Score

I thought I read that Kite runner was fiction? Handmaid's tale is fiction also.
or is this fiction and non-fiction combined?

Yes, the list combines different genres :-) All of the books I've added have been gifts to me in how they offer proof of resilience and the beauties in living -- as well as eloquently depicting the experience of what physician and author Dr. Richard Mollica calls the "existential injury." In trauma, every aspect of one's existence is affected. Great stories, poems, memoirs, plays, and other non-clinical/non-self-help books can get to the marrow of traumatic experience...They are a wonderful complement to the practical writings of professionals.

For those who have struggled with trauma/mental illness or know someone who does, these books are a must-read:
—The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk is a best-selling, compassionate book by one of the world's top experts in mental illness. The book describes the physiology of trauma, many case studies, and new non-pharmaceutical treatments. Note: the case studies involve some graphic descriptions of atrocities.

—Trauma and Recovery by Dr. Judith Herman is a classic on the history of the treatment of mental illness: how Freud was pressured into retracting his discovery that his female patients were victims of childhood incest (resulting in the cruel psychoanalytic practice of blaming the victim), the use of borderline diagnosis as a pejorative substitute for PTSD, trauma in the military, etc. Note: the Recovery section is out-of-date.

Good fiction can reduce the need for medications by distracting ill readers from their pain. Please vote on and/or add suggestions to this list of healing, humorous books: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...