Here are 46 books that Bipolar II Disorder fans have personally recommended if you like
Bipolar II Disorder.
Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I’m a writer and illustrator based in coastal California. I have bipolar disorder, and my writing reflects my preoccupation with the mysteries of mental health. I wrote a novel-in-stories about an idealistic young teacher struggling with bipolar disorder, and my latest book is a graphic novel about a bipolar bear who gets trapped in the labyrinth of health insurance claims. I’m also the creator of a website designed to encourage people who are fighting off depression’s Voice of Doom.
As you probably deduced from the title, this book focuses on schizophrenia, not bipolar disorder. But it is the best mental health memoir I’ve ever read. I keep multiple copies so I can hand them out to my friends. Esmé Weijun Wang is a beautiful writer, and the book contains deep, insightful reflections on the weight of stigma and the nature of a psychiatric diagnosis.
An intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness, The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esme Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the "collected schizophrenias" but to those who wish to understand it as well. Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, Wang discusses the medical community's own disagreement about labels and procedures for diagnosing those with mental illness, and then follows an arc that examines the manifestations of…
I’m a writer and illustrator based in coastal California. I have bipolar disorder, and my writing reflects my preoccupation with the mysteries of mental health. I wrote a novel-in-stories about an idealistic young teacher struggling with bipolar disorder, and my latest book is a graphic novel about a bipolar bear who gets trapped in the labyrinth of health insurance claims. I’m also the creator of a website designed to encourage people who are fighting off depression’s Voice of Doom.
This book is also full of sad facts. But understanding suicide is important. Many people with bipolar disorder struggle with suicidal thoughts, and researchers estimate that 20-60% of people with bipolar disorder attempt suicide. Kay Redfield Jamison’s book is full of compelling patient profiles, thought-provoking statistics, and beautiful poetry. This is book is gripping, compassionate, and ultimately life-affirming.
Critical reading for parents, educators, and anyone wanting to understand the tragic epidemic of suicide—”a powerful book [that] will change people's lives—and, doubtless, save a few" (Newsday).
The first major book in a quarter century on suicide—and its terrible pull on the young in particular—Night Falls Fast is tragically timely: suicide has become one of the most common killers of Americans between the ages of fifteen and forty-five.
From the author of the best-selling memoir, An Unquiet Mind—and an internationally acknowledged authority on depression—Dr. Jamison has also known suicide firsthand: after years of struggling with manic-depression, she tried at age…
I’m a writer and illustrator based in coastal California. I have bipolar disorder, and my writing reflects my preoccupation with the mysteries of mental health. I wrote a novel-in-stories about an idealistic young teacher struggling with bipolar disorder, and my latest book is a graphic novel about a bipolar bear who gets trapped in the labyrinth of health insurance claims. I’m also the creator of a website designed to encourage people who are fighting off depression’s Voice of Doom.
Time for a fun one. RX is a wry, insightful, graphic memoir by a woman with bipolar disorder who gets a job writing ads for a pharmaceutical company. She finds herself in meetings, brainstorming ad ideas for bipolar medication! A manic episode lands her in an inpatient psychiatric facility. She chronicles her experience as a patient, and reflects on what it means to heal.
A graphic memoir about the treatment of mental illness, treating mental illness as a commodity.
In her early twenties in New York City, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Rachel Lindsay takes a job in advertising in order to secure healthcare coverage for her treatment. But work takes a strange turn when she is promoted onto the Pfizer account and suddenly finds herself on the other side of the curtain, developing ads for an anti-depressant drug. Overwhelmed by her professional life and the self-scrutiny it inspires, her mania takes hold. She quits her job to become an artist, only to be hospitalized…
I’m just an everyday person. I don’t have a fancy title or lots of degrees, but I do have experience being close to God and a never-ending quest to know Him more. His love is so good that it absolutely must be shared. So if I, in all of my ordinariness, can learn extraordinary sacred things, then I can bring others along the journey, too. His presence in my heartaches, struggles, joy, and adventures has sustained my life, and I don’t know any credential that could testify any clearer that a journey with God is worth taking.
