Required Reading for Mental Health Awareness Month

NYC-based Fountain House empowers people with serious mental illness to live and thrive in society. By working together, members regain confidence, make friends, learn new skills, and make progress towards achieving their employment and educational goals.

Below you will find a list curated by Fountain House staff that spans the stories of those living with mental illness, through to the advocates seeking change.

1. Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me, Billy Hayes

Insomniac City offers a powerful glimpse into the life of an insomniac, who explores his new home of New York City at night with his camera. Along the way, he falls in love with the much-older neurologist, Oliver Sacks, until Sacks tragically passes away from cancer. Hayes evaluates his own grief and celebration of life using visual snapshots to capture his intimate relationship with Sacks, as well powerful street photos of everyday New Yorkers.

2. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, Oliver Sacks

Fascinating, poignant, and undeniably strange, this novel is comprised of twenty vignettes by Dr. Oliver Sacks as he recounts experiences with individuals affected by various neurological and neuropsychiatric afflictions. Sacks brings humanity and understanding to otherwise alienated people, rejected by mainstream society for their neural differences.

3. No One Cares About Crazy People: the Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America, Ron Powers

This is a deep and critical look into the neurotypical public’s misconceptions leading up to uninformed and damaging public policies regarding mental illness. Powers’s analysis is informed by history, current affairs, and his experience with raising two schizophrenic sons.

4. Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill, DJ Jaffe

DJ Jaffe addresses prominent issues, such as the disproportionate incarceration and homelessness of mentally ill in this heartbreaking and eye-opening critical analysis of the mental health industry. Jaffe researches the causes of this industry-driven failure and offers a compelling solution that emphasizes the medical and social aspects of mental illness that are presently neglected and pushes for reformation and leadership.

5. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, Elyn Saks

A triumphant tale of an Oxford University/Yale Law School student’s battle with mental illness, The Center Cannot Hold is haunting and brave. While attending school, Saks is committed to mental hospitals after experiencing psychosis — characterized by suicidal thoughts and imagined voices — later revealed to be a symptom of her advancing schizophrenia. Recipient of a doctorate in psychoanalysis, Saks admits that coping with her mental illness is a constant and ever-changing fight for equilibrium.

6. The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music, Steve Lopez

An LA columnist looking for a story stumbles upon a homeless man named Nathaniel Ayers playing a two-string violin on Skid Row, all of his belongings stuffed into a shopping cart. The journalist discovers that Ayers was once a student at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music but had leave due to his ongoing struggles with mental illness. What follows is an unlikely friendship, a moving column in the Los Angeles Times, and a new hope for Ayers as he finally receives treatment for his schizophrenia.

7. My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward: A Memoir, Mark Lukach

In this powerful memoir, Mark Lukach chronicles the collective and unexpected psychotic breaks of his beloved wife, Giulia. Over the years, Giulia repeatedly experiences episodes of delusion and paranoia, ending in multiple hospitalizations. At its heart, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is a love story, one that affirms the human need for support and community, especially for those struggling with mental illness. It also asks the open-ended question: how do you cope with and offer steadfast support to your mentally ill loved ones?

8. Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character, Kay Redfield Jamison

Robert Lowell, the famed poet, suffered from mania and depression that led to his repeated hospitalization. In this revealing biography, Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison presents information from Lowell’s medical records, interviews with Lowell’s daughter, Harriet, and never-before-seen snippets of Lowell’s unpublished poetry — all to show readers the psychological struggles and courageous triumphs of the Pulitzer Prize winner.

9. The Eden Express, Mark Vonnegut

After completing college, Mark Vonnegut lived on a quaint farm with his friends — that is, until he suffers from a nervous breakdown and is eventually committed to a mental hospital. In this forthright memoir about mental illness, Vonnegut describes what led up to his crisis, his experience being diagnosed with schizophrenia — even the parts he cannot recall, and his path to recovery.

10. Henry’s Demons: A Father and Son’s Journey Out of Madness, Patrick Cockburn

In this dual memoir, journalist Patrick Cockburn and son, Henry, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia, describe the eight troubling years that follow Henry’s diagnosis. While Henry details his toilsome years in and out of the hospital, perpetuated by the constant voices and delusions he has, his father chronicles the difficult journey he sets out on in seeking treatment for his son. Henry’s Demons is a portrait of courage and an intimate story of a family persevering in the face of mental illness.

Honorable Mentions:

Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, Pete Earley; Surviving Schizophrenia, E. Fuller Torrey; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey; Touched with Fire, Kay Jamison; A Beautiful Mind, Slyvia Nasar; The Snake Pit, Mary Jane Ward; Noonday Demon, Andrew Solomon; The Devil in Silver, Victor Lavalle; A Common Struggle, Patrick Kennedy; Shrinks, Jeffrey Liberman; Cracked, Not Broken, Kevin Hines; Lincoln’s Melancholy, Joshua Wolf Shenk; Hurry Down Sunshine, Michael Greenberg; Sometimes Amazing Things Happen: Heartbreak and Hope on the Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Prison Ward, Elizabeth Ford MD (Available soon at Strand!)

For further reading on Fountain House, check out:

Fountain House: Creating Community in Mental Health Practice, Alan Doyle, Julius Lanoil, and Kenneth Dudek

Through an emphasis on personal choice, professional and patient collaboration, and, most important, “the need to be needed,” Fountain House demonstrates that people with serious mental illness can not only live but also contribute and thrive in society.

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