Depression and Mental Illness*
/ The Death of Jayson PorterAdoff, Jaime
In the Florida projects, sixteen-year-old Jayson struggles with the harsh realities of his life which include an abusive mother, a drug-addicted father, and not fitting in at his predominately white school, and bring him to the brink of suicide.
/ Border Crossing
Anderson, Jessica Lee
Manz, a troubled fifteen-year-old, ruminates over his Mexican father's death, his mother's drinking, and his stillborn stepbrother until the voices he hears in his head take over and he cannot tell reality from delusion.
/ Breaking Butterflies
Anjelais, M.
Promised to each other before they were born, Cadence and Sphinxie, separated after he deliberately cut her face, are drawn back together at age sixteen, but Cadence is even less stable mentally and Sphinxie, sweet, plain, and attracted to his brilliance, tries to be loyal but fears for her life.
/ Head Case
Aronson, Sarah
Seventeen-year-old Frank Marder struggles to deal with the aftermath of an accident he had while driving drunk that killed two people, including his girlfriend, and left him paralyzed from the neck down.
/ Thirteen Reasons Why
Asher, Jay
High school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing seven cassette tapes recorded by his crush, Hannah Baker, who committed suicide, and spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death.
/ Cameron and the Girls
Averett, Edward
A boy suffering from schizophreniform disorder falls into a love triangle with a girl in his junior high class--and a girl in his head.
/ Jars of Glass
Barkley, Brad and Heather Hepler
Two sisters, aged fourteen and fifteen, offer their views of events that occur during the year after their mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia and their family, including a recently adopted Russian orphan, begins to disintegrate.
/ Never Ending
Bedford, Martyn
Traumatized by grief and guilt after her younger brother dies during a family vacation, fifteen-year-old Shiv is sent away to an exclusive clinic that claims to "cure" people like her.
/ Drowning Instinct
Bick. Ilsa J.
Jenna Lord's first sixteen years were not a fairy tale. Her father is a controlling psycho and her mother is a drunk. She used to count on her older brother until he shipped off to Iraq. And then, of course, there was the time she almost died in a fire.
Other Topics: Family Abuse, Alcohol Abuse, Cutting
/ Dear Life, You Suck
Blagden, Scott
Irreverent, foul-mouthed, seventeen-year-old Cricket Cherpin, living under the watchful eye of Mother Mary at a Catholic boys' home in Maine, has such bleak prospects he is considering suicide when Wynona Bidaban steps into his world.
/ Hate List: a novel
Brown, Jennifer
Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junior year, struggles to cope with integrating herself back into high school life, unsure herself whether she was a hero or a villain.
/ The Chance You Won’t Return
Cardi, Annie
While navigating high school, driver's education, and her first crush, teenager Alex Winchester must deal with a devastating family secret.
/ Finding Alice
Carlson, Melody
On the outside, Alice Laxton appears to be a normal college student, but as her senior year becomes more stressful, her schizophrenia progresses, disrupting her life and forcing her to seek experimental treatment.
/ Walkaway Carter, Aiden R.
Fifteen-year-old Andy, fed up with his alcoholic father and annoying older brother, leaves their northern Wisconsin cabin on his version of a walkabout, leaving his medications to combat depression, anxiety, and delusions behind.
/ Hush
Chayil, Eishes
After remembering the cause of her best friend Devory's suicide at age nine, Gittel is determined to raise awareness of sexual abuse in her Borough Park, New York, community, despite the rules of Chassidim that require her to be silent.
/ Undone
Clarke, Cat
After the suicide of her gay best friend Kai, Jem Halliday reads letters he left her encouraging her to come out of her shell and Jem does just that, but only to infiltrate the group of popular students who released a video that "outed" Kai so that she can take revenge.
/ Little Black Lies
Cohen, Tish
Starting her junior year at an ultra-elite Boston school, sixteen-year-old Sara, hoping to join the popular crowd, hides that her father not only is the school janitor, but also has obsessive-compulsive disorder.
