Mental Illness Memoirs

In her stirring, vulnerable new memoir, Karena Dawn reveals what it was like to grow up with a mother suffering from severe mental health issues, and how, during her teenage years, she desperately tried to escape her own inner demons. Addicted to pain-numbing drugs and crippled by severe depression, Karena learned how to use grief as a teacher, releasing herself from guilt and shame and finding the inner strength to go from abandonment to forgiveness, from hopelessness to healing.

Following the death of her husband, Hilda Mahaney Tucker begins a lifelong battle with mental illness. Her son. only fifteen-years-old when he first witnesses the onset of his mother's paranoia, tells the story of her rollercoaster life of isolation, electroshock therapy and psychopharmacology, laced with periods of peace and tranquility.

Scheier’s mother Judith was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—a violent and abusive liar whose hold on reality was shaky at best. On an uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room to tell her two important things.

A case study of millennial addiction that challenges society, values, rules and norms regarding relationships, sex, drugs and alcohol. Lock in and listen while generational stories are told to understand the onset of mental illness and the struggle of defending against addiction while trying to find purpose. From the top of potential to rock bottom reality, experience the highs and lows of recovery as surrender is accepted and a soul is found.

When Robert Hine's daughter, Elene, first showed signs of unhappiness as a little girl, no one dreamed she would grow up to have a serious personality disorder. As an early baby boomer, Elene reached adolescence and young womanhood in the midst of the counterculture years. Her father, a respected professor of American history at the University of California, shares the story of his family's struggle to keep Elene on track and functional, to see her through her troubles with delusions and medication, and eventually to help her raise her own children.

As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over 20 years. It Didn't Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms.

When her husband, Alan, is injured in a speedboat accident, Cathy Crimmins reluctantly assumes the role of caregiver and learns to cope with the person he has become. No longer the man who loved obscure Japanese cinema and wry humor, Crimmins’ husband has emerged from the accident a childlike and unpredictable replica of his former self with a short attention span and a penchant for inane cartoons. Where Is the Mango Princess? is a breathtaking account that explores the very nature of personality - and the complexities of the heart.

The Bahamas is a 700-island nation off the coast of Florida, home to 400,000 inhabitants. I grew up there and lived a charmed life: we had a mansion on an acre of land with 270-degree ocean views, a maid, a gardener and a boat. I went to the best school on the island of Nassau, was skippering sunfish boats from the age of 7 and had a happy circle of friends. But I also had early signs of a mood disorder. When the offshore banking crisis of the late 1980s pushed us out of our idyllic paradise, my family and I relocated to Florida, a move that exacerbated my mood disorder at the start of high...

Spiritual teacher Michael A. Singer explores the question of human identity and shows how the development of consciousness can enable us all to dwell in the present moment and achieve happiness and self-realization.

As a research neuroscientist, Lise Eliot has made the study of the human brain her life's work. But it wasn't until she was pregnant with her first child that she became intrigued with the study of brain development. She wanted to know precisely how the baby's brain is formed, and when and how each sense, skill, and cognitive ability is developed. And most importantly, she was interested in finding out how her role as a nurturer can affect this complex process.

With heart-racing urgency and unflinching honesty, Jenkins takes you inside the grips of addiction and the desperate decisions it breeds. She is a born storyteller who lived an incredible story, from blackmail by an ex-boyfriend to a soul-shattering deal with a drug dealer, and her telling brims with suspense and unexpected wit. But the true surprise is her path to recovery. Tiffany breaks through the stigma and silence to offer hope and inspiration to anyone battling the disease - whether it’s a loved one or themselves.

An essential resource designed to help partners of people with bipolar disorder mend strained relationships, negotiate episodic crises, survive the turbulence manic behavior may cause, and more.

Called "a masterpiece" by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This program contains all three volumes of her memoirs.

Letters to Carol were written to make it easier for me to face my abusers and to move on with my life. Glenda Bixler is indeed right. This book is a non-fiction memoir, a true-life story of one woman's harrowing abuse. In elementary school, during the late 1960s, classmates called me "The Blob." My mother made fun of me. She imitated my looks for my siblings while she disassociated me from my real name. With the early loss of my beloved grandmother, I had no protection from my brother's abuse, which hurt me primarily on multiple levels. One day, inside my bedroom closet, I developed ...

As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken (in the Best Possible Way), Jenny brings listeners along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way. With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it.

Carrie Cantwell grew up with an unstable father who suffered from manic depression. His emotional absence left her wounded and yearning for his affection. To make matters worse, she struggled with inexplicable mood swings of her own. As a child, she was hyperactive and attention-seeking. By her twenties she was engaging in reckless behavior to quiet her inner demons. When Carrie was 24, her father died by suicide, and she was hit with her first major depressive episode. When she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, her heart sank. It felt like a death sentence. At age 38 and in a failing, ...

Serious in part, yet at times humorous, Gently Dented chronicles what it is like living with a severe mental disorder. Each chapter explores the various trials of living with an abnormal mind. With absolute truth and conviction, Meaghan Hilary attempts to meet, head on, the challenges of describing the personal and social experiences of being a bipolar schizophrenic. Gently Dented is Meaghan Hilary's written account of living with hallucinations, paranoia, grand delusions, mixed episodes, mania, and depression. It is a peek into the mind of a bipolar schizophrenic. Now with a new afterword ...

Richard Carlson Jr. was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 21 years of age. His illness first manifested when he was an early adolescent. Modern psychiatry greatly failed Richard for over a decade. Then, after an incident involving the police, he truly understood that his diagnosis was real, and finally began the long process of recovery. Over 10 years later, his life is greatly improved. In the course of his treatment, Richard also recovered from depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and lethargy.

In this poignant memoir that is both laugh-out-loud funny and sniffle inducing, Clint Edwards explores his lifelong struggle with mental illness in the shadow of his father's battle with the opioid epidemic and his mother's undiagnosed mental illness. From being diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, to finding love, marriage, and having children, Clint explores what it means to find a healthy and balanced life with mental illness as your copilot.

After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises. The girl calls herself Ursa, and she claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles.