By Julie Sara Porter, Bookworm
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. I created a list of 15 of the best books about mental illness. I included both fiction and non-fiction including two short stories, novels, YA novels, autobiographies, and memoirs.
I am including only books that humanize mental illness and portray those who have it in an understanding light. So psychological thrillers, true-crime books, horror books, or 19th Century Gothic Literature will not be featured. Text or medical books such as The Diagnostics and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders are also not included because as informative as they are, they are not personal in scope. As always, if you agree with the list or know of books I left out, please let me know in the comments below or on Facebook. I should warn you, some may include spoilers.
Also if you or someone you know has a mental illness, please call your local healthcare provider or hospital or the National Mental Health Services phone number at 1(877)450-7259. Remember, you are not alone.
15. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey(1962)- Descriptions of: Various including Schizophrenia, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Selective Muteness etc.
Ken Kesey's famous novel about a group of men in an Oregon psychiatric ward is probably one of the most famous novels about mental illness, and deservedly so. Besides being a book that humanizes people with mental illness, it is an Anti-Establishment fight against those in charge.
Randle P. McMurphy, who faked an insanity defense, wants to inject some life into his fellow patients. He gets a vote for the patients to watch the World Series. He organizes a fishing trip and sneaks prostitutes into the ward. While his behavior appears extreme and even mysoginistic at times, he simply wants to wake the patients up from their drugged stupors and remind them that they are still human.
Nurse Ratched, the Ward's head nurse, represents The System. She takes an almost sadistic delight in her control over the patients such as when she threatens the introverted, Billy with telling his mother if he doesn't tell her that McMurphy sneaked in the prostitutes.
Even though, Ratched gets McMurphy lobotomized, McMurphy emerges the victor. He changes the mens' lives for the better, particularly Chief Bromden, the selectively mute schizophrenic narrator. Because of McMurphy's guidance, Bromden is able to escape the ward to a new life.
14. Running With Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs (2002)-Descriptions of: Various including Psychotic Breakdowns, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder etc.Augusten Burroughs' darkly humorous Memoir shows what happens to someone when their caregiver and the therapists are as mentally ill and possibly dangerous as they are. This book does not deal with one person with mental illness, it deals with two families of them. First, there's Burroughs' divorced mother, Deirdre, a poet who suffered from psychotic breakdowns and fell in love with women who were as unstable as her.
Then there's the family of Dr. Finch, whom Dierdre signed over guardianship of Augusten. Finch's home was dirty, cluttered with children and Finch's former patients, and appeared free of rules and regulations. The Finch family got into loud fist fights, encouraged sexual behavior in the children, and participated in odd traditions like reading feces and walking in public wearing nothing but balloons.
In the middle of his mother's hysterics and The Finch's eccentricities lay Augusten. At first, Augusten was disgusted by the Finch's slovenly nature, but then slowly adjusted to their free spirited ways, particularly in his friendship with Finch's sexually active daughter, Natalie.
Over time, Burroughs discovered a dark undercurrent in the Finch home and the doctor's treatment of his patients. He slipped them drugs without a prescription. He had affairs with his female patients, claiming to have three extra "wives" along with Agnes, his legal wife.
From the time he is 14, Augusten became involved in an affair with Neil Bookman, the Finch's 30ish adopted son who became obsessed with Augusten. Initially concerned, Finch turned a blind eye to the affair even after Neil became threatening towards Augusten. Burroughs realized that because of the freedom from rules, the Finch home harbored little safety and protection from the darkness of others' behavior and within.
Things finally became climactic when after her hospital release following a violent breakdown, Dierdre accused Finch of raping her. Both she and Finch's family particularly, Natalie expected Burroughs to side with them. Convinced of Finch's guilt and fed up with his mother's instability, 17-year-old Augusten decided he didn't belong to either family and moved to Manhattan to begin a new life. His epilogue states that Burroughs remained estranged from both his mother and Finch even up to the doctor's death in 2000.
13. Wintergirls by Laura Halse Anderson (2009)-Descriptions of: Anorexia, Bulimia, Self-Harm, Depression, Visual and Auditory Hallucinations (possibly)Wintergirls is among the most graphic books on this list and certainly among the most graphic YA books ever. It details realistically with a high school girl starving herself after the death of her best friend.
