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.

A memoir by Glenn Close's sister, Jessie, about the challenges of living with severe bipolar disorder—includes chapters by Glenn Close. At a young age, Jessie Close struggled with symptoms that would transform into severe bipolar disorder in her early twenties, but she was not properly...

'Darkly funny as well as deeply shocking, [Be Patient] is an antidote to This is Going to Hurt... This is what it's like to be on the other side of Britain's hospital wards' -The Times 'Tilly writes beautifully, with such compassion... the insight that she gives the reader is astonishing.'...

Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography is a memoir, told in vignettes, that captures the history of one dysfunctional American family. An extension of a 2003 "memory experiment" of the same name, A Common Pornography weaves recollections of small-town youth with darker threads from his family’s story, including incest, madness, betrayal, and death. A regular contributor to Dave Egger’s The Believer and McSweeney’s, Sampsell has written "the kind of book where you want to thank the author for helping you feel less alone with being alive" (Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir! and The Double Life Is Twice as Good).

"the audiobook is compelling and, on occasion, jaw-dropping."-- Vulture Liz Scheier’s darkly funny and touching memoir—with shades of Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle and Mira Bartók’s The Memory Palace—of growing up in ’90s Manhattan with a brilliant, mendacious single mother...

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.

The bestselling and ABIA Award shortlisted memoir from Osher Gunsberg, one of Australia's most loved celebrities, about life, love and living with mental illness - powerful, dark, funny and heartwrenching. It's hard to remember a time when Osher Gunsberg (or Andrew G as he was then) wasn't on TV...

From 1977 to 1981, Ruth Finley, an ordinary wife and mother from Kansas, was tormented by an elusive maniac known as The Poet. The police, already on edge from BTK’s reign of terror, spent years searching for the stalker. Meanwhile, his cryptic letters in rhymed verse grew more disturbing and violent, spilling into deeds like stabbing and kidnapping.

This program is read by the author. A groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that investigates Munchausen by Proxy from the host and creator of the award-winning true crime podcast Nobody Should Believe Me. "I devoured this chilling yet critically important book in 48 hours, unable to...

Terri Cheney ripped the covers off her secret battle with bipolar disorder in her New York Times bestselling memoir, Manic. Now, in this "stigma-buster" and "must-read", she blends a gripping narrative with practical advice (Elyn Saks). Cheney flips mental illness inside out, exposing the...

Moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, Lori Schiller's memoir is a classic testimony to the ravages of mental illness and the power of perseverance and courage. "A book of rare power, passion, and intelligence."— Diane Sawyer, award-winning television new anchor At seventeen Lori...

A riveting look behind the mask of an NHL goalie, The Save of My Life offers understanding and hope to anyone living with mental illness 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...

Hurry Down Sunshine tells the story of the extraordinary summer when, at the age of fifteen, Michael Greenberg’s daughter was struck mad. It begins with Sally’s sudden visionary crack-up on the streets of Greenwich Village, and continues, among other places, in the out-of-time world of a...

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.

I feel like I'm on a boat sailing to some island where I don't know anybody. I'm on a boat someone is operating and we aren't in touch. So begins David Milch's urgent accounting of his increasingly strange present and often painful past. From the start, Milch's life seems destined to echo that...

An instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller! Beloved former ABC 20/20 anchor Elizabeth Vargas share the truth about her alcohol addiction and anxiety disorder in this honest and emotional memoir. "My dazzling friend and colleague, Elizabeth Vargas, has stared straight into the lethal...

For the first twenty-seven years of his life, Ben McKelvey didn't spend too much time thinking about his brain, nor much about trauma. He was fit, carefree and happy working as a magazine journalist, writing listicles and doing celebrity junket interviews. Then one day, while boxing, he suffered...