Mental Health in Fiction
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Increase your own awareness by reading these stories of mental illness, treatment, and wellbeing. Created April 2025.
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Please Stop Trying to Leave Me
Saab’s debut novel masterfully intertwines the complexities of modern life with a raw and intimate exploration of trauma, mental health, and queerness. (Booklist)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Weather Girl
Ari and Russell scheme to get their feuding divorced bosses back together, Parent Trap-style, and regain peace in the workplace. Instead, they find love. A touching, surprisingly weighty romance, exploring issues of depression and body image and incorporating glimpses of Jewish faith. (LibraryReads)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both
Moving between New York City and Los Angeles, Stovall’s debut novel follows a Black millennial woman as she reckons with her past...A powerful testimony to the enduring violence of harmful relationships and the profoundly difficult task of recovery. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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We'll Prescribe You A Cat
Tucked away in an old building in Kyoto, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found by people who are struggling in their lives and genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way there: it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take” their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, occasionally challenging yet endearing cats. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer
An ex-Army grad student, Joseph, navigates PTSD, single fatherhood and strained family ties while confronting the complexities of race, love, and justice in modern Philadelphia in the new novel by the author of Sink. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Never Been Better
A bipolar woman travels to Turks and Caicos to break up the wedding of her best friends...A funny, refreshing, and generous story full of wisdom on mental health. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Lightning in Her Hands
In this heartfelt tale, witch Teal Flores has never been able to control her powers over the weather...Gilliland weaves a touching story about loss and letting go with the idea of being worthy of love, even on the bad days. (Booklist)
Format: Book
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The Emperor of Gladness
In the struggling town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai is saved from despair by Grazina, an elderly widow with dementia, forging an unexpected bond that reshapes their lives and reveals dynamics of love, memory, and resilience on the margins of society. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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Misinterpretation
An interpreter living in Brooklyn throws herself into the lives of acquaintances to avoid confronting her own life...This debut novel explores the ways traumas of the past can impact how we experience the present. (Kirkus)
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The Other Side of Nothing
Zadeik deftly evokes the dark days of clinical depression and the rapid cycling of a mood disorder while exploring societal attitudes toward mental illness over generations. The author also beautifully depicts the unfolding and emotionally charged love story between two young people invested in philosophy, literature, and art, and she captures the heartbreaking spiral that can happen when things go awry. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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