Lia, is consumed with guilt by her friend, Cassie's death from bulimia and that she tried to call her 33 times before her death. Lia deals with her grief by cutting and starving herself. Throughout the book, Lia is visited by Cassie's ghost, possibly a hallucination, who encourages Lia's Anorexia and self-destructive patterns taunting her with, "See you soon."
Laurie Halse Anderson pulled no punches in her descriptions of Lia and Cassie's mental illnesses and their effects on themselves and their families. While concerns about their appearances are important to the girls, they turn to their eating disorders to control something in their lives, particularly Lia who fights with her combative divorced parents. When Lia's mother describes Cassie's death she mentions that her esophagus ruptured. When Emma, Lia's adorable stepsister, sees Lia with blood from self-inflicted wounds, Lia's stepmother, Jennifer sends Lia to her mother so she can't frighten Emma anymore.
Anderson is also very honest in describing Lia's recovery and that all the interventions, institutions, and stern talking-tos matter very little to Lia. Only she can make the choice to recover when she is faced with her own impending death in the same hotel where Cassie died. It also hints that her recovery will be a slow process as Lia is still self-conscious and mentally counts the calories of the food she eats but at least is grateful that she is eating.
12. The Quiet Room: A Journey Through the Torment of Mental Illness by Lori Schiller(1994)-Descriptions of: Schizophrenia, Auditory Hallucinations, Attempted Suicide
Lori Schiller's memoir of schizophrenia is a harrowing story about what it's like to hear voices and how frightening those voices really are.
Schiller first heard the Voices at age 17 during a stint in summer camp. Suddenly she heard disembodied voices telling her that she will die. Afraid to tell people, Schiller kept quiet about the Voices until she was 23 and attempted suicide.
The book is filled with frightening moments where Schiller feels enslaved to the Voices. She believed their opinions about her appearance and her intellect believing herself to be ugly and stupid. She turned to cocaine and Self-Harm in attempts to silence them. Schiller reveals through her writing what it is like for someone to live day after day unable to trust their own mind.
Besides Schiller's the book is told from various points of view: Schiller's parents who blamed themselves and each other for her condition; Schiller's brothers one who hesitated to introduce his wife to his "crazy" sister and the other who worried that he would be mentally ill as well; Her friends particularly her roommate, Lori Winter who called emergency after Schiller's first suicide attempt, and Schiller's doctors particularly Dr. Jane Dollar who prescribed Clozapine and helped Schiller with her recovery.
These multiple perspectives reveal that mental illness doesn't just effect the person who has it. It effects everyone around them.
Schiller first heard the Voices at age 17 during a stint in summer camp. Suddenly she heard disembodied voices telling her that she will die. Afraid to tell people, Schiller kept quiet about the Voices until she was 23 and attempted suicide.
The book is filled with frightening moments where Schiller feels enslaved to the Voices. She believed their opinions about her appearance and her intellect believing herself to be ugly and stupid. She turned to cocaine and Self-Harm in attempts to silence them. Schiller reveals through her writing what it is like for someone to live day after day unable to trust their own mind.
Besides Schiller's the book is told from various points of view: Schiller's parents who blamed themselves and each other for her condition; Schiller's brothers one who hesitated to introduce his wife to his "crazy" sister and the other who worried that he would be mentally ill as well; Her friends particularly her roommate, Lori Winter who called emergency after Schiller's first suicide attempt, and Schiller's doctors particularly Dr. Jane Dollar who prescribed Clozapine and helped Schiller with her recovery.
These multiple perspectives reveal that mental illness doesn't just effect the person who has it. It effects everyone around them.
11. Maus by Art Spiegelman(1980-1991)-Descriptions of: Suicide, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Mental Breakdowns, Psychotic Breakdowns.
The Holocaust is filled with stories of great courage and sacrifice such as Oskar Schindler who hired 10,000 Jews to work in his factory so they wouldn't be sent to the camps or Jan and Miep Gies, who protected the Frank family while they hid in a Secret Annex behind their workplace. However those times left emotional and psychological scars on those who lived through them, scars that passed to the later generations. The book that best exemplifies those scars is Art Spiegelman's surrealistic and brilliant graphic novel, Maus.