We often forget that Dr. King was also a pastor in addition to his civil rights work. However, these two roles were intertwined.
Strength to Love is a collection of sermons that address the revolutionary effect of God’s love on our lives. Receiving holy love motivates us to love our neighbors in many ways, including seeking justice and taking action for their well-being. God’s love is transformative, and seeing this framed in the non-violence philosophy of social change is an inspiring, motivating illustration.
The classic collection of Dr. King’s sermons that fuse his Christian teachings with his radical ideas of love and nonviolence as a means to combat hate and oppression.
As Martin Luther King, Jr., prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his most well known homilies. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in July 1962. While behind bars, he spent uninterrupted time preparing the drafts for works such as “Loving Your Enemies” and “Shattered Dreams,” and he continued to edit the volume…
My parents survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia and the aftermath of the Vietnam War, so their love for us was always tinged with anxiety, fear, and a large deal of paranoia and control. All of my books are about the complex relationship between parents and their children, and the things we knowingly or unknowingly pass down. I’ve also worked a number of years as a university student counsellor, where the same enduring themes play out in my students’ experiences. So naturally, I am drawn to stories that explore difficult but loving family dynamics.
Many years ago, because I’d written a book about my family’s experience surviving the Cambodian genocide, a talented author asked if I would mentor her through writing a book about the aftermath of the Bosnian conflict and her mother’s mental illness. The result of this is Amra Pajalic’s extraordinary memoir Things Nobody Knows about Me. Pajalic writes with raw candour about her mother’s bipolar and psychosis and growing up in the economically depressed suburbs of working-class Australia. Despite the horrors and hardships of having to constantly be an ‘adult’ in the parent-child relationship Amra’s memoir is full of humour, life, and love.
When she is four years old Amra Pajalić realises that her mother is different. Fatima is loving but sometimes hears strange voices that tell her to do bizarre things. She is frequently sent to hospital and Amra and her brother are passed around to family friends and foster homes, and for a time live with their grandparents in Bosnia.
At sixteen Amra ends up in the school counsellor's office for wagging school. She finally learns the name for the malady that has dogged her mother and affected her own life: bipolar disorder. Amra becomes her mother's confidante and learns the…
I am Zangba Thomson, a happy, positive, and charismatic human being. I appreciate the simple things in life, and I am content with what I have. I laugh and smile a lot, and people say I am always in a good mood. I love to motivate, encourage, and inspire people to focus on the solution and not the problem; and to be optimistic and cheerful despite difficulties. In a nutshell, I love seeing people succeed. My motto is (P) Positive (E) Energy (A) Always (C) Creates (E) Elevation (PEACE). I hope you enjoy my book recommendations and I wish you the very best on your road to success.
A book I strongly recommend on your success journey is As A Man Thinketh. This 60-page book is short, sweet, and to the point. Your thoughts are things, and you are where you are in life because of how you think. Understanding that profound statement can enable you to weave happiness and prosperity into your life. Also, As A Man Thinketh will show you how to always stay positive and keep successful thoughts flowing in your mind so you can live a prosperous life.
As a female writer, I love digging into the minds of women characters, especially in light of their family circumstances. I think we can sometimes underestimate the importance of a strong, loving family unit in terms of personal development. But what’s amazing is how a person’s story can be redeemed even if they were raised in a less-than-ideal environment. Even though I got pretty lucky in the parent department, I know not a lot of people have. And I love showing others through fiction that despite hardships they’ve had to face along the way, they are still loved and still wanted by a God who knows them better than anyone.
I’m recommending this book because it made me cry, and I don’t cry. The warped triangle between two divorced parents and their daughter is tragic enough, but what really stirred me was the way Willow so fiercely wants to live life with her “fun” mom, not really understanding that not everything in life is as it seems.
Little Miss Sunshine meets About a Boy in this piercingly bittersweet novel which shows how the most meaningful love can last a lifetime.
