Top ten books about psychiatry

Elizabeth Lowry was born in Washington DC and educated in South Africa and England. She is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and other publications.

Her first novel, The Bellini Madonna, was published in 2008 to great acclaim and will be reissued in 2019.

Her second novel, Dark Water, appeared in September 2018.

One of Lowry's top ten books about psychiatry, as shared at the Guardian:

Darkness Visible by William Styron

Styron’s account of being overtaken in late middle age by clinical depression’s “toxic and unnameable tide” is an urgent frontline report of how it feels when the mind turns “agonisingly inward”. Its publication in 1990 helped initiate a public conversation about the condition and launched the contemporary trend in depression memoirs. Yet the candour and paradoxical beauty of Styron’s remains unequalled. His description of the hospital where he slowly recovers as “a kinder, gentler madhouse than the one I’d left” is rich in tender humour; his final message charged with hope: that those who dwell “in depression’s dark wood” will at last emerge, like Dante climbing out of hell’s black depths, into “the shining world”.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue