Books like Briefing for a Descent into Hell by Doris Lessing

Alicia Berenson, a celebrated painter, shoots her husband Gabriel and then falls silent, becoming a media sensation. In North London’s Grove secure unit, psychotherapist Theo Faber devotes himself to uncovering why she became the Silent Patient and his own true motives.

The Bell Jar is the sole novel by Sylvia Plath, a psychologically intense and autobiographical look at a young woman’s decline into mental illness.

xxxv, 338 pages ; 21 cm

Johann Hari investigates the roots of depression and anxiety, arguing that modern lifestyles—not chemical imbalances—are the primary culprits, and presents nine real causes along with seven alternative solutions.

William Styron’s memoir recounts his 1985 struggle with severe depression, hospitalization, and recovery, offering an honest portrait of living with mental illness.

From Kay Redfield Jamison - an international authority on manic-depressive illness, and one of the few women who are full professors of medicine at American universities - a remarkable personal testimony: the revelation of her own struggle since adolescence with manic-depression, and how it has shaped her life. Vividly, directly, with candor, wit, and simplicity, she takes us into the fascinating and dangerous territory of this form of madness - a world in which one pole can be the alluring dark land ruled by what Byron called the "melancholy star of the imagination," and the other a desert of depression and, all too frequently, death. A moving and exhilarating memoir by a woman whose furious determination to learn the enemy, to use her gifts of intellect to make a difference, led her to become, by the time she was forty, a world authority on manic-depression, and whose work has helped save countless lives.

Elyn R. Saks, a distinguished professor and lawyer, chronicles her lifelong battle with schizophrenia, detailing how she overcame challenges to build a respected career in law, psychology, and psychiatry.