This book contains excerpts of life stories from 118 individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and major depressive disorder. This library of personal narratives, heavily reproduced and quoted throughout the text, presents a composite image of the ways in which narrative identity can be affected by mental illness while also being a resource for personal recovery. Those researching, studying, or practicing in mental health professions will find a wealth of humanizing first-person perspectives on mental illness that foster perspective-taking and aid patient-centered treatment and study. Researchers of narrative psychology will find a unique set of life stories synthesized with existing literature on identity and recovery. Moving toward intervention, the authors include a 'guide for narrative repair' with the aim of healing narrative identity damage and fostering growth of adaptive narrative identity.

‘Through a broad and expansive overview, beautifully interweaving research findings with individuals' own stories, they provide a highly readable and articulate conception of the ways in which narrative identity is central to understanding the causes, consequences, and lived experience of mental illness. With great deftness, they present a counter-narrative of cultural conceptions of mental illness that help the reader to understand the complexity of living a meaningful life in the midst of mental illness.'

Robyn Fivush - Emory University, USA

‘This new work comprehensively tackles directly issues of narrative identity, mental illness, and personal recovery. It delves deeply into how persons make personal sense of the challenges which surround mental illness, as well as their own emergent path to a fully meaningful life. While it reminds us of these neglected issues, it also breaks new ground, bringing scientific inquiry to these deeply subjective aspects of human experience.'

Paul H. Lysaker - IUPUI School of Science, USA

‘Psychiatric illness is a thief in the night, upending our lives by stealing the very stories we live by. In this groundbreaking study of narrative identity and psychopathology, Dorthe Thomsen and her colleagues reveal the horrific costs incurred, as well as the occasional benefits, by examining how people afflicted with major mental disorders make narrative sense of their lived experience. Blending rigorous scholarship with deep empathy, the authors chart the many variations on the theme of psychological suffering that appear in first-person accounts, and they show that hope for a better life lies in narrative repair – that is, in the prospect of re-writing our life stories to recover what has been taken away from us, and thereby re-affirming personal wellbeing and human connection.'

Dan P. McAdams - The Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology, Northwestern University, USA

‘This elegantly written and scientifically sound book shows that narrative psychology provides unique insights into mental illness not captured by traditional medical and psychological research, covering themes that humans hold most dear: themes of loss of time, loss of future, loss of self, loss of relationships, and loss of life. This timely book not only provides a moving account of lived experience of mental illness, but offers the methodological tools to study it further, with the ultimate hope of improving our treatments, which are, admittedly, in need of reform. A must-read book for clinicians, researchers, and anyone interested in understanding mental illness from the inside out.'

Carla Sharp - University of Houston, USA

‘This is an important book. The focus on life stories aligns with the global movement toward positioning experiential knowledge of individuals living with mental health issues at the center of health and social care systems. Narrative approaches will become increasingly important in mental health care, and this book makes an original contribution which has wide relevance to anyone trying to support individuals experiencing mental health issues. I thoroughly recommend it.'

Mike Slade - University of Nottingham, UK