/ You Know Where to Find Me
Cohn, Rachel
In the wake of her cousin's suicide, overweight and introverted seventeen-year-old Miles experiences significant changes in her relationships with her mother and father, her best friend Jamal and his family, and her cousin's father, while gaining insights about herself, both positive and negative.
/ Waiting for You
Colasanti, Susane
Fifteen-year-old high school sophomore Marisa, who has an anxiety disorder, decides that this is the year she will get what she wants--a boyfriend and a social life--but things do not turn out exactly the way she expects them to.
/ Oblivion
Dawn, Sasha
Sixteen-year-old Callie Knowles fights her compulsion to write constantly, even on herself, as she struggles to cope with foster care, her mother’s life in a mental institution, and her belief that she killed her father, a minister, who has been missing for a year.
/ Some-thing Like Normal
Doller, Trish
When Travis returns home from Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother has stolen his girlfriend and car, and he has nightmares of his best friend getting killed but when he runs into Harper, a girl who has despised him since middle school, life actually starts looking up.
/ Fell of Dark
Downes, Patrick
Chronicles the lives of two mentally ill boys--Erik, who believes he is a saint, and Thorn, who believes he is a demon--as their minds devolve into hallucinations, showing the way their worlds intersect, and culminating in a final stand-off.
/ Tears of a Tiger
Draper, Sharon M.
The death of high school basketball star Rob Washington in an automobile accident affects the lives of his close friend Andy, who was driving the car, and many others in the school.
/ Playlist for the Dead
Falkoff, Michelle
After his best friend, Hayden, commits suicide, fifteen-year-old Sam is determined to find out why--using the clues in the playlist Hayden left for him.
/ Schizo
Firmston, Kim
When Dan's mother stops taking her medication for schizophrenia it is up to him to keep the family together.
/ Suicide Notes: a novel
Ford, Michael Thomas
Fifteen-year-old Jeff wakes up on New Year's Day to find he has been admitted to the psychiatric ward after trying to kill himself and is offended that anyone would think he has anything in common with the other "crazies" in the hospital with him, but as his stay lengthens he begins to see he is more like them than he thought.
/ I Was Here
Forman, Gayle
In an attempt to understand why her best friend committed suicide, eighteen-year-old Cody Reynolds retraces her dead friend's footsteps and makes some startling discoveries.
/ Be Not Afraid
Galante, Cecilia
Since her mother's suicide, high school junior Marin has been able to see others' pain as colors and shapes, but what she sees in the head of classmate Cassie, who forced her to participate in a weird conjoining rite, is much more frightening and deadly.
/ Fat Kid Rules the World
Going, K.L.
Seventeen-year-old Troy, depressed, suicidal, and weighing nearly three hundred pounds, gets a new perspective on life when Curt, a semi-homeless teen who is a genius on guitar, asks Troy to be the drummer in a rock band.
/ Running for My Life
Gonzalez, Ann
After fourteen-year-old Andrea McKane's mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia, Andrea copes with the abuse and absence of a beloved parent, and her fear of sharing a similar fate, by running.
/ Born Ugly
Goobie, Beth
Shir has always tried to be invisible, but is still tormented by the bullies at her school and treated like an outcast in her own home, leaving her with only two places where she feels she can escape--at her part-time job delivering groceries and at her secret retreat by the river--but when her job leads her into a world of uncertainty and a stranger invades her haven by the river, Shir's whole world is turned upside down.
/ Under Rose-Tainted Skies
Gornall, Louise
Will teenaged Norah, who is struggling with agoraphobia and OCD, accept that she could be the right one for sweet, funny Luke?
/ Turtles All the Way Down
Green, John
Aza Holmes is a young woman navigating daily existence within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
/ Ordinary People
Guest, Judith
After spending eight months in a mental institution following a suicide attempt, seventeen-year-old Conrad returns home and finds that he must rebuild his life.
