May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a perfect opportunity for everyone to learn more about mental illnesses and the way they affect our lives. I often find that reading is a great way to process my feelings and better understand the world around me, so just in case you’re like me, I’ve put together a list of books that feature different depictions of mental illness. From memoirs to fantasy novels to family stories, read on for some powerful stories about mental health, trauma, therapy, and healing.

Any Body Can Heal – Sara Davidson

Sara Davidson is a survivor and therapist, and Any Body Can Heal is her deeply personal memoir, exploring trauma and its aftereffects. By her mid-thirties, Sara had fled a tsunami, fought off a knife-wielding thief, and survived a horrific sexual assault by two masked gunmen who had burst through her bedroom door in the middle of the night. While she was struggling to confront and come to terms with her own trauma, she was also helping her clients navigate theirs. This memoir is vulnerable, intimate, and honest, drawing on a combination of her personal experiences, professional training, and the insights she gained through her own investigations, in order to paint a portrait of one woman’s winding path to self-acceptance, healing, and reclaiming her own life.

Feelings: A Story In Seasons by Manjit Thapp

Manjit Thapp’s Feelings is a gorgeous and enchanting graphic novel, illustrating the author’s representation of the spectrum of mental illness through the seasons. In this book, she ties together the cyclical nature of plants, seasons, and moods in a beautiful way, feeling real and relatable to readers. From the sparks of possibility and creativity in High Summer, to the need for release during Monsoon, to the numbness of Winter, this book asks us to think about the seasons of our own emotional journeys.

Never Been Better by Leanne Toshiko Simpson

Leanne Toshiko Simpson’s Never Been Better is a hilarious and charming comedy about one bipolar woman’s search for love. Back in the psych ward, Dee, Misa, and Matt were the “three musketeers”. Now, a year after being discharged, Dee is eager to convince everyone that she’s turning things around. However, Matt and Misa are getting married in beautiful, scenic Turks and Caicos, surrounded by guests who have no idea where they actually met. This doesn’t sit right with Dee, especially since she’s been hopelessly in love with Matt since before she got kicked out of the hospital. So, when she shows up to the wedding, she knows it’s now or never to confess her feelings. But disrupting her best friends’ wedding would threaten the entire support system connecting the three of them, and Dee must choose between love and recovery.

The Hollow Half by Sarah Aziza

Sarah Aziza’s The Hollow Half is a brilliant memoir, tracing three generations of diasporic Palestinians from Gaza to New York. In October 2019, Sarah Aziza, a descendant of Gazan refugees, is hospitalized for an eating disorder. This brush with death brings her past into her present, through vivid “hauntings”: ghostly dreams that help unearth family secrets, forcing her to confront her own trauma, and the legacies that have shaped both her trauma and her recovery. Soon, Sarah starts grasping at the ways her legacies have informed each other, through love and tragedy, learning to assert herself in ways that honour her ancestors and herself.

Rough Magic by Miranda Newman

Miranda Newman’s Rough Magic is a harrowing memoir about living with one of the most stigmatized diagnoses in mental health — borderline personality disorder. It would be years before Miranda would finally receive the diagnosis that explained the complicated way she moved through the world, and the process would involve advocating for herself in the mental health system while dealing with abuse, homelessness, survival sex, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations. In Rough Magic, Miranda shares how she has found strength and joy in what others might see as tragic, combining personal recollection with deeply researched observations about Canada’s mental healthcare system.

The Light Between Worlds by Laura E. Weymouth

Laura E. Weymouth’s The Light Between Worlds is a stunning novel that asks the question: what would have really happened to the children when they returned from Narnia? Five years ago, Evelyn and Philippa Hapwell cowered from air strikes in a London bomb shelter, but the night took a turn when they were transported to another realm called the Woodlands. In a forest kingdom, populated with creatures straight out of myth and legend, they found refuge, and when they finally returned to London, years had passed in The Woodlands, but not even a moment had passed back home. Now, Evelyn spends her days desperate to find a way back to the Woodlands, no matter what it takes. Philippa, on the other hand, is determined to find her place in this world, moving to America to escape her memories of what was. But when Evelyn goes missing, Philippa is forced to confront the depths of her sister’s despair, and uncover the truths they had both been running from. This is a gorgeous and devastating story, exploring depression, self-harm, PTSD, disordered eating, grief, loss, and more. It is a heartbreaking (but strangely uplifting) read.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom is beautiful and breathtaking. It is an immersive, powerful, and fascinating exploration of depression, addiction, immigration, faith, science, and grief. I fell in love with the complicated and messy characters, becoming invested in Gifty’s search for answers through her research, as she tried to uncover the scientific basis for all the suffering she sees around her. Her brother, a promising athlete, died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him addicted to OxyContin. Her mother is suicidal, and lives in her bed. Meanwhile Gifty finds herself grappling with faith, and with her complicated relationship to the evangelical church she was raised in. This is a deeply moving family portrait about a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression, addiction, and grief. 

Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya

Sarah Chihaya’s Bibliophobia is about the power of books — especially their power to annihilate, provoke, and destroy you. These are the kinds of books she calls “Life Ruiners”. Her Life Ruiner was Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which unearthed Sarah’s deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb. But Sarah had always lived through books, even building her life around reading and literary criticism. When she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, the world became an unreadable blank page. Through this book, she explores books like Anne of Green Gables, Possession, and The Last Samurai, interrogating her relationship with depression, her cultural identity, and the painful and intoxicating ways books push back on the ones who love them. 

Favorite Daughter by Morgan Dick

Morgan Dick’s Favorite Daughter is a beautiful and funny story about two estranged sisters who are unknowingly thrown together because of their father’s dying wish. Mickey and Arlo are half sisters who have never met or spoken. Arlo adored her father, but always lived in his shadow. Meanwhile, Mickey hates the father who abandoned her and her mother years ago. When they receive news of their father’s passing, Mickey is shocked to learn that he’s left her a fortune. However, there’s a catch: in order for the money to be released, Mickey must attend a series of therapy sessions. Unbeknownst to either of them, the psychologist Mickey’s father ensured she would meet with is her half sister Arlo. Working as therapist and patient with no idea that they are sisters, soon Arlo and Mickey get under each other’s skin. Will their connection break them? Or will it be what saves them?

–

Ameema Saeed (@ameemabackwards) is a storyteller, a Capricorn, an avid bookworm, and a curator of very specific playlists and customized book recommendations. She’s a book reviewer, a Sensitivity Reader, a book buyer at Indigo Books & Music, and the Books Editor for She Does the City, where she writes and curates bookish content, and book recommendations. She enjoys bad puns, good food, dancing, and talking about feelings. She writes about books, big feelings, unruly bodies, and her lived experiences, and hopes to write your next favourite book one day. When she’s not reading books, she likes to talk about books (especially diverse books, and books by diverse authors) on her bookstagram: @ReadWithMeemz