100 Must-Read Books about Mental Illness

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and a great time to explore the many writers who write on diverse topics related to mental health and mental illness. The following list of books about mental illness contains fiction, graphic novels, nonfiction, memoirs, biographies, and more, all books that broaden our understanding of mental illness from first hand and second hand experiences. Whether it’s May or the other eleven months, reading books about mental illness can lead to greater awareness of how these invisible disabilities and chronic illnesses can affect our lives firsthand. 

1. 72 Hour Hold – Bebe Moore Campbell
2. All the Bright Places – Jennifer Niven 
3. All the Things We Never Knew: Chasing the Chaos of Mental Illness – Sheila Hamilton 
4. Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
6. Awakening Kali – T. S. Ghosh
7. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 
8. Beloved – Toni Morrison
9. The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide – David Miklowitz 
10. Bleeding Violet – Dia Reeves 
11. The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating – Kiera Van Gelder 
12. By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead – Julie Ann Peters 
13. The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives – ed. Vanessa Hazzard
14. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
15. Crazy – Han Nolan
16. Darkness Visible – William Styron 
17. Dragonfish – Vu Tran
18. Every Last Word – Tamara Ireland Stone 
19. Everything, Everything – Nicola Yoon
20. The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – David J. Morris 
21. Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng
22. Fangirl – Rainbow Rowell 
23. Find You in the Dark – A. Meredith Walters 
24. Flowers From the Storm – Laura Kinsale 
25. Franny and Zooey – J. D. Salinger 
26. Furiously Happy – Jenny Lawson 
27. Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder – Rachel Reiland 
28. Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen 
29. Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life – Melody Moezzi
30. Hamlet – William Shakespeare 
31. The Hours – Michael Cunningham 
32. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened – Allie Brosh 
33. Imagine Me Gone – Adam Haslett 
34. Impulse – Ellen Hopkins 
35. It’s Kind of a Funny Story – Ned Vizzini 
36. The Last Time We Said Goodbye – Cynthia Hand 
37. Keep Me Still – Caisey Quinn
38. Let the Tornado Come – Rita Zoey Chin 
39. A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
40. Look Straight Ahead – Elaine M. Will 
41. Looking for Alaska – John Green 
42. Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl – Stacy Pershall 
43. Made You Up – Francesca Zappia 
44. Madness: A Bipolar Life – Marya Hornbacher 
45. The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie – Jennifer Ashley 
46. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination – Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar 
47. The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought 
48. Manic: A Memoir – Terri Cheney 
49. Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me – Ellen Forney 
50. The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides 
51. The Memory of Light – Francisco X. Stork
52. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf 
53. More Happy Than Not – Adam Silvera
54. The Museum of Intangible Things – Wendy Wunder 
55. My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind – Scott Stossel 
56. My Heart and Other Black Holes – Jasmine Warga 
57. The Nest – Kenneth Oppel
58. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression – Andrew Solomon
59. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
60. Not Alone: Reflections on Faith and Depression – Monica A. Coleman
61. A Note of Madness – Tabitha Suzuma 
62. Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self – Sara Shandler 
63. Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Mental Illness – Rebecca Shannonhouse (ed.) 
64. Paperweight – Meg Haston 
65. Polarity – Max Bemis 
66. Prozac Nation – Elizabeth Wurtzel 
67. Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories about Mental Illness – Darryl Cunningham
68. The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness – Lori Schiller
69. Reasons To Stay Alive – Matt Haig 
70. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
71. The Salt Eaters – Toni Cade Bambara
72. Shadows in the Sun: Healing from Depression and Finding the Light Within – Gayathri Ramprasad
73. She’s Come Undone – Wally Lamb 
74. The Silver Linings Playbook– Matthew Quick 
75. Skinny – Donna Cooner 
76. Sparks Off You – Anita Felicelli
77. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy – Sonya Sones
78. Stranger – Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith
79. The Surrendered – Chang-rae Lee
80. Swallow Me Whole – Nate Powell 
81. A Tale for the Time Being – Ruth Ozeki
82. Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide – Darryl “DMC” McDaniels
83. Therapy – Kathryn Perez 
84. Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher 
85. Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament – Kay Redfield Jamison 
86. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath – Sylvia Plath 
87. The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B – Teresa Toten 
88. An Unquiet Mind – Kay Redfield Jamison 
89. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides 
90. Your Voice is All I Hear – Leah Scheier 
91. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia – Marya Hornbacher 
92. When Reason Breaks – Cindy L. Rodriguez
93. When We Collided – Emery Lord 
94. White Oleander – Janet Fitch
95. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys 
96. Willow – Julia Hoban 
97. Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey through Depression – Meri Nana-Ama Danquah
98. Wintergirls – Laurie Halse Anderson 
99. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 
100. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman