5 Personal Essays About Mental Health

Honoring Mental Health Awareness Month by sharing powerful writing about suicidal ideation, ADHD, binge eating, wildlife rehabilitation, and getting off social media

May 01, 2024

the word mental health spelled with scrabbles next to a green leaf — Photo by Total Shape on Unsplash

This Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re sharing personal essays from our archives dealing with various aspects of mental health. We hope these vulnerable stories help you feel less alone.

If you are in crisis in the United States, you can call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, 24/7. Click here for international suicide hotlines.

Mental Health

My Mental Health Drastically Improved When I Stopped Posting on Social Media

Rachel Kramer Bussel

April 22, 2024

My Mental Health Drastically Improved When I Stopped Posting on Social Media

Ten years ago, I couldn’t have imagined I’d ever not have the urge to take to Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis—often multiple times a day—to divulge everything momentous or mundane that happened to me in a given 24-hour period. A weird dream? A new laptop? A trip? A date? An epic fail? A good meal? …

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Mental Health

The Place Where I Bury My Bats

Jessica Harvey

February 26, 2024

To get to the place where I bury my bats, I walk a broken, concrete path through my backyard. The scant weight I carry feels heavier than the body of a mammal smaller than my palm. Rose bushes direct me to soldier on to the lemon tree that perennially bears fruit. Above the thorny citrus is a redwood jungle gym for the squirr…

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Mental Health

Binge Eating Was My First High

Kelly A. Varner

October 23, 2023

The one-liter glass wine carafes in the bottom of my mother’s closet taunted me. Filled with change from her bartending tips, each one was dedicated to a particular coin. Quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies were all encased in glass. In a row. In order. My mother was nothing if not tidy. Painfully tidy. Everything in the house was…

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Mental Health

I’m a Surgeon Who Was Diagnosed with ADHD in My Thirties

Nimisha Kantharia

October 2, 2023

I’m a Surgeon Who Was Diagnosed with ADHD in My Thirties

Six months into therapy, I was grumbling, as one is prone to, about my mother. Despite the fact that I’m a surgeon, a mother myself, and almost forty, I exclaimed in utter frustration, “My mother just won’t listen! Whenever I talk to her, she jumps from one topic to another and then another, before I can co…

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Mental Health

For 42 Years, I’ve Lived with Chronic Suicidal Ideation

Caren Gussoff Sumption

May 1, 2023

For 42 Years, I’ve Lived with Chronic Suicidal Ideation

I seriously consider suicide at least once a week. This is the first time these nine words have ever externalized, outside my head, in this particular order. I feel like I need to type them again. I seriously consider suicide at least once a week. And I have, every week, 52 weeks a year, since I was about eight years old.

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5 Personal Essays About Mental Health

Honoring Mental Health Awareness Month by sharing powerful writing about suicidal ideation, ADHD, binge eating, wildlife rehabilitation, and getting off social media

My Mental Health Drastically Improved When I Stopped Posting on Social Media

The Place Where I Bury My Bats

Binge Eating Was My First High

I’m a Surgeon Who Was Diagnosed with ADHD in My Thirties

For 42 Years, I’ve Lived with Chronic Suicidal Ideation

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