Mental Health Memoirs

Reading memoirs can help you begin to heal and thrive again. 

Andy Behrman (2002): Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania (public library)

Sara Benincasa (2012): Agorafabulous!: Dispatches from My Bedroom

Nellie Bly (1887): Ten Days in A Mad-House: Illustrated and Annotated: A First-Hand Account of Life At Bellevue Hospital on Blackwell’s Island in 1887

Susannah Cahalan (2013): Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Terri Cheney (2009): Manic: A Memoir

Clyde Dee (2015): Fighting for Freedom in America: Memoir of a “Schizophrenia” and Mainstream Cultural Delusions

Patty Duke (1997): Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive Illness (first published in 1992)

Patty Duke (2011): Call Me Anna (first published in 1987)

Nick Flynn (2004): Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. A Memoir

Ellen Forney (2012): Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir

Emma Forrest (2012): Your Voice in My Head: A Memoir

Roxanne Gay (2017): Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

Emma Goude (2020) My Beautiful Psychosis – Making Sense of Madness

Suzy Favor Hamilton (2016): Fast Girl: A Life Spent Running from Madness

Stephan Hinshaw (2017): Another Kind of Madness: A Journey Through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness

Marya Hornbacher (2009): Madness: A Bipolar Life

Marya Hornbacher (2009): Wasted Updated Edition: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (first published in 1998)

Siri Hustvedt (2010): The Shaking Woman or a History of My Nerves

Kay Redfield Jamison (2009): An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (first published in 1995)

Susanna Kaysen (2000): Girl, Interrupted

Amy Liptrot (2018): The Outrun

Eleanor Longden (2013): Learning from the Voices in My Head (TED Books Book 39)

Carmen Maria Machado’ (2019): In the Dream House: A Memoir

Terese Marie Mailhot (2019): Heart Berries

Zack McDermott (2017): Gorilla and the Bird: A memoir of madness and a mother’s love

Channel Miller (2109): Know My Name

Melody Moezzi (2014): Haldol and Hyacintas: A Bipolar Life

Katinka Blackford Newman (2016): The Pill That Steals Lives: One Woman’s Terrifying Journey to Discover the Truth about Antidepressants

Stacy Pershall (2012): Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl

Elyn R. Saks (2008): The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

Daniel Paul Schreber (2000): Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (first published in 1955)

William Styron (1992): Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

Grace Talusam (2019): The Body Papers: A Memoir

Ned Vizzini (2007): It’s Kind of a Funny Story

Elizabeth Wurtzel (2016): Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America