Kay Redfield Jamison is an American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. She holds the post of the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is an Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.
Bulimia nervosa, also known as simply bulimia, is an eating disorder characterized by binge eating followed by purging or fasting, and excessive concern with body shape and weight. This activity aims to expel the body of calories eaten from the binging phase of the process. Binge eating refers to eating a large amount of food in a short amount of time. Purging refers to the attempts to get rid of the food consumed. This may be done by vomiting or taking laxatives.
Links between creativity and mental health have been extensively discussed and studied by psychologists and other researchers for centuries. Parallels can be drawn to connect creativity to major mental disorders including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, OCD and ADHD. For example, studies have demonstrated correlations between creative occupations and people living with mental illness. There are cases that support the idea that mental illness can aid in creativity, but it is also generally agreed that mental illness does not have to be present for creativity to exist.
Works of fiction dealing with mental illness include:
Unspecified feeding or eating disorder (UFED) is a DSM-5 category of eating disorders that, along with other specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED), replaced eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS) in the DSM-IV-TR.
Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia is an autobiography written by Marya Hornbacher, detailing her fourteen-year battle with eating disorders. Published by HarperCollins in 1997, Wasted was a critical and commercial success. The author's young age surprised many readers, and the memoir was praised for its maturity and candor.
Ellen Forney is an American cartoonist, educator, and wellness coach. She is known for her autobiographic comics which include I was Seven in '75; I Love Led Zepellin; and Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me. She teaches at the Cornish College of the Arts. Her work covers mental illness, political activism, drugs, and the riot grrrl movement. Currently, she is based in Seattle, Washington.
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness is a memoir written by American clinical psychologist and bipolar disorder researcher Kay Redfield Jamison and published in 1995. The book details Jamison's experience with bipolar disorder and how it affected her in various areas of her life from childhood up until the writing of the book. Narrated in the first person, the book shows the effect of manic-depressive illness in family and romantic relationships, professional life, and self-awareness, and highlights both the detrimental effects of the illness and the few positive ones. The book was originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in New York and reprinted by Vintage Books in paperback in 1997.
Scattershot: My Bipolar Family is a 2008 memoir, written by American writer, carpenter, and former Montague Bookmill proprietor David Lovelace, published by Dutton Adult. Lovelace's memoir chronicles the challenges of growing up in a family in which four out of five members suffer from bipolar disorder, including Lovelace himself. Only his sister, who is a professional therapist, was spared the ravages of bipolar disorder, while both his parents, his brother, and himself, have suffered to differing degrees over the years.
Wintergirls (2009) is a realistic fiction novel by the American author Laurie Halse Anderson. The novel was published in 2009 by Viking. The story focuses on a girl, Lia Overbrook, who suffers from anorexia and self harm. Lia struggles to cope with her mental illness while balancing everything else going on in her life. Some months after a fall out with her best friend Cassie, Lia receives the news that she has died from bulimia. This complicates Lia's life even more and forces her to confront her own illness.
Julia Bell is a British novelist and poet living in North London. She is Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck and the founder and Project Director of the annual publication the Mechanics’ Institute Review and the website "Writers Hub".
Susannah Cahalan is an American writer and author, known for writing the memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, about her hospitalization with a rare auto-immune disease, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. She published a second book, The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness, in 2019. When she is not writing longer works, she works as a writer for the New York Post. Cahalan's work has raised awareness for her brain disease, making it more well-known and decreasing the likelihood of misdiagnoses.
Bassey Ikpi is a Nigerian-born American spoken-word artist, writer, and mental health advocate. She has appeared on HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry five times and her poetry has opened shows for Grammy Award-winning artists. She's also the New York Times bestselling author of I'm Telling The Truth But I'm Lying. In 2020 she judged the Indiana Review Creative Nonfiction Prize. She also features on the OkayAfrica's 100 Women campaign 2020 honoree list, which celebrates women building infrastructure for future African generations.
Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother's Love is a memoir by the American public defender Zack McDermott published in 2017.
Paul E. Garfinkel is a Canadian psychiatrist, researcher and an academic leader. He is a professor at the University of Toronto and a staff psychiatrist at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).
Hunger for Life is a 2019 coming-of-age novel by Scottish author Andy Marr, which explores a man struggling between his anorexic sister, his aging parents, and his new free-spirited Austrian girlfriend, Hannah. Originally a self-published novel via Kindle Direct Publishing, the book received broader critical attention and popularity than expected, particularly for its accurate portrayal of eating disorders. The original book had an emerald-green cover with a photograph of two children on it; later versions had conceptual art sketches in black-and-white pencil.
The Best Little Girl in the World is a 1979 American young adult coming of age novel by Steven Levenkron, telling the story of Kessa, a fictional teenager who suffers from an eating disorder. The book was originally published by Warner Books in 1979. It was adapted into a 1981 ABC TV film by the same name, and it won the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults Award.
