Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament

A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness

S. Nassir Ghaemi · 340 pages

An investigation into the surprisingly deep correlation between mental illness and successful leadership, as seen through some of history's greatest politicians, generals, and businesspeople. "A First-Rate Madness," Nassir Ghaemi, who runs the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts University Medical Center, draws from the careers and personal plights of such notable leaders as Lincoln, Churchill, Gandh

Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me

Ellen Forney · 256 pages

One of the best memoirs on mental illness. It contains specifics about mania, depression, and bipolar disorder and how brutally numbing depression can be, the dangerous hives of mania and what it is like to undergo therapy and receive medication.

The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

John D. Gartner · 368 pages

Manic: A Memoir

Terri Cheney · 245 pages

He wowed critics with his Frank Corso and Leo Waterman series, catapulting to the upper ranks of contemporary crime writers with each riveting new thriller. Now, G.M. Ford is back with a brand-new book, his first stand-alone novel, featuring a man with no name, no past—and at the center of a conspiracy so pervasive he's forced to run from the only home he's ever known—straight into the abyss—in hi

Hurry Down Sunshine: A Memoir

Michael Greenberg · 234 pages

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 visionary crack-up on the streets of Greenwich Village, and continues, among other places, in the out-of-time world of a Manhattan psychiatric ward during the city's most sweltering months.

Fast Girl: A Life Spent Running from Madness

Suzy Favor Hamilton, Sarah Tomlinson · 304 pages

During the 1990s, three-time Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton was the darling of American track and field. An outstanding runner, a major sports apparel spokesperson, and a happily married wife, she was the model for an active, healthy, and wholesome life. But her perfect facade masked a dark truth: manic depression and bipolar disorder that drove her obsession to perform and win. For years after leav

The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide: What You and Your Family Need to Know

David J. Miklowitz

Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life

Melody Moezzi · 288 pages

"With candor and humor, a manic-depressive Iranian-American Muslim woman chronicles her experiences with both clinical and cultural bipolarity. Melody Moezzi was born to Persian parents at the height of the Islamic Revolution and raised amid a vibrant, loving, and gossipy Iranian diaspora in the American heartland. When at eighteen, she began battling a severe physical illness, her community stepp

Changing My Mind

Margaret Trudeau · 382 pages

"In this deeply moving memoir, Margaret Trudeau speaks with candour and insight about the illness that silently shaped her life -- a life lived often in turbulence and in the public's fascination. Plagued since childhood by extreme moods, Margaret was ill-prepared for the high-profile role into which she was cast at age twenty-two, as Canada's youngest first lady. Captivated by her high spirits, y

Welcome to the Jungle: Everything You Wanted to Know about Bipolar But Were Too Freaked Out to Ask

Hilary T. Smith

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Robert Whitaker · 379 pages

In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading m

Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke

Patty Duke, Kenneth Turan · 311 pages

Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder: Understanding and Helping Your Partner

Julie A. Fast, John D. Preston · 216 pages

My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

Mark Lukach · 320 pages

"A heart-wrenching, yet hopeful, memoir of a young marriage that is redefined by mental illness and affirms the power of love. Mark and Giulia's life together began as a storybook romance. The fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in

My Body Is a Book of Rules

Elissa Washuta · 189 pages

As Elissa Washuta makes the transition from college kid to independent adult, she finds herself overwhelmed by the calamities piling up in her brain. When her mood-stabilizing medications aren't threatening her life, they're shoving her from depression to mania and back in the space of an hour. Her crisis of American Indian identity bleeds into other areas of self-doubt; mental illness, sexual tra

Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy

Sonya Sones · 159 pages

A younger sister has a difficult time adjusting to life after her older sister has a mental breakdown.

The Silver Linings Playbook

Matthew Quick

Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl

Stacy Pershall · 232 pages

Stacy Pershall grew up depressed and too smart for her own good, a deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas (population 1,000), where the prevailing wisdom was that Jesus healed all. From her days as a thirteen-year-old Jesus freak, through a battle with anorexia and bulimia, her first manic episode at eighteen, and the eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disord

The Body Keeps The Score

Bessel van der Kolk

How trauma affects the body and mind, and innovative treatments for recovery. Read by Sean Pratt. 16 hours, 17 minutes unabridged.

Daughter of the Queen of Sheba

Jacki Lyden · 258 pages

As a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, Jacki Lyden has spent her adult life on the frontlines in some of the most dangerous war zones in the world. Her childhood was a war zone of a different kind. Her mother suffered from what we now call manic-depression; when Jacki was a child in a small midwestern town, her mother was simply called crazy. Jacki would return home from grade scho

A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life

Ayelet Waldman · 242 pages

"In an effort to treat a debilitating mood disorder, Ayelet Waldman undertook a very private experiment, ingesting 10 micrograms of LSD every three days for a month. This is the story--by turns revealing, courageous, fascinating and funny--of her quietly psychedelic spring, her quest to understand one of our most feared drugs, and her search for a really good day"--

The Man Who Couldn't Stop

David Adam · 324 pages

**An intimate look at the power of intrusive thoughts, how our brains can turn against us, and living with obsessive compulsive disorder** Have you ever had a strange urge to jump from a tall building or steer your car into oncoming traffic? You are not alone. In this captivating fusion of science, history, and personal memoir, David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind

On Edge: A Journey Through Anxiety

Andrea Petersen · 305 pages

A wry, sympathetic, bracingly honest account of living with anxiety, coupled with deep reportage on the science of anxiety disorders--

My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind

Scott Stossel · 416 pages

The author recounts his lifelong battle with anxiety, showing the many manifestations of the disorder as well as the countless treatments that have been developed to counteract it, and provides a history of the efforts to understand this common form of mental illness.