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Mental Health Awareness Month: General Mental Illness Fiction

This last list deals with teens living or having a parent with different types of mental illnesses.

Dawn, Sasha. Oblivion. Egmont, 20145.
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.

Easton, Kelly. To Be Mona. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2008.
High school senior Sage tries to hide her mentally ill mother and get a popular football player to go out with her, but eventually she realizes that abandoning her real friends and letting herself be manipulated by others does not make her feel better after all.

Harrar, George. Not as Crazy as I Seem. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
As fifteen-year-old Devon begins mid-year at a new prestigious prep school, he is plagued by compulsions such as the need to sort things into groups of four.

Hopkins, Ellen. Impulse. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2007.
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.

Kuehn, Stephanie. Delicate Monsters. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015.
Three psychologically damaged teenagers uncover dark secrets and even darker truths about themselves.

Leveen, Tom. Shackled. Simon Pulse, 2015.
Six years after her friend Tara disappeared from a shopping mall during a game of hide-and-seek, prickly, anxious Pelly thinks she spots her buying coffee with her captor. Pelly, who has an unnamed mental illness, goes to online rather than traditional school and works as a barista. When she serves coffee to the girl she thinks is Tara, she thinks she sees the girl mouth the words "Help me." Pelly calls the police, but they are unconvinced by her story, and Pelly instead begins following leads on her own.

McCormick, Patricia. Cut. Front Street, 2000.
While confined to a mental hospital, thirteen-year-old Callie slowly comes to understand some of the reasons behind her self-mutilation, and gradually starts to get better.

Nolan, Han. Crazy. Harcourt, 2010.
Fifteen-year-old loner Jason struggles to hide father's declining mental condition after his mother's death, but when his father disappears he must confide in the other members of a therapy group he has been forced to join at school.

Phillips, Linda Vigen. Crazy. Eerdman’s Books for Young Readers, 2014.
While growing up in the 1960s, Laura uses art to cope with her mother's mental illness.

Polsky, Sara. This is How I Find Her. Albert Whitman &Company, 2013.
High school junior Sophie has always had the burden of taking care of her mother, who has bipolar disorder, but after her mother's hospitalization she must learn to cope with estranged family and figure out her own life.

Scelsa, Kate. Fans of the Impossible Life.  Balzar + Bray, 2015.
At Saint Francis Prep school in Mountain View, New Jersey, Mira, Jeremy, and Sebby come together as they struggle with romance, bullying, foster home and family problems, and mental health issues.

Shaw, Susan. Black-Eyed Suzie. Boyd Mills Press, 2002.
Suzie's stay in a mental hospital helps her tear down the walls of a devastating psychological prison she calls "the box".

Smith, Hilary T. Wild Awake. Katherine Tegen Books, 2013.
The discovery of a startling family secret leads seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd from a protected and naive life into a summer of mental illness, first love, and profound self-discovery

Vaught, Susan. Freaks Like Us. Bloomsbury, 2012.

A mentally ill teenager who rides the "short bus" to school investigates the sudden disappearance of his best friend.

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