The surrealism is displayed throughout as the characters are portrayed as anthromorphic animals, such as Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, Polish people as pigs and so on. (At one point, Vladek and Anja Spiegelman, a Jewish mouse couple wear pig masks so they could pose as Polish.) But at heart, it shows the psychological horrors that the Spiegelman family faced long after the Holocaust ended in 1945.
Art Spiegelman tries to piece together his parent's time during the Holocaust to understand his mother, Anja's suicide in 1967 and his estrangement from his father, Vladek. His father acts with reluctance as he puts off telling the story and admits he destroyed his late wife's papers. Enraged that his father destroyed a part of his mother's history, Spiegelman calls his father "a murderer."
Vladek's reminisces and Spiegelman's transcription, show that sometimes people in times of great stress will make the most traumatic decisions. The Spiegelman Family is haunted by the death of their older son, Art's brother, who with his cousins were murdered by his aunt to avoid being taken to a concentration camp. Throughout his youth, Spiegelman felt insignificant compared to his "ghost" brother and Vladek avoided the subject.
The trauma in Spiegelman's family is best shown in the mini-comic, "Prisoner in Planet Hell" co-created by Spiegelman in 1971. Vladek's second wife, Maja, shows her stepson that Vladek read it but refused to talk about it. The mini-comic shows Spiegelman's mother's suicide shortly after her son returned from being institutionalized, after a mental breakdown possibly caused by his ingestion of L.S.D. Anja's suicide depressed Vladek so much that his son handled the funeral arrangements and upheld him during the funeral. Spiegelman suffered a relapse because of his mother's suicide. The mini-comic haunting final image shows Spiegelman back in the hospital screaming, "You murdered me, Mommy and you left me to take the rap!"
10. "Diary of a Mad Man" by Nikolai Gogol (1835)-Descriptions of: Schizophrenia, Auditory Hallucinations, Grandiose Delusions, Paranoid Delusions
The title, "Diary of a Madman" makes this short story sound like a psychological thriller or an '80's Heavy Metal album. (Actually not too far off since Ozzy Osbourne used the same title for his 1981 Album.) But Nikolai Gogol's story is a strange, uncomfortably farcical, and ultimately tragic story about a minor civil servant slowly losing his sanity.
Arksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin works in a councilor's office where he is disregarded by his peers, derided by his Supervisor for his lack of ambition, and has an unrequited crush for his Director's daughter, Sofia. His diary entries become bizarre as he begins to believe he can understand the language of dogs and begins to write letters to them. Poprischin's delusions grow more fanciful and larger until he believes that he is the King of Spain.
Gogol's writing is an interesting trip into the mind of a schizophrenic. It is fascinating to read Poprischin's strange entries. For example, his first few entries are chronologically dated, but as his King of Spain delusion takes over, the dates become haphazard such as 43 April, 2000 or in the last few entries are abandoned all together. Also, Poprischin's thought process show the inner workings of one who is schizophrenic rather well by making the thoughts rational to them but insane to everyone else. Poprishchin reads a news story about the absent King of Spain, so he believes the King could be anywhere. He reads books on Spain's monarchy, so he reasons that he must be the missing King.
Besides understanding, Gogol wrote his protagonist with a lot of compassion for his condition. Before his mental decline, Poprishchin was stuck in a mundane job where he was overlooked and ignored. The writing suggests that Poprishchin held onto his royal delusion so he could be heard and noticed.
Even after he is institutionalized, Poprishchin receives little support from other characters. His hair is shorn and he is beaten and splashed with ice cold water by sadistic orderlies so he will face reality. Instead, Poprishchin retreats further into his insanity by insisting that he has been kept from his court and is imprisoned in China.
9. Stop Pretending! What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones (1999)-Descriptions of: Mental Breakdown, Bipolar Disorder, Visual HallucinationsSonya Sone's lyrical book of poems tells of mental illness from the point of view of a family member. In this brief, but moving book, Sones tells the point of view of a 13-year-old girl whose older sister suffers a breakdown during Christmas.
Based on the breakdown of Sone's real-life sister, the book details the confusion and fear that Cookie feels over the young woman that Cookie once thought as her sister, but now thinks is a stranger. "Stop pretending," she says. "Right this minute/Don't Tell me you don't know me.."
Cookie is torn between lying about having too much homework to avoid visiting her sister and wanting to help her. Like many teenagers, Cookie is anxious about her role in school and wonders if other students know of her sister's condition. A few poems described how Cookie's friends ignored after she told them and a boy at school supported her when he learned of her sister's condition.
