Have you read any romances with mental illness as a theme?

The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie and Flowers From the Storm were both quite good. Well, Flowers From the Storm has the hero having a stroke and being considered insane while he's trying to recover, but that's still mental illness as a theme imho.

Lucy Monroe's The Shy Bride. She's not shy at all, she has agoraphobia. Other than the title, I really loved this. And yes, Flowers from the Storm was my first thought. It's possibly the best romance novel ever.

Yes, I've read a few where the hero has some form of PTSD. And one of Courtney Milan's historical romances features a hero who suffers from depression. I'll see if I can find the titles and post them later.

I just wrote one (M/M) where the point of view character has an anxiety disorder and phobias (see avatar).

Doesn't Cathy C here on AW have one? I read it a long time ago and it was quite good. The heroine was the one with depression. I'm pretty sure it was Cathy C who wrote it.

Heaps of the 90's ones with "former Navy SEAL" or former special agent/cop/fireman/soldier ones in the blurb involve heroes with depression and/or post traumatic stress disorder. Just googling "former Navy SEAL romance " should bring lots of those up. I've read a few with heroines who've had eating disorders in their past that they worry about as well. There were a couple I read in the 80's about famous ballerinas and pop stars that had nervous breakdowns. I was reading them as an early teenager and remember wondering WTF a 'nervous breakdown' was. It was never fully articulated in the books, but it was obviously enough to get you put away in a hospital for a few weeks. Still don't really know what one is!

'Mental illness' is such a broad umbrella term that it's difficult to work out what you're after. If you are interested in characters with full on psychotic breaks, then you're probably just going to get it as back story as you can't really build a HEA romantic relationship with someone who can't even cope with the activities of daily living, let alone build a successful relationship with someone else. TBH, I avoid books with a mental illness theme as I've seen the IRL trainwreck of relationships that people with serious mental illness leave behind them. It makes it difficult for me to believe in the HEA.

Courtney Milan's Trial by Desire, but I have not read it.

If you really want a romp, try Set This House In Order by Matt Ruff. Great stuff.

eggs said:

I was reading them as an early teenager and remember wondering WTF a 'nervous breakdown' was. It was never fully articulated in the books, but it was obviously enough to get you put away in a hospital for a few weeks. Still don't really know what one is!

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Lol. Ok, I had a nervous breakdown almost 10 years ago now, so I can describe what it's like. First of all you have a person under unsustainable amounts of stress and no workable path to escaping that situation. Then you add some guilt because they think they aren't doing their best or aren't being organized and responsible and reasonable. They start having nightmares, the subconscious telling them they need to get out of that situation ASAP. But they are trapped in it, and the lack of sleep isn't helpful. Now add some emotional trauma to the cauldron - could be a friend or relative's problems, could be that they are being treated neglectfully or abusively or simply the victim of severe bad luck; they don't have the mental resources left to cope with this kind of burden or attack.

So they snap. They either go postal: a frenetic fit of rage, possibly while crying, because the anger is what their pain and frustration are getting converted into, possibly committing a violent crime, and if all else fails, turn that violence against themselves; or they go avoidant: quit going to class or work, hide in alcohol or sleeping 20 hours a day, if the source of stress is at home they may prefer to sleep rough and miss meals rather than go home, if they go out at all they may go to extremes to hide from acquaintances, and a possible extreme is becoming a selective mute.

Afterward of course there is more guilt, and they still might not have escaped the stressful situation. If they did, they probably feel like a failure or quitter, or like they are broken or unstable and dangerous, and probably continue to have nightmares for a while.

M Jules Aedin wrote Lovegames, an all-male menage with a bi-polar character.

There's another one on the tip of my tongue, but it's not coming to me. If I remember it, I'll come back and post it.

Also, I'm working on one right now, From Out in the Cold, which has two characters who have PTSD (one from combat, one from witnessing/surviving a violent crime).

Megan Chance's The Portrait, is a historical romance set in 1850s New York with a hero who suffers from bipolar disorder. Her straight historical fiction, An Inconvenient Wife, is set in 1880s New York and deals with a heroine suffering from "hysteria".

The love interest in my M/M series Real Werewolves Don't Eat Meat has PTSD from an assault when he was 15. (Which is when he was turned into a werewolf.) His PTSD symptoms are becoming more evident as the series goes on, because now he has his mate to lean on, whereas before he had to be the strong pack Alpha and couldn't show any weakness whatsoever. It apparently isn't uncommon, based on what therapists have told me, for someone with PTSD to manage to suppress the trauma and the symptoms when they're in "survival" mode, and then have the PTSD hit them full force when they're in a safe place and don't have to devote all their energy to just staying alive and making it through each hour.

Not that having PTSD or being affected by it is weakness, mind you. He's just afraid that the other werewolves will perceive it as such. (I have complex PTSD myself, so I can one hundred percent state that there's nothing "weak" about it. And the "PTSD hits harder once you're safe" has proven true in my case.)

Jayne Ann Krentz has a lot of heroines with panic attacks and anxiety disorders.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon
deals with someone with a very low IQ, so has learning disabilities, and how a surgical procedure changes his life. Not sure if it what you are after.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon

gingerwoman said:

No I was thinking more along the lines of milder conditions like anxiety disorders

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Anxiety disorders are not 'mental illness light'. They cover a range of conditions which can be extremely debilitating on a day to day basis - and challenging in close relationships.

ShannonMcEwan said:

Anxiety disorders are not 'mental illness light'. They cover a range of conditions which can be extremely debilitating on a day to day basis - and challenging in close relationships.

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Ginger didn't say they were "mental illness light" or make any such flippant remark. She merely said she was looking for something milder than the "full on psychotic break" mentioned in the post she was quoting.

Granted, "milder" is sometimes in the eye of the beholder, but as someone who has suffered from an anxiety disorder in the past and also known people who suffer from psychotic disorders (with the hallucinations, delusions, thought intrusions, and heavy anti-psychotic meds), I agree that anxiety disorders, in general, are "milder" than psychotic disorders, at least as far as symptoms, treatment, and hope of ever being cured.

gingerwoman said:

No I was thinking more along the lines of milder conditions like anxiety disorders like (for example) Emily Veinglory mentioned, and also those conditions which might be called learning disabilities instead. Randy Ingemarson's '(The Snowflake Guy) has a geek Asperger's hero in a romance coming out soon I believe.

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Kelly Hunter has a gorgeous geek hero with ADHD in Flirting with Intent.