresa Toten | Book Riot |
| The Untethered Soul | Michael Singer | Psych Central |
| The Upside of Your Dark Side | Todd Kashdan, PhD, and Robert Biswas-Diener, PhD | Good Therapy |
| Therapy | Kathryn Perez | Book Riot |
| These Gentle Wounds | Helene Dunbar | The Guardian |
| Touched with Fire: Manic | Book Riot | |
| Trauma and Recovery | Judith Lewis Herman | Buzzfeed |
| Tricks of The Mind | Derren Brown | High Existence |
| UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS | All Womens Talk | |
| Unhinged: A Memoir Of Enduring, Surviving And Overcoming Family Mental Illness | Anna Berry | Nami |
| Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry | Daniel Carlat | Pulse |
| What Every Body is Saying | Joe Navarro | Pulse |
| When Rabbit Howls | Truddi Chase | Masters In Health Care |
| When Reason Breaks | Cindy L. Rodriguez | Book Riot |
| When We Collided | Emery Lord | Book Riot |
| Where’d You Go Bernadette | Maria Semple | Sofeminine |
| White Oleander | Janet Fitch | Book Riot |
| Wide Sargasso Sea | Jean Rhys | Book Riot |
| Willow | Julia Hoban | Book Riot |
| WONDER | R.J. PALACIO | Young Minds |
| Your Voice in My Head: A Memoir | Emma Forrest | Huffington Post |
| Your Voice is All I Hear | Leah Scheier | Book Riot |
22 Best Mental Health and Illness Book Sources