Many of her poems recall childhood experiences of the sisters getting lost, fighting about minor issues, and going on family trips and Cookie's attempts to help her sister remember them. One of the most moving passages occurs when Cookie's sister recalls their mother's gold leaf decor. For Cookie it is the first sign that her sister will recover.
8. The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut (1975)
Descriptions of: Schizophrenia, Visual Hallucinations, Auditory Hallucinations, Paranoid Delusions, Attempted Suicide.
The Sixties seemed like a carefree time for many hippies, but for Mark Vonnegut, it was less of a long strange trip than it was a frightening one.
The son of noted author, Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut moved to British Columbia with his girlfriend, dog, and various other hippies to start their own commune. Then he started hallucinating.
Vonnegut's schizophrenia is really well-written particularly because for a long time, Vonnegut was unaware that he had a problem. He exhibited bouts of extreme mania and excitement which he attributed to his enthusiasm for keeping the commune going. When (in one terrifying scene), he saw a disembodied face and heard voices, he believed that it was either a drug trip or a cosmic message. Only when he kept having delusions of world destruction, his girlfriend dying in a massive earthquake, and his father committing suicide and he blamed himself did he seek help.
This book shows the difference between living an eccentric free-spirited lifestyle in which a person has thoughts that are outside the mainstream but not harmful and having a mental Illness in which the person is filled with disturbing thoughts that cause destruction to oneself and others.
The final passages reveal a touching letter that Vonnegut wrote to a woman who also had Schizophrenia. In his letter, Vonnegut detailed his hospitalization, his recovery particularly orthomolecular therapy( a somewhat outdated process which includes restoring brain chemistry by taking vitamins and minerals, adjusting diets, and desensitizing allergies. In later writings including the book's Afterward, Vonnegut would downplay and even dismiss the involvement orthomolecular therapy had in his recovery.) Most importantly Vonnegut assured Anita that Schizophrenia is nobody's fault and that she should not hesitate to get as much assistance as possible. In his letter to Anita, Vonnegut reminded her and the Reader that people who have mental Illnesses can be a guide for others who live through it.
Descriptions of: Schizophrenia, Visual Hallucinations, Auditory Hallucinations, Paranoid Delusions, Attempted Suicide.
The Sixties seemed like a carefree time for many hippies, but for Mark Vonnegut, it was less of a long strange trip than it was a frightening one.
The son of noted author, Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut moved to British Columbia with his girlfriend, dog, and various other hippies to start their own commune. Then he started hallucinating.
Vonnegut's schizophrenia is really well-written particularly because for a long time, Vonnegut was unaware that he had a problem. He exhibited bouts of extreme mania and excitement which he attributed to his enthusiasm for keeping the commune going. When (in one terrifying scene), he saw a disembodied face and heard voices, he believed that it was either a drug trip or a cosmic message. Only when he kept having delusions of world destruction, his girlfriend dying in a massive earthquake, and his father committing suicide and he blamed himself did he seek help.
This book shows the difference between living an eccentric free-spirited lifestyle in which a person has thoughts that are outside the mainstream but not harmful and having a mental Illness in which the person is filled with disturbing thoughts that cause destruction to oneself and others.
The final passages reveal a touching letter that Vonnegut wrote to a woman who also had Schizophrenia. In his letter, Vonnegut detailed his hospitalization, his recovery particularly orthomolecular therapy( a somewhat outdated process which includes restoring brain chemistry by taking vitamins and minerals, adjusting diets, and desensitizing allergies. In later writings including the book's Afterward, Vonnegut would downplay and even dismiss the involvement orthomolecular therapy had in his recovery.) Most importantly Vonnegut assured Anita that Schizophrenia is nobody's fault and that she should not hesitate to get as much assistance as possible. In his letter to Anita, Vonnegut reminded her and the Reader that people who have mental Illnesses can be a guide for others who live through it.
7. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kayson (1993)-Descriptions of: Various including Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression, Pyromania, Sociopathy etc.
Susanna Kayson's memoirs of her two years in McLean Hospital in Massachusetts could be seen as a female version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but it is stronger than just being an imitation of Kesey's novel. While it is about women residing in a hospital, the book is about how the institutionalization affected them in the hospital and afterward.