/ Get Well Soon
Halpern, Julie
Anna Bloom, confined to a mental hospital by her parents who do not know how to deal with her depression and panic attacks, writes letters to her best friend Tracy sharing the funny details of her life and the people she is getting to know at Lakeland.
/ Have a Nice Day
Halpern, Julie
Anna struggles to adjust after a three-week stay in the mental hospital, and, although she misses Justin, Anna is weary to ask about the goings on back at the hospital and begins to suspect she may be the cause of tension between her parents.
/ Paperweight
Haston, Meg
Seventeen-year-old Stevie is trapped. In her life. In her body. And now in an eating-disorder treatment center on the dusty outskirts of the New Mexico desert. ... Her dad has signed her up for sixty days of treatment. But what no one knows is that Stevie doesn't plan to stay that long. There are only twenty-seven days until the anniversary of her brother Josh's death--the death she caused. And if Stevie gets her way, there are only twenty-seven days until she, too, will end her life.
/ ImpulseHopkins, Ellen
Three teens who meet at Reno, Nevada's Aspen Springs mental hospital after each has attempted suicide connect with each other in a way they never have with their parents or anyone else in their lives.
/ Rumble
Hopkins, Ellen
Eighteen-year-old Matt's atheism is tested when, after a horrific accident of his own making that plunges him into a dark, quiet place, he hears a voice that calls everything he has ever disbelieved into question.
/ A Long Way Down
Hornby, Nick
A former talk-show host, a musician, a teenage girl, and a mother, each intending to commit suicide, find themselves together on the roof of a London building and begin to contemplate their individual choices and circumstances.
/ Try Not to Breathe
Hubbard, Jennifer R.
The summer sixteen-year-old Ryan is released from a mental hospital following his suicide attempt, he meets Nicki, who gets him to share his darkest secrets while hiding secrets of her own.
/ Fragments
Johnston, Jeffry
Chase is haunted by fragmented memories of the accident that changed his life and struggles to put the crash behind him, but first he must face the truth about what he has done and how it has changed him.
/ Silhouetted by the Blue
Jones, Traci L.
After the death of her mother in an automobile accident, seventh-grader Serena, who has gotten the lead in her middle school play, is left to handle the day-to-day challenges of caring for herself and her younger brother when their father cannot pull himself out of his depression.
/ Back Home
Keller, Julia
Thirteen-year-old Rachel Browning understands that her father will be different after being injured in the Iraq War, but no one is prepared for the impact that his traumatic brain injury and other wounds have on the entire family.
/ One Thing Stolen
Kephart, Beth
Nadia Cara is in Florence, Italy, with her family because her professor father is researching the 1966 flood, but Nadia herself is in trouble--she has turned into a kleptomaniac and she feels detached from everything, except for an elusive Italian boy whom no one but herself has seen.
/ Everybody Sees the Ants: a novel
King, A.S.
Overburdened by his parents' bickering and a bully's attacks, fifteen-year-old Lucky Linderman begins dreaming of being with his grandfather, who went missing during the Vietnam War, but during a visit to Arizona, his aunt and uncle and their beautiful neighbor, Ginny, help him find a new perspective.
Other topics: bullying
/ I Crawl Through It
King, A.S.
A surrealist novel about four teenagers who find unconventional ways to
escape standardized tests and their perilous world, and discover that the
only escape from reality is to face it.
/ Finding Audrey
Kinsella, Sophie
Fourteen-year-old Audrey is making slow but steady progress
dealing with her anxiety disorder when Linus comes into the picture
and her recovery gains momentum.
/ The Smaller Evil
Kuehn, Stephanie
Chronically sick and anxiety plagued Arman Dukoff runs away to
attend a self-actualization retreat where he eventually discovers
both a bloody corpse and a sense of self that was not what he
bargained for.
/ My Time as Caz Hazard
Kyi, Tanya Lloyd