Books like Prozac Nation — picked by fans

When I started Untamed, I thought all women should read it. Then I thought all parents should read it. By the end, I believed everyone should.

I found myself laughing, reflecting, and thinking, I wish I had read this sooner. I had so many moments of “I never thought of it that way” and “that’s exactly what happened to me.” Doyle shares honest insights on everything from parenting and relationships to identity and breaking free from expectations.

I especially appreciated her perspective on raising kids, acknowledging emotions, and living authentically. I walked away feeling more aware, more open, and more willing to question the life I’m creating.

This is a book I’ll revisit—and recommend often.

I read Darkness Visible in the midst of my worst depressive episode around 2008. I remember relating completely to his vivid descriptions of highly abstract psychological sensations, impending doom, for example, in which one feels askew to her or his surroundings, like death is imminent but you don’t know from where or how. Styron describes depression as being not unlike physical pain, and that moment in which you simply and utterly succumb to a kind of unprecedented existential suffering, if you will. It is a moment of agony, tender, fierce and absolute. Without a hint of self-indulgence, his rendering of depression is immaculate, a reckoning of the self, a crucible.

Hornbacher details her experience of living with bipolar disorder—the psychological escapades, the unimaginable highs, and devastating lows. These transcendent highs and crippling lows are mirrored in the strange delights and perils of the physical world. She is the life of parties, dressed provocatively in silky red dresses and matching ruby lipstick. But she is also capable of breaking ties with reality, hopping in a car with a boyfriend and travelling across the state for no reason in particular, an adventure in which the pleasure of the high becomes too much, too dangerous to be reckoned with. 

I too recall waking up at 2 am, writing for 18 hours straight, (without a water or pee break), and creating a beautiful essay in one draft which was later published. I once spent two days and nights in a blinding fury of elation that was simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. I too remember in… show more.

I loved this book because it doesn’t shy away from the uncomfortable parts of the mind.

It made me feel less alone in the way certain emotions can overwhelm you—how the world can look normal on the outside even when everything inside is loud, tangled, or numb. Kaysen’s honesty struck me. I admired how she wrote about mental health with clarity but without shame.

The book made me sit with myself, reflect on my own quiet unravelings, and recognise how fragile and strong a person can be at the same time.

A poetic book that brought me into the meaningful world of the "mental patient."

Hornstein’s beautifully written book compels us not to dismiss the stories that patients are trying to tell. I was mesmerized by the examples in this book, in particular that of Agnes Richter, a German woman who stitched tiny, almost indecipherable, autobiographical texts into every inch of the jacket she created from her institutional uniform.

This book is a tribute to the capacity of the human spirit and our need to tell our stories of suffering.

We are continually learning how the brain works through the work of neuroscientists. Dr. Sweeton uses her knowledge in the field to give readers a view into our brain and what we know at the present time about its functioning, how it is affected by mental illness, and what changes can occur through brain-based therapy. We have made great strides in helping individuals with such illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar and learning how disorders such as PTSD occur and impact the brain. The book’s information is reader-friendly. The more we know about this fascinating area of the body, the better treatments that can be developed to help those who suffer from trauma-impacting events become more resilient and whole. 

I picked this book up as I suffer with OCD and welcomed a genuine account of the effects it has on day-to-day life.

This, however, was just that but also gloriously uplifting and funny. I both cried and laughed, and sometimes a mixture! So, although this is non-fiction it follows Bryony’s journey as if following a protagonist in a novel, making it compelling and heart-wrenching.

The heart of this book is the stories of individuals with serious mental illness based on repeated interviews over the course of years, which illustrate the dysfunction of our mental health system.

These stories are woven together with interviews of experts, research, and the author’s experiences living with a sister who had schizophrenia. I learned as much from this book as any other single book I have read in the field.

I once worked on a film shoot at the infamous Friern Barnet Asylum in London, an imposing building that boasts the longest corridor in Europe at over a third of a mile long. It was my job to lock up after filming was over each night, and to do so, I had to walk the long corridor with just a flashlight for company… and the ghosts rumoured to haunt the building! I have never forgotten the feeling of dread and despair in that place, and my heart went out to the patients who were isolated in the creepy basement wards. Barbara Taylor gives an inside perspective on this fearsome institution in her book, which is both an achingly honest account of mental illness and addiction, and a critique of community care.

Like the author, I live with mental illness and use humorous writing/reading to process my thoughts and “check out” sometimes. In many instances, her words feel like my words. I can’t help that depression and anxiety affect my daily life, but I do find myself musing about weird happenings—often questioning the reality of situations. And then I laugh.

When I read this book, I didn’t feel so alone in my “weirdness,” I felt validated in giggling at the strange predicaments I’ve found myself in.