Resources

We recommend the following links, books & magazines, and movies and documentaries for individuals seeking to learn more about overcoming mental illness.

 

Links

Click on the name to visit the site.

Books

  • 72 Hour Hold by Bebe Moore Campbell
  • A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash by Sylvia Nasar
  • A Mind That Found Itself: A Memoir of Madness and Recovery by Clifford Whittingham Beers
  • An Undefeated Mind by Kua Ee Heok
  • An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison
  • Back From The Brink Of Insanity by Dr. Rita Goh
  • Beyond the Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson and William Proctor
  • Bipolar and Pregnant by Kristin K. Finn
  • Darkness visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron
  • Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D by Lizzie Simon
  • Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia by Pamela Spiro Wagner and Carolyn Spiro
  • Don't Call Me Nuts: Coping With The Stigma Of Mental Illness by Patrick Corrigan and Robert Lundin
  • Five Little White Pills...and Then There Were None: A Journey From Manic Depression To Recovery by Choo Kah Ying
  • Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated by David D. Burns
  • Get It Done When You Are Depressed by Julie A. Fast and John D. Preston
  • Helping Someone With Mental Illness: A Compassionate Guide for Family, Friends and Caregivers by Rosalynn Carter and Susan Ma Golant
  • I am not sick I don’t need help by Xavier Amador
  • Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness and Survival by Jay Neugeboren
  • Loving Someone With Bipolar Disorder by Julie A. Fast and John D. Preston
  • Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
  • Nobody's Child by Marie Balter
  • Out of the shadows: confronting America's mental illness crisis by Fuller Torrey
  • Recovered Grace: Schizophrenia by Harris Ng
  • Remembering Garrett by Gordon H. Smith
  • Returning Home by Soh Eng Sim
  • Rewind, Replay, Repeat: A Memior of Obsessive-Cumpulsive Disorder by Jeff Bell
  • Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry by Bebe Moore Campbell
  • Speaking Up For Mental Ilness by Kua Ee Heok
  • Splintered Mind: Understanding Schizophrenia by Viyaj Nagaswami
  • Standing in the Shadows: Understanding and Overcoming Depression in Black Men by John Head
  • Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder: A 4-Step Plan for You and Your Loved Ones to Manage the Illness and Create Lasting Stability by Julie A. Fast and John D. Preston
  • Telling is Risky Business: The Experience of Mental Illness Stigma by Otto F. Wahl
  • The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in The Face of Illness by Jerome Groopman
  • The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks
  • The Day the Voices Stopped: A Journey from Madness to Hope by Ken Steele and Claire Berman
  • The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns
  • The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
  • The Quite Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett
  • The Relaxation Response by M.D. Herbert Bensen and Miriam Z. Klipper
  • Transforming Madness: New Lives for People Living with Metnal Illness by Jay Neugeboren
  • Undercurrents: A Therapist's Reckoning with Her Own Depression by Martha Manning
  • Unholy Ghosts: Writers On Depression by Neil Casey
  • UNSTUCK: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression by James S. Gordon, M.D.
  • What Goes Up: Surviving the Manic Episode of a Loved One by Judy Eron
  • Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey Through Depression by Meri Nana Ama Danquah
  • Women's Moods: What Every Woman Must Know About Harmones, the Brain, and Emotional Health by Deborah Sichel and Jeanne Watson Driscoll

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Magazines

  • The Advocate is NAMI's quarterly newsmagazine, featuring cutting-edge articles about the latest research, treatments, and services for mental illnesses; the status of major policy and legislation at the federal, state, and local levels; and provocative editorials and columns. It brings you the kind of timely, practical information you need, whether you are a consumer, a family member, or a friend of person with a serious mental illness.
  • Reintegration Today magazine is published quarterly by the Center for Reintegration as an information resource and community forum for people interested in all aspects of severe mental illness, particularly the process of recovery and reintegration back into society.
  • Mental Health Works is a free quarterly publication focused on mental health in the workplace (www.workplacementalhealth.org/mentalhealthworks).
  • Bp is the healthy living magazine for those with bipolar disorder (www.bphope.com).
  • Schizophrenia Digest is dedicated to sufferers, relatives, caregivers, and professionals in the field (www.schizophreniadigest.com).

