Mental Health Memoir

In 2002, at age 28, David MacLean woke up in a foreign land with his memory wiped clean. No money. No passport. No identity. Taken to a mental hospital by the police, MacLean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. Soon he could remember song lyrics and scenes from television shows but not his family, his friends, or the woman he loved. All of these symptoms, it turned out, were the result of the commonly prescribed malarial medication he was taking. Upon hisreturn to the States, he struggled to piece together the fragments of his former life in a harrowing, absurd, and unforgettable journey back to himself.

By the time he was twenty-two years old, goaltender Corey Hirsch had realized his childhood dream of playing in the NHL, won an Olympic medal and drunk from the Stanley Cup. While he excelled on the ice, out of the net Hirsch was plagued by persistent dark thoughts and ceaseless anxiety. On days when he could barely get out of bed, he was able to push aside the endless loop of dark thoughts running inside his brain long enough to win a game. But as soon as he got back home, the agonizing cycle started all over again.

The journey of a man, father, and sailor, Anchored in Resilience: Overcoming Adversity through Mental Health Awareness is the true story of adventures, lessons, and growth as seen through the eyes of a boy looking for love, a young man looking for answers, and an adult yearning to inspire. Author and Navy veteran Amaury Ponciano shares vulnerable truths, revelations, and experiences from over twenty years of Naval service. Anchored in Resilience is a memoir of healing—because healing starts with understanding our wounds.

We all know girls develop differently to boys during puberty but, shockingly, pro coaches fail to adapt training to their bodies. Girls develop eating disorders, RED-S and amenorrhea; they're also likely to be emotionally and physically abused; and in their careers with sponsors like Nike, they're underpaid and misrepresented. Lauren Fleshman—one of the fastest American women runners—explores scientific and social research while telling her own story in a bold, energetic voice.

Maggie Newcomb had not just one, but three serious mental breakdowns, and in Chocolate Pudding in Heaven, she takes you along on her candid journey from chaos and madness to stability and joy. Diagnosed with bipolar I disorder in her teens, Maggie cleverly reveals the mystery of the human brain as she recounts her last manic episode that began in amazing bliss, and then destroyed the life she had worked so hard to create. After being hospitalized and medicated, she is thrown back into reality, left to pick up the pieces of her broken life.

"Why aren't you angry?" people often asked Martin Moran after he told his story of how he came to forgive the man who sexually abused him as a boy. At first the question pissed him off. Then it began to haunt him. Why didn't he have more anger? Why had he never sought redress for the crime committed against him? Was his fury hidden, buried? Was he not man enough? Here he was, an adult in midlife, with an established acting career, a husband. A life. And yet the question of rage began to obsess him.

Rose Cartwright reveals how the failure of the mental health system to cure her OCD led her to radical action. While she explored her trauma through a series of mind-bending psychedelic trips, Rose started to interrogate our dominant medical paradigm. What if people’s intense distress is not a symptom of illness, but a desperate expression of our need for love and connection? Rose set out on a quest to draw a new map of mental health, interviewing experts in psychiatry and neuroscience along the way: what she discovered will have implications for generations to come.

After her mother, Brenda, passed away and her father sold the family home, broadcaster and writer Emma Kennedy found herself floundering, unable to make peace with the complex, charismatic woman who had been her mum. And then they found the letters. This heartbreakingly funny book about the impact of discovering lost letters is a celebration of correspondence; those lost acts of penned love, the vivid snapshots in time scattered back through a life.

In 2012 Melissa Broder went through a harrowing cycle of panic attacks and dread, so she began @SoSadToday, an anonymous Twitter feed that allowed her to express her darkest feelings and which quickly gained a dedicated following. In So Sad Today, Broder delves deeper into existential themes, from eating disorders, drug addiction and unusual fetishes to love, death and the drama of waiting for the universe to text you back.

Amy Jo Burns grew up in Mercury, Pennsylvania, an industrial town humbled by the steel collapse of the 1980s. Instead of the construction booms and twelve-hour shifts her parents’ generation had known, the Mercury Amy Jo knew was marred by empty houses, old strip mines, and vacant lots. The year Burns turned ten, this sleepy town suddenly woke up. Howard Lotte, its beloved piano teacher, was accused of sexually assaulting his female students.

Marine Sgt. John Peck survived an IED during the War on Terror that left him with a traumatic brain injury, amnesia, and cost him his marriage. He survived another three years later, one that left him with three and a half limbs missing. He’s one of only two living people to survive the flesh-eating fungus he contracted in recovery at Walter Reed, one that left him as a quadruple amputee. And that’s only the beginning of his story. What followed was a recovery nothing short of miraculous.

Born in London, in 1889, Charlie Chaplin grew up in dire poverty. Both his parents were in show business, but severe alcoholism cut short his father's flourishing career, and his beloved mother first lost her voice, then lost her mind to syphilis. Charlie, at age seven, was committed to the Hanwell School for Orphans and Destitute Children. How then did this poor, lonely child become such an extraordinary comedian, known and celebrated worldwide? Chaplin cut his teeth in British music halls, but it was America that made him.

For writer and human rights advocate Amanda Jetté Knox, the inspiring story of her family’s journey of love and acceptance, when both her child and partner came out as transgender one after the other, was the hopeful beginning to their new lives. Their tale, shared in her memoir Love Lives Here and embraced by readers everywhere, quickly found its way to the top of bestseller lists.

This workbook is more than just a writing guide—it's a roadmap to self-understanding and personal growth. Turn your memories into memoir, your pain into prose, and your experiences into a testament of resilience. Your story matters—it's time to tell it. In this compassionate and practical guide, Sarah Small, lawyer, author and memoirist, leads you on a profound journey of self-discovery and healing through the art of memoir writing.

Would you like to find out how to avoid being manipulated by people you trusted? If your answer to this question is yes, then keep reading to find out more. Human beings have the unique capacity to alter their environment to suit their needs. This capacity to alter the environment can be stretched as far as manipulating others to inadvertently do their bidding. This poses a significant threat to the much-treasured freedoms that ought to be enjoyed by all without external influence.

A unique joint memoir by a US marine and a conflict photographer whose unlikely friendship helped both heal their war-wounded bodies and souls.

Longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize: In this piercing memoir, Roméo Dallaire, retired general and former senator, the author of the bestsellers Shake Hands with the Devil and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children, and one of the world's leading humanitarians, delves deep into his life since the Rwandan genocide. At the heart of Waiting for First Light is a no-holds-barred self-portrait of a top political and military figure whose nights are invaded by despair, but who at first light faces the day with the renewed desire to make a difference in the world.

As the recent tragedies in Oregon, Arkansas, and Colorado Have shown, children as young as eight years old are capable of murder and violence. No community is safe from this tragic phenomenon, and experts ranging from law enforcement officials to guidance counselors are confused and conflicted about how to approach it.

Sam Delaney was Jack the Lad. He was confident, loud and funny; an absolute legend, to be honest. Or at least that was what he pretended to be. But when he reached his thirties, work, relationships and fatherhood started to take their toll. Like so many blokes who seemed to be totally fine, he often felt like a complete failure whose life was out of control; anxiety and depression had secretly plagued him for years. Turning to drink and drugs only made things worse.

Chronicling her childhood of abuse, her diagnosis of BPD in her twenties, and her ultimate road to recovery, Born Under the Gaslight is a memoir like none you have ever listened to before. Offering a rare and insightful glimpse into the inner struggles of someone who lives with BPD, Born Under the Gaslight is a must-listen for therapists, others living with BPD, and anyone wanting to understand the complexities of BPD and how to offer practical and emotional support.