Mental Illness Memoirs

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

This collection of poetry, memoirs, and stories of short fiction presents to the listener such themes as depression, suicide, hopelessness, grief, loss, love, mental illness, and abuse both emotional and physical experienced by the writers or someone close to them. This collection serves to demonstrate that hiding behind shame or fear rather than sharing emotional pain as the authors in these works do is tantamount to putting on a mask; wearing a person suit.

This is my life story. This is what mental illness looks like. This is how it breathes. A real life account of a man that is going through mental illness from the state of Ohio.

Journey Untold: Twisted Love is a candid and powerful memoir about recovering from mental health disorders. If you like unflinching personal stories, expert insight, and hope for a better future, you’ll adore Dr. Hall’s inspirational book.

I wanted to write a book to uplift mentally ill people of the harshest variety, schizophrenic or schizoaffective like I have. I wanted to tell the story of my own life, like some people see me. I am not a pitiable sad case. I am a hero who’s gone on adventures. Sometimes I was unstable, but that is not the purpose of my story.

Experience Mia's remarkable journey of resilience and healing in a story that the listener will find profoundly moving. Innocent Victims is a powerful memoir that will touch your heart and inspire your own path to recovery.

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.

Forfatter og antropolog Ina Kjøgx Pedersen har været på feltarbejde i sin egen familie. Hendes idé var på nærmeste hold at følge sin mors demenssygdom; den sygdom, som er udråbt til at være en af vor tids største personlige og verdensøkonomiske katastrofer, som i ringe omfang lader sig behandle, og som i sundhedsvæsnet kun kan måles negativt: I form af rask tilbagegang. Men ville det også opleves sådan for hende i virkeligheden?

Gripping, unforgettable and deeply affecting, The Skeleton Cupboard recounts the patient stories that most influenced Professor Tanya Byron, covering years of training that forced her to confront the harsh realities of the lives of her patients and the demons of her own family's history. Among others, we meet Ray, a violent sociopath desperate to be treated with tenderness and compassion; Mollie, a talented teenager intent on starving herself.

From Hell to Hope: A Memoir of Addiction and Mental Illness takes you on a visceral journey with Kate, from the confusion of her teenage years to the fragile beauty of motherhood. Witness her battle with addiction and bipolar disorder, the desperate lows that threatened to consume her, and the flickering moments of hope that fueled her fight.

After a near fatal stroke in 1995, Robert McCrum has gained an intimate understanding of his own mortality. Twenty-two years on, his friends have joined him in experiencing Prospero's 'every third thought' of death as a dominating theme of life. McCrum asks: can we make peace with what Freud calls 'the necessity of dying'? Searching for answers leads him to brain surgeons, psychologists, cancer patients and writers for advice and wisdom.

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.

In the 1950s, mental illness was in the closet, a condition rarely discussed beyond immediate family members. A young mother struggles with bipolar disorder, abusing alcohol and prescription drugs before seeking psychiatric help. Their solution: mind-altering shock and insulin treatments. Her husband, fighting to keep the love of his life, focuses on her recovery, working two jobs to cover the costs of a decade-long cycle of depression.

Outside, the Sky Is Blue is a beautifully drawn, heartbreaking yet also joyful memoir of growing up, of happiness and love, of living with physical and mental ill health, and of being the only one left of a family that had once had so much colour and life.

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.