Movies

A Beautiful Mind

If you've read the book, see the movie. Both received NAMI Special Awards in 2002 for the Greatest Contribution to Public Education About Mental illness. The biography of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash charts a path of struggle and recovery from schizophrenia. The Academy Award winning movie is changing public perceptions of mental illness forever.

 

The Hours

Winner of NAMI's 2003 Oustanding Media Award for a Dramatic Motion Picture; Nicole Kidman received an Academy Award for her performance as Virginia Woolf. An authentic, balanced, although tragic portrayal of mental illness, emphasizing individual dignity and the element of choice in embracing life.

 

The Caveman's Valentine

Winner of NAMI's 2001 Outstanding Media Award for a Dramatic Motion Picture (starring Samuel L. Jackson). Even before A Beautiful Mind, this was the movie that achieved a breakthrough in its heroic portrayal of a man with schizophrenia who solves a murder mystery. It also contrasts with the A Beautiful Mind in the method through which schizophrenia is portrayed.

 

Devrai

A film that demystifies schizophrenia, a mental disorder, giving it a human face. The film operates on the simple theme of a family coming to terms with the disease and learning to live with it, realizing that the disease is not curable, but can be controlled with medication. There is no permanent solution to it, only momentary reprieves…

 

15 Park Avenue

The story of a mind which believes in happiness with such insurmountable faith that it creates that happiness away from the broken life that its reality can offer, where it can remain untouched, pristine and eternal. This film was met with critical acclaim from critics all over India, and received a National Award in 2006.

 

 

Buy the Video!My Sister's Keeper

Winner of NAMI's 2001 Oustanding Media Award for a Television Movie, starring Kathy Bates and Elizabeth Perkins. It offers an uplifting, non-stereotyped view of a person with mental illness and an at times difficult, but loving relationship with her sister. Based on the book My Sister's Keeper: Learning to Cope with A Sibling's Mental Illness.

 

 

Nobody's Child

In this Emmy-winning role, Marlo Thomas (That Girl) portrays Marie Balter. Abandoned as an infant, Balter, endures abuse and neglect by her foster parents. Suffering from sever panic disorder, she is misdiagnosed with schizophrenia at age 17 and confined to a mental institution for 20 years.

A heart-wrenching true story about the survival of the human spirit, Nobodys’s Child follows Balter’s struggle to overcome impossible odds and build a normal life. Her inspiring journey from tragedy to triumph takes her to the halls of Harvard University and back to the mental institution of her youth to champion the cause of the mentally ill.

 

Documentaries

Shadow Voices: Finding Hope in Mental Illness

An hour-long documentary dealing with stigma, recovery and hope regarding mental illness. The program offers an inside look at what it is like to live with a mental illness and how individuals and their families find their way through a morass of  medical, governmental, societal and spiritual issues. Ten persons from across the U.S. and many sectors of the population with mental illness tell their stories, plus experts and advocates in the field add perspectives and insights.

 

Out of the Shadow

This very personal documentary chronicles the filmmaker’s mother, Millie, who has schizophrenia, as she suffers through the chaos of our mental health system as well as that of her own mind. A story of madness and dignity, shame and love, this intimate film illuminates a national plight through one family’s struggle and helps dispel the stigmas and misconceptions surrounding this harrowing illness.

 

 

West 47th Street

Life on the streets of New York City for the poor and homeless is an unforgiving struggle. For those who also battle mental illness, it is marked by the additional pressures of fear, isolation and misunderstanding. "West 47th Street," a remarkable new film, takes its cameras into the heart of the struggle as it rejects the invisibility of the mentally ill who inhabit America's urban streets. Filmed over three years at Fountain House, a renowned 50-year-old rehabilitation center in New York, "West 47th Street" reveals the human face of mental illness — and the faith and courage with which its victims fight to recover control of their lives.

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