Mental Illness Memoirs

Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it. In Bamford’s “trademark blend of disarming intimacy and dark whimsy” (Publishers Weekly), Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult brings us on a quest to participate in something.

An inspiring and unforgettable memoir that provides hope to others who are experiencing depression, mania, or psychosis, RESILIENT is a deeply personal account about life with mental illness, hearing loss and resiliency. Liz's journey provides encouragement for patients, families, friends, and healthcare workers by showing that recovery is possible.

In the tradition of The Glass Castle, Educated, and Heartland, Neal Wooten traces five decades of his dirt-poor, Alabama mountain family as the years and secrets coalesce.

A moving, compelling memoir about growing up and escaping the tragic legacy of mental illness, suicide, addiction, and depression in one of America's most famous families: the Hemingways.

At 15, Elizabeth Gilpin was an honor student, a state-ranked swimmer, and a rising soccer star, but behind closed doors, her undiagnosed depression was wreaking havoc on her life. Growing angrier by the day, she began skipping practices and drinking to excess. At a loss, her parents turned to an educational consultant who suggested Elizabeth be enrolled in a behavioral modification program. That recommendation would change her life forever.

The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most recognizable structures to define a modern city. Yet, for author Kevin Hines the bridge is not merely a marker of a place or a time. Instead, the bridge marks the beginning of his remarkable story. At 19-years-old, Kevin attempted to take his own life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge - a distance which took four seconds to fall. Recently diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, Kevin had begun to hear voices telling him he had to die, and days before his attempt, he began to believe them. The fall would break his body, but not his spirit.

At the heart of countless crimes lie the mysteries of the human mind. In this eye-opening book, Dr. Cheryl Paradis draws back the curtain on the fascinating world of forensic psychology, and revisits the most notorious and puzzling cases she has handled in her multifaceted career. Her riveting, sometimes shocking stories reveal the crucial and often surprising role forensic psychology plays in the pursuit of justice - in which the accused may truly believe their own bizarre lies, creating a world that pushes them into committing horrific, violent crimes.

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.

A unique blend of memoir, research, and cultural criticism, this is a searing and incisive examination into how we tell stories about mental illness, how that affects how we treat it, and how those with mental illness can begin to take control of their own stories through fantasy and fiction.

The Close sisters are descended from very prominent and wealthy ancestors. When the Close sisters were very young, their parents joined a cult called the MRA, or Moral Rearmament. The family was suddenly uprooted to a cult school in Switzerland and, ultimately, to the Belgian Congo where their father became a surgeon in the war-ravaged republic, and ultimately the personal physician to President Mobutu.

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.

In 2015, Barbara Lipska - a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness - was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers. But miraculously, the immunotherapy her doctors had prescribed worked quickly. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity.

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.

Mark and Giulia's life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at 18, married at 24, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was 27, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe.

By the Time You Read This shares the manuscript Cheslie wrote before her passing, her story in her own words—from the highest highs of passing two bar exams, winning Miss USA, and beginning an exciting career as an entertainment journalist to the lowest lows of heartbreak, betrayal, and persistent depression. When Cheslie’s mother, April Simpkins, picks up the narrative, she shares for the first time what she experienced in the aftermath of Cheslie’s suicide. When faced with such a devastating loss, how does a mother find a way to carry on?

On a highway in Houston, Texas, Sarah LaBrie’s mother was found screaming at passing cars, terrified she would be murdered by invisible assailants. The diagnosis of schizophrenia that followed compelled Sarah to rethink her childhood, marked at turns by violence and all-consuming closeness. Digging into the events that led to her mother’s break, Sarah traces her family history of mental illness, from the dysphoria that plagued her great-grandmother, a granddaughter of slaves, to her own experience with depression as a scholarship student at Brown.

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.

As an award-winning stuntwoman, Kimberly Shannon Murphy was intimate with pain. For years, she propelled her body through dangerous spaces—medicating the trauma of her childhood sexual abuse with the adrenaline rush that came from pushing herself to the absolute limit. But as Kimberly learned, no matter how much you suppress your past, it always catches up with you.

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.

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.