Kayson, who was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, describes herself, the other patients, and the staff rather well. There is Georgina, Kayson's roommate who felt "a wave of darkness" in a movie theater, Polly, who set herself on fire and above all, Lisa, a diagnosed sociopath whom the other girls admired. Like McMurphy, Lisa challenged the nurse's authority for privileges. However, Kayson's is not afraid to show the dark side of Lisa's behavior. She attacked other patients, exhibited violent behavior, and was constantly isolated. She is a composite of a breath of fresh air and a juvenile delinquent someone who alternately fascinates and annoys the Reader.
The strongest theme in Kayson's book is how the stigma of being diagnosed with a mental illness effects the characters. When Kayson's applied for a job and listed the hospital's address, she writes that she read their expressions wondering what she had and if it was contagious. She reads the description of Borderline Personality Disorder in the DSM manual to compare her experience with the symptoms described in the book. ( which she she realizes that she fits.) After she was released, Kayson threw herself into a short-lived marriage just to "return to life."
Meanwhile her other fellow patients adjusted to their releases in their own way, particularly Lisa who had a child and longed for a respectable life. However, both she and Kayson's realize that they will never truly put their past at McLean behind them, the place that Kayson writes took two years of her life.
6. I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg (1964)Descriptions of: Schizophrenia, Auditory Hallucinations, Visual Hallucinations, Self-Harm, Paranoid Delusions
Joanne Greenberg's semi-autobiographical novel shows how detailed the mind of a schizophrenic can be. When a person with schizophrenia is highly intelligent and creative, such as Deborah Blau, Rose Garden's 16-year-old protagonist the schizophrenic's thought process can be a fascinating and disturbing place.
Deborah suffered from psychological problems even as a child when a surgery removed a tumor from her brain at age 5 and later when she became the victim of anti-Semitism in school and at summer camp. These two events plus the isolation Deborah felt after the family moved caused Deborah to create a fantasy world which she called Yr.
Deborah's fantasies of Yr at first are welcoming as the characters in her fantasies treat her like a long-lost Queen. When she gets older, Deborah's Hallucinations become more threatening as the fantasy creatures particularly a sadistic character called The Censor, tell her that she is not like everyone else, remind her of every bad thing she has ever done or thought, and taunt her from inside a dark place she calls The Pit. Periodically, Deborah burns herself as punishment that she calls a volcano exploding. Deborah's fantasies and delusions of Yr take over her whole life as she is institutionalized.
The Yr fantasies show Deborah's and Greenberg's thought processes rather well. Deborah creates a secret language which she chants in times of great stress. Time is measured differently so Deborah goes back and forth between the Yrian Calendar and the "Earth Calendar." She gives Yriian names to the people in her life such as her psychiatrist, Dr. Fried whom she calls Furii, a fire goddess. The details Deborah constructed of Yr show how much Creativity and Imagination contribute to Schizophrenia and what lengths that a Schizophrenic mind can go through to protect itself.
Throughout the book, Deborah's understanding psychiatrist, Dr. Fried strives to help Deborah to see through her delusions to find the truth. She helps her see that the Yriian people are really symbols of people in her life, such as a soldier is her stern grandfather. Dr. Fried assists Deborah in breaking through false memories that the Yriian delusions taunt her with, such as Deborah almost throwing her baby sister out a window. Dr. Fried reminds her that since Deborah was a small child, she could not have carried her sister and the memory is false implanted by Deborah's own feelings of envy towards her sister and guilt for feeling that way.
Dr. Fried is also very realistic in her treatment of the young woman. When Deborah questions hospital policy after a friend is isolated, Dr. Fried quotes the book's title and said that she never promised Deborah that life without Schizophrenia would be perfect or fair. She only wants to help Deborah recover so she chooses to make her life better.
5. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb(1992)-Description of: Clinical Depression, Attempted Suicide, Binge Eating
There are probably many Readers who were or still are social outcasts that relate to Dolores Price, the protagonist of Wally Lamb's novel. Even as a girl, Dolores is beset by problems. Her philandering father and bipolar mother divorce. Dolores is raped as a teenager by a married man who rents the family's upstairs room.
As she gains weight, Dolores is constantly bullied by other girls in school. She is one of those characters even when she gains some happiness such as maintaining a close correspondence with her future college roommate, then that happiness is crushed, such as the roommate calling Dolores a hippopotamus upon their first face-to-faces meeting.
