Mental illness in fiction

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Mental illness in fiction is perhaps most often covered by writers who have themselves had experience of mental illness, or experiences that are similar, for example the taking of psychotropic drugs.

A starting list might include:

• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, a fictionalised account of her own struggles with depression

• Regeneration by Pat Barker, based on the historical experiences of the poet Siegfried Sassoon, explores shell-shock and other traumatic illnesses following World War I

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is a classic, though arguably its subject is more mental institutions than illness itself, if the two can be separated.

• A Beautiful Mind - the movie was a fictionalised account of the schizophrenic mathematician, John Nash.

More recently, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon is written from the point of view of an autistic child.

Darkness Descending by Bethann Korsmit is about a man who suffers a mental breakdown and various other mental problems, and the people who help him to overcome the obstacles in his life.

• I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Hannah Green (aka Joanne Greenberg)

• Saint Jude by Dawn Wilson

• Glimmer by Annie Waters

• Cut by Patricia Mccormick

• The Good Patient: A Novel by Kirsten Waterfield Duisberg

• Hard Candy: Nobody Ever Flies Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Charles Carroll

• The Bird of Paradise by R. D. Laing, often available with his non-fiction essay The Politics of Experience about schizophrenia and hallucinogenic drugs

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