Willow's mother Rosie isn't like the other mums. She's wears every colour of the rainbow, has midnight feasts, and sends Willow to school covered in paint.
Meanwhile, Rex is the sort of father who checks Willow's homework, has a rule for everything, and would never dream of playing in the dirt.
Now Rosie and Rex live in different places, Willow knows her mum needs her even more. But Rosie's multi-coloured way of looking at the world can…
I do not have bipolar disorder like my father did and other relatives do, but have dealt with OCD, anxiety, and depression off and on from age thirteen forward. Throughout my (and my father's) mental illness journey and in the course of writing WWMF, countless hours have succumbed to the duties of researching and exploring bipolar and other mental illnesses. I am not a medical expert but I do think my compass and intentions point true on bringing light to these realities of life. If you disagree with my selections, commentary, or something you find askance in WWMF, please tell me! We all learn from discussion and dialogue.
The thorns of Twain's personal life and literary career only heighten our intrigue with him.
For me, he's a tragic figure whose parade of misfortunes interrupted by periods of commercial success and critical acclaim followed by further failures result in an exceptionally bipolar history. His classic novels should persist as required reading but I find his short stories equally satisfying.
This volume is voluminous, so here are some favorites to start: "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," "Was it Heaven? Or Hell?" and "Luck."
These sixty satirical, rollicking, uproarious tales by the greatest yarn-spinner in our literary history are as fresh and vivid as ever more than a century after their author’s death. Mark Twain’s famous novels Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have long been hailed as major achievements, but the father of American literature also made his mark as a master of the humorous short story. All the tales he wrote over the course of his lengthy career are gathered here, including such immortal classics as “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," “The Diary of Adam and…
I do not have bipolar disorder like my father did and other relatives do, but have dealt with OCD, anxiety, and depression off and on from age thirteen forward. Throughout my (and my father's) mental illness journey and in the course of writing WWMF, countless hours have succumbed to the duties of researching and exploring bipolar and other mental illnesses. I am not a medical expert but I do think my compass and intentions point true on bringing light to these realities of life. If you disagree with my selections, commentary, or something you find askance in WWMF, please tell me! We all learn from discussion and dialogue.
Whether one can detect TR's likely bipolar condition from the vast array of moods and messaging in these deeply personal and candid letters remains subjective.
What comes through as undebatable, however, is the level of tenderness, vulnerability, playfulness, and sentiment that our 26th President (who proudly accepted his Bull Moose and Rough Rider monikers) reveals here.
Though a handful of the editor's selections seem too esoteric, the remainder holds special appeal to me because my father's "letters/apologies to (his) grandchildren" informed the core of my book.
This collection of letters from the 26th President of the United States to his six children was an immediate bestseller when it was originally published in 1919, shortly after Roosevelt's death. Written between 1898 and 1911, the letters show Roosevelt as a devoted and encouraging father, with a sense of humor and a skilled sketching hand.
In addition to my lived experience as someone who has struggled with mental health and addiction since adolescence, I'm passionate about social justice issues related to mental illness and substance use. In June 2021, I completed a post-graduate program in Mental Health & Addictions. Throughout my studies I was able to gain a deeper understanding of how my own struggles developed and what they have come to mean to me from both a personal and clinical perspective. Now, I endeavor to pursue future writing projects in various genres that illuminate mental health issues as a relevant and timely topic of interest. I also hope to work with disenfranchised populations while pursuing my creative writing.
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…
Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of Wasted, Marya Hornbacher's astonishing New York Times best-selling memoir from the belly of bipolar disorder.
Marya Hornbacher tells the story that until recently she had no idea was hers to tell: that of her life with Type I ultra-rapid-cycle bipolar disorder, the most severe form of bipolar disease.
In Madness, Hornbacher relates that bipolar can spawn eating disorders, substance abuse, promiscuity, and self-mutilation, and that for too long these symptoms have masked, for many of the three million people in America with bipolar, their underlying illness. Hornbacher’s fiercely self-aware portrait of bipolar, starting as early as…
