book reviews

Best Mental Illness Memoirs

If you are lucky enough to have never experienced mental illness firsthand, rest assured you know people who have, probably many of them. Despite the leaps and bounds the scientific community has made in categorizing diagnoses and fine-tuning psychiatric treatments, some aspects of the experience simply cannot be measured quantitatively. The brain, after all, cannot be properly understood without acknowledging one's individual emotional experience. Firsthand accounts about mental illness provide insight into the human psyche that no blood test or brain scan possibly could. Each of these testimonies speaks to a slightly different set of symptoms, environmental circumstances, prognosis and recovery; and yet, each one shares a common thread of empathy that transcends all differences in detail. These mental illness memoirs are must-reads for anyone who's experienced similar suffering as well as those who want to try and understand.