75 Must-Read Books Concerning Mental Illness | The Odyssey Online
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75 Must-Read Books Concerning Mental Illness

That's right, Thirteen Reasons Why was a book before it was a TV series.

Kate Kossoy
Jan 07, 2019
Villanova University
223
Pixabay
https://pixabay.com/en/books-pages-story-stories-notes-1245690/

Mental illness is more talked about now then ever before, however we often still dance around the subject in order not to delve too deep into it. While there are often portrayals of characters with mental health issues in movies and TV shows and many celebrities discuss it in the media, this does not typically put the viewer in the shoes of someone with a mental illness. Books are typically the best way to feel fully immersed in the life of someone else, so in order to fully understand a mental illness if you don't have one--or to feel understood if you do--reading a book about them is the best option.

1. Awakening Kali by T. S. Ghosh

2. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

3. Beloved by Toni Morrison

4. Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

5. By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Ann Peters

6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

7. Crazy by Han Nolan

8. Darkness Visible by William Styron

9. Dragonfish by Vu Tran

10. Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

11. The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by David J. Morris

12. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

13. Find You In The Dark by A. Meredith Walters

14. Flowers From the Storm by Laura Kinsale

15. Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

16. Girl In Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow

17. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

18. Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life

19. The Hours by Michael Cunningham

20. Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett

21. Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

22. It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

23. The Last Time We Said Goodbye by Cynthia Hand

24. Lead Me Not by A. Meredith Walters

25. Let the Tornado Come by Rita Zoey Chin

26. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

27. Look Straight Ahead by Elaine M. Will

28. Looking for Alaska by John Green

29. Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl by Stacy Pershall

30. Made You Up by Francesca Zappia

31. The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley

32. Manic: A Memoir by Terri Cheney

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

34. The Memory of Light by Francisco X. Stork

35. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

36. More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

37. The Museum of Intangible Things by Wendy Wunder

38. My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga

39. The Nest by Kenneth Oppel

40. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

41. A Note of Madness by Tabitha Suzuma

42. Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Mental Illness edited by Rebecca Shannonhouse

43. Paperweight by Meg Haston

44. Polarity by Max Bemis

45. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel

46. Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories about Mental Illness by Daryl Cunningham

47. The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness by Lori Schiller

48. Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig

49. The Round House by Louise Erdrich

50. The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara

51. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

52. The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

53. Skinny by Donna Cooner

54. Sparks Off You by Anita Felicelli

55. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones

56. Stranger by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith

57. The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee

58. Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell

59. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

60. Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide by Darryl McDaniels

61. Therapy by Kathryn Perez

62. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

63. The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten

64. An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison

65. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

66. Your Voice is All I Hear by Leah Scheier

67. Waster: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher

68. When Reason Breaks by Cindy L. Rodriguez

69. When We Collided by Emery Lord

70. White Oleander by Janet Finch

71. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

72. Willow by Julia Hoban

73. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

74. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

75. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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