Mental Illness Memoirs

I Am Not Your Baby Mother was a landmark publication in 2020. A thought-provoking, urgent and inspirational guide to life as a Black British mum, it was an important call-to-arms allowing mothers to take control and scrap the parenting rulebook to do it their own way. It was a Sunday Times top-five best seller. Sista Sister is a compilation of essays about all the things Candice wishes someone had talked to her about when she was a young Black girl growing up in London.

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.

From the moment war broke out across Europe in 1914, the world entered a new, unparalleled era of modern warfare. Soldiers faced relentless machine gun shelling, incredible artillery power, flame throwers, and gas attacks. Within the first four months of the war, the British Army recorded the nervous collapse of ten percent of its officers; the loss of such manpower to mental illness left the army unable to fill its ranks. Soldiers Don't Go Mad tells for the first time the story of the soldiers and doctors who struggled with the effects of industrial warfare on the human psyche.

When thirty-five-year-old Sonja Wasden is involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital by her husband and father, she is sure it is a mistake. Wife of a CEO, mother of three, living in a beautiful suburb, Sonja's life appears ideal. How did she get here? In this gripping and breathtaking narrative that makes the listener feel as though they are listening in on a private conversation, Sonja reveals her delusions and battles with mental illness.

From New York Times best-selling author and blogger Heather B. Armstrong comes an honest and irreverent memoir - reminiscent of the New York Times best-seller Brain on Fire - about her experience as one of only a few people to participate in an experimental treatment for depression involving 10 rounds of a chemically induced coma approximating brain death.

An electrifying true story of one young woman's nightmarish descent into the hell of schizophrenia and her courageous battle to rejoin the real world, such is the story of Lori Schiller. Once she had it all - a loving family, devoted friends, intelligence, and opportunity. Then at age 15 she began to suffer from symptoms of schizophrenia, hearing voices that began to take over her life. At 23, she committed herself to a private mental institution and spent the next 7 years waging a war against the voices that urged her to kill her family, her doctor, herself. This account of a journey into and out of madness is at once gripping, heartening, and ultimately triumphant.

A scorching memoir of a love affair with an addict, weaving personal reckoning with psychology and history to understand the nature of addiction, codependency, and our appetite for obsessive love. "The disease he has is addiction," Nina Renata Aron writes of her boyfriend, K. "The disease I have is loving him."

If Naomi had picked tails, she would have won the coin toss. She wouldn't have had to go back for the yearbook camera, and she wouldn't have hit her head on the steps. She wouldn't have woken up in an ambulance with amnesia. She certainly would have remembered her boyfriend, Ace. She might even have remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place. She would understand why her best friend, Will, keeps calling her "Chief".

When I was 13 months old, I sat in the backseat of my parents’ Chevy Impala, on the way to my father’s first of many stays in a mental institution. Soon after, he was diagnosed with Bi-Polar I disorder, a severe mental illness that would shape our family’s life. His outbursts were unpredictable, confusing, and often violent. As difficult as that was, it was only the beginning of my story.

In Let's Pretend This Never Happened, Jenny Lawson regaled listeners with uproarious stories of her bizarre childhood. In Furiously Happy, she explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. And terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.

From battling a devastating childhood illness to unearthing untold trauma, this healing memoir is one of resilience and transformation.

In his early 20s, Nick Griemsmann was diagnosed with an incurable mental illness called schizophrenia. With little hope for the future, Nick turned to his faith. After his full recovery, Nick worked as an administrator at the very same behavioral health care provider where he was once a patient. Defeating Mental Illness is an encouraging true story to help you and your loved ones. Inside, you will find valuable insights, tools, and tips that may help you and/or someone you care about move forward in recovery.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, as one judge described her, as "a coldly calculated criminal recidivist and serial killer." She had experienced a lifetime of murder, mayhem, and mental illness. She killed two boyfriends, including one whose body was stuffed in a freezer. And she was convicted in one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's strangest cases: the Pizza Bomber case, in which a pizza deliveryman died when a bomb locked to his neck exploded after he robbed a bank in 2003 near Erie, Pennsylvania, Diehl-Armstrong's hometown.

Plagued by depression her entire life, it wasn’t until her early 50s that writer and book critic Bethanne Patrick, advocating for her own care, received a medical diagnosis that would set her on the path to wellness and stability. Recognizing the intergenerational effects of trauma and mental health struggles, Patrick unearths the stories of her past in order to forge a better future for herself and her two daughters, dismantling the stigmas surrounding mental health challenges that can plague families into silence and resignation.

Those in uniform keep our world safe and often pay a high price for fulfilling their duty mentally and emotionally. Retired Sergeant Eric Weaver can attest to this, as he lives with mental illness and struggled with the issue of suicide on numerous occasions, including multiple hospitalizations, while serving as a police sergeant. In Overcoming the Darkness, he gives a raw accounting of his own experiences coupled with knowledge and pragmatic advice gained from 20 years of instructing literally thousands in law enforcement about mental illness, substance use, PTSD, and suicide.

Twenty-seven-year-old Sarah Thebarge had it all - a loving boyfriend, an Ivy League degree, and a successful career - when her life was derailed by an unthinkable diagnosis: aggressive breast cancer. After surviving the grueling treatments - though just barely - Sarah moved to Portland, Oregon, to start over. There, a chance encounter with an exhausted African mother and her daughters transformed her life again.

Despite all her best efforts to break the cycle of catastrophic, destructive patterns of mental illness, Anna Berry found herself at the end of her rope - unemployed, penniless, homeless, and in the throes of a psychotic episode that threatened to destroy her life. Alone and unwell, she manages to find her grip on life, seeks the help she needs, and embarks on a life and career that illustrate that mental illness does not have to be ruinous.

From Beneath the Ice is more than a book, it is a triumph of the human spirit. Todd’s mind was hijacked, but he slowly took the helm and charted a new course. It was a difficult process for him to write this book, but in the end, it was empowering. Publishing was even harder, knowing that his darkest moments would be ‘out there’ for the world to see. He knew his primary focus was to help people and contribute to ending the stigma about mental illness. To do this, he had to be more courageous than he had ever been.

Susan Doherty's groundbreaking book brings us a population of lost souls, ill-served by society, feared, shunted from locked wards to rooming houses to the streets to jail and back again. For the past ten years, some of the people who cycle in and out of the severely ill wards of the Douglas Institute in Montreal have found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the ward, and then follows her friends out into the world as they struggle to get through their days. With their full cooperation, she brings us their stories, which challenge the ways we think about people with mental illness.

In Sweden, refugee children fall asleep for months and years at a time. In Upstate New York, high school students develop contagious seizures. In the US embassy in Cuba, employees complain of headaches and memory loss after hearing strange noises in the night. These disparate cases are some of the most remarkable diagnostic mysteries of the 21st century, as both doctors and scientists have struggled to explain them within the boundaries of medical science and—more crucially—to treat them.