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