Dolores is understandable as she withdraws into herself by eating junk food and watching television. The television becomes a focal point as Dolores navigates her life through the shows she watches like the soap opera, Search for Tomorrow, Bonanza, or Jeopardy. While Dolores is certainly a television addict, she justifies it by seeing very little else that she can rely on.
While it would be tempting to make Dolores a sad sack caricature, Lamb did not do this. Dolores is very sardonic and cynical. (She calls her primary psychiatrist, "Dr. Quack-Quack") But she carries a determination throughout the narrative to make things different by moving to a seaside town, working in various jobs, and becoming involved with and eventually marrying her former roommate's ex-boyfriend. (A marriage that does not go well because of Dolores' denial of her past and his affair with one of his students.) Throughout her troubles, Dolores keeps trying to be a happier person than she was before.
A beautiful symbol that carries through the book is that of a beached whale that Dolores sees before a suicide attempt. Afterwards, Dolores thinks about and even dreams of "her" whale swimming out to sea. It is only after Dolores finds supportive friends, a committed relationship, and a probable career that she sees a whale at sea swimming happily knowing that Dolores has found peace within herself.
4. Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke by Patty Duke (1987)- Description of: Bipolar Disorder
Many Hollywood memoirs are about struggles with drug addiction, alcoholism, and mental illness. But few are as memorable as Patty Duke's autobiography which tells of Duke's struggle with bipolar disorder. (then called manic-depression)
Duke tells how she struggled to keep the facade of the perky, outgoing, adorable actress seen as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, the "Identical Cousins" on The Patty Duke Show, or the troubled Neely O' Hara in the cult film, Valley of The Dolls. This facade was enforced by her tyrannical managers, John and Ethel Ross who took their charge from her mother and subsequently abused Duke mentally and sexually. The constant abuse and stress of maintaining a cheerful front took their toll on Duke and became a contributing factor to acquiring bipolar.
Many of the symptoms of bipolar are sprinkled throughout in the early chapters during Duke's time with the Rosses such as fears of death triggering panic attacks or Patty's decision to sleep for two or three days straight while she wasn't working. (She considered sleep as an escape from dealing with her managers.) Duke's condition became full-blown after she broke from her managers at age 18 to marry her first husband, Harry Falk.
Much of the book is filled with descriptions of manic episodes. Some of which such as walking off sets and fighting with directors rendered Duke difficult to work with. In one particular unsettling manic phase she married music promoter, Michael Tell for only 13 days where they shopped compulsively and took private jets for minor trips.
The book settles down as Duke writes of her loving but troubled third marriage to actor, John Astin who helped Duke find treatment for her mental illness, and her loving relationships with her sons, Sean and Mackenzie, and her fourth husband, Michael Pearce. Many Readers won't forget Duke's descriptions of her illness and how it affected her personal and professional life and will wonder about what goes on in the minds of public figures and how their mental disorders sometimes get worse under the spotlight's glare.
3. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins- Gilman (1892)-Descriptions of: Postpartum Depression, Visual and Olfactory Hallucinations (possibly)
Charlotte Perkins-Gilman's short story proves the cliche about the cure proving more deadly than the disease. A young woman is given a Rest Cure by her physician husband. Locked inside a bedroom and deprived of any outside stimulation, The Narrator becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper which she believes has another woman trapped inside. She suffers a breakdown as she tries to free the woman.
The story's description of The Narrator's mental decline, particularly her hallucinations of the woman inside the wallpaper are quite unnerving. But what makes this story even more disturbing is that the treatment was real. In fact, Gilman herself had been prescribed the Rest Cure by S. Weir Mitchell, a prominent physician and " The Yellow Wallpaper" is based on her experience. While, Gilman wrote that she did not suffer hallucinations, she suffered an even worse breakdown than before. This breakdown only ended after Gilman separated from her husband and she visited California where she engaged in physical activities, communed with nature, wrote, and lectured.
The narrator of " The Yellow Wallpaper" has only a slight grasp of what the isolation is doing to her. She says that she would love to write more but keeps her journal from her husband and hints that she doesn't get well faster because of him. Gilman and the Reader know full well that is the isolation and boredom that has driven The Narrator to her breakdown and that in freeing the hallucinatory woman, The Narrator is trying to free herself from not only her psychiatric disorders but from her well-meaning, but thoughtless husband.
2. Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America by Elizabeth Wurtzel (1996)-Descriptions of: Acute DepressionElizabeth Wurtzel's autobiography is the best description of depression and how it is a long continuous process that effects every aspect of the depressed person's life.
Wurtzel's first encounter with depression began at summer camp when she was 12 and lay in her bunk, listening to Bruce Springsteen, and overdosing on medicine. The depression continued throughout Wurtzel's life in school as she challenged her absent father and her argumentative mother after their divorce.
Wutrzel's depression worsened when she attended Harvard University where she took too many drugs, had affairs with men who broke her heart, and traveled from one place to another from one job to another hoping to find some semblance of peace and happiness.
The symptoms are well-written. Sometimes Wurtzel's despair gave way to frenzied activity, particularly during her time working at the Dallas Morning News where she enthusiastically jumped from one article to another. She later learned that behavior is not uncommon among people with depression when they are in an upswing, when things are going well.
Wurtzel describes her depression with depth and understanding. When she related her problems to friends, particularly her former roommate, she is aware that she comes across as annoying to them. She knows that to people who don't have depression, those that do can seem irritating and emotional. All Wurtzel knew was that she couldn't control her feelings and needed help.
Wurtzel even retains some humor in her situation, particularly in her epilogue. Recovering from her depression with the assistance of therapy and Prozac, Wurtzel is bemused by the publicity Prozac received in the 90's media and how many people revealed their struggles with mental illness, citing the suicide of Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain. She contemplates the issues in society such as economic uncertainty and unhappy home lives that cause mental illness and believes more could be done to help such people so their depression doesn't lead to suicide.
1. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (U.K. Published date, 1962; American Published date,1971)-Descriptions of: Mental Breakdowns, Clinical Depression, Attempted Suicide
Sylvia Plath's novel about a woman going through a mental breakdown may seem all-too-real for readers because it is. The plot was based on Plath's real-life 1953 breakdown after she worked as a Guest Managing Editor of Mademoiselle magazine. The book tells of Esther Greenwood, Plath's fictional counterpart as she works at Ladies' Day magazine, has failed love affairs particularly her consumptive hypocritical ex-boyfriend, gets rejected for an exclusive writer's program, suffers from Depression, attempts suicide, and finally is institutionalized.
One of the things that make The Bell Jar stand out from many of the other books on this list, indeed from many other depictions of mental illness is the seeming randomness of Esther's breakdown. There is no specific set trigger such as abuse, rape, parental divorce or separation, or death of a loved one.
To most people, Esther's life would appear normal, even enviable. But what Esther, and Plath, knew was that depression and other psychiatric disorders don't need a specific event and that they will come anytime irregardless of an outside trigger.
Esther is aware that her emotional state may seem unimportant compared to the problems of others. She often compares her situation to the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (convicted of and executed for espionage.) knowing which one is the greater tragedy. She doesn't always know why she feels depressed, she just does.
Throughout the book, Esther carries a sense of futility and sadness that she strives to break out of but seemingly can't. For example, after she is rejected for the writer's program, Esther talks about how she built up her expectations for it and her crushing despair now that she feels the avenue has been closed to her.
Esther feels so strongly and becomes overwhelmed and depressed, because she is face with so many possibilities but feels unable to reach her goals. Even when she gains some success, such as winning a scholarship prize, she finds little satisfaction, because she doubts and second guesses herself. In one famous passage, Esther dreams of several possible bright futures, hanging from a fig tree and she starves to death as she can't decide on which one to take. Any Reader will completely relate to what Esther goes through and understand that even the most seemingly mundane normal life can mask inner turmoil and eventual despair.
Honorable Mentions: Lisa, Bright and Dark by John Neufield, I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and Other Stories by Oliver Sacks, Sybil: The True Story of A Woman With Sixteen Personalities by Flora Rheta Schrieber, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison, Suddenly Last Summer and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, "There She Goes Again" by Elizabeth Wurtzel from Bitch:In Praise of Difficult Women, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee, Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson (recommended by Bernice Wittwer) and The Day Room: A Memoir of Madness and Mending by Kathleen Crowley(recommended by Bernice Wittwer).