El buen mal

It's early autumn and Dr. Headley eagerly demonstrates what seems to be a miraculous cure for tuberculosis. Not far from where he is working, the disease seems preparing to soon claim yet another life, a teenage girl named Winifred. Winifred's mother and little sister Trixie are devastated. When Trixie hears the family doctor say of Winifred that "when the last leaf falls, she will have passed away," she interprets the doctor's words literally. Thinking over what she has heard, she determines to do everything possible to save her sister.

Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.

On the outside, Helen has it all – a loving family and a successful career – but when her suppressed mental illness resurfaces, the world crumbles around her. Crippled by depression, Helen finds solace through her friendship with Mathilda, a kindred spirit struggling with bipolar disorder.

Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a shy research physician, uses an experimental drug to "awaken" the catatonic victims of a rare disease. Leonard is the first patient to receive the controversial treatment. His awakening, filled with awe and enthusiasm, proves a rebirth for Sayer too, as the exuberant patient reveals life's simple but unutterably sweet pleasures to the introverted doctor.

When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?

Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.

A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.

Evan, a musically gifted orphan, runs away from his orphanage and searches New York City for his birth parents. On his journey, he's taken under the wing of the Wizard, a homeless man who lives in an abandoned theater. After discovering his talent, the Wizard gives Evan the name "August Rush" and devises a plan to profit from his talent. Little does Evan know that his parents, Lyla and Louis, are searching for him too.

A woman watches time pass beside the suitcases of her ex-lover (who is supposed to come pick them up but never arrives) and a restless dog who doesn't understand that his master has abandoned him.

A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.