Top 250 Movies Like It'S Okay To Not Be Okay

When you can't control yourself, count to three.

A list of the best movies similar to It's Okay to Not Be Okay. If you liked It's Okay to Not Be Okay then you may also like: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Young Poisoner's Handbook, Unsane, Veronika Decides to Die, Wacko and many more great movies featured on this list.

Desperate to escape from his emotional baggage and the heavy responsibility he’s had all his life, a psychiatric ward worker begins to heal with help from the unexpected – a woman who writes fairy tales but doesn’t believe in them.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

A petty criminal fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.

The Young Poisoner's Handbook

Graham Young is a teenage misfit living in suburban London in the 1960s. He hates his stepmother but loves chemistry, and the two impulses unite in a wicked plot to slowly poison her. After she dies, he's found guilty and sent to a psychiatric hospital, where an idealistic doctor thinks he can be cured.

Unsane

A woman is involuntarily committed to a mental institution where she is confronted by her greatest fear.

Veronika Decides to Die

After a frantic suicide attempt, Veronika awakens inside a mysterious mental asylum. Under the supervision of an unorthodox psychiatrist who specializes in controversial treatment, Veronika learns that she has only weeks to live.

Wacko

Thirteen years after the "Lawnmower Killer" killed her sister, high school student Mary Graves and obsessed detective Dick Harbinger are on the lookout for the killer to reappear during the annual Halloween Pumpkin Prom.

Waking Madison

A woman suffering from multiple personality disorder tries to piece back together her life.

The Ward

Kristen, a troubled young woman, is captured by the police after burning down a farmhouse and is locked in the North Bend Psychiatric Hospital. Soon, she begins to suspect that the place has a dark secret at its core and she's determined to find out what it is.

Welcome to Me

A year in the life of Alice Klieg, a woman with Borderline personality disorder who wins the Mega Millions lottery, quits her meds and buys her own talk show.

Neo Ned

Like most kids, Ned idolized his father and dreamed of following in his footsteps. Unfortunately, his father was a two-bit crook who spent most of his life in jail. Without a family of his own, Ned falls in with the Aryan Brotherhood. Soon after, Ned is placed in a mental hospital where he is mesmerized by a young black girl who believes Adolf Hitler was reincarnated in her.

Neverwas

Zach Riley is a psychiatrist, who leaves a job at a prestigious university, to take up a job at the privately run mental institution, Millwood. What he doesn't reveal at the time of his appointment is that this was the very place where his novelist father, T.L. Pierson, spent many years of his life.

The Other Sister

A mentally challenged girl proves herself to be every bit as capable as her "perfect" sister when she moves into an apartment and begins going to college.

Promise

Bob returns home for his mother’s funeral knowing that he must fulfill a promise made 30 years earlier—to care for his younger brother DJ, who is schizophrenic. When Bob eventually takes over responsibility for his younger brother’s well-being, he embarks upon the most difficult challenge of his life.

Another Happy Day

A wedding at her parents' Annapolis estate hurls high-strung Lynn into the center of touchy family dynamics.

Asylum

A young psychiatrist applies for a job at a mental asylum, and must pass a test by interviewing four patients. He must figure out which of the patients, is in fact, the doctor that he would be replacing if hired.

Bates Motel

Alex West is a man who roomed with Norman Bates at the state lunatic asylum for nearly 20 years. After Bates' death, Alex finds that he is in Norman's will as the inheritor of the Bates Motel, which has been vacant since Norman's arrest. Alex travels to Bates' California hometown and with a little help from a teenage runaway, Willie, Alex struggles to re-open the motel for business, only to have strange things happen. Is someone trying to drive him away, or is the motel really haunted by the ghost of Norman's mother?

Benny & Joon

A mentally ill young woman finds her love in an eccentric man who models himself after Buster Keaton.

Black Jack

In this fascinating adventure of the England of the 1750s, the huge Frenchman Black Jack (Jean Franval) miraculously survives a hanging by the British authorities in Yorkshire and escapes from the grim jaws of "justice." He takes to the countryside in the company of Tolly, a teenaged boy who is able to translate Black Jack's odd speech into something comprehensible. They join up with Belle, an aristocratic teenager who has escaped from the madhouse her family imprisoned her in when she grew troublesome. Together, the three join a carnival. However, as it becomes clear that the girl is far from crazy, love between Tolly and Belle grows. This story, set in the mid-18th century, is based on a novel by Leon Garfield.

Escaping the Madhouse: The Nellie Bly Story

An investigative reporter Nellie Bly, who’s on a mission to expose the deplorable conditions and mistreatment of patients at the notorious Women’s Lunatic Asylum, and feigns mental illness in order to be institutionalized to report from the inside. The movie is an account of actual events surrounding Nellie’s stay beginning after she has undergone treatment, leaving her with no recollection of how she came to the asylum or her real identity.

Petals on the Wind

This sequel to Flowers in the Attic picks up 10 years after Cathy, Chris and Carrie managed to escape Foxworth Hall.

Imaginary Friend

During her traumatic childhood with an abusive father, Emma relied on an imaginary friend for strength. She is now an artist struggling with mental illness living with her apparently loving husband, Brad. But when Emma's imaginary friend starts reappearing, she knows she's losing her grip. Desperate to save her marriage and show Brad she is in control, Emma takes drastic measures to free herself of her torment and her imaginary friend.

Mind Games

A woman puts her own life on the line by helping a private investigator gather evidence against her potentially dangerous husband.

The Penthouse

A rich young woman fights to save her life when she is held captive by an obsessed former friend in her own penthouse.

Girl, Interrupted

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.

Patch Adams

The true story of Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams, who in the 1970s found that humor is the best medicine, and was willing to do just anything to make his patients laugh—even if it meant risking his own career.

Shock Corridor

With the help of his girlfriend Cathy and Dr. Fong, a psychiatrist, ambitious journalist Johnny Barrett poses as a madman in order to be admitted to a mental institution where a bloody murder has been committed.

The Dentist 2

Dr. Feinstone escapes from the mental hospital where he has been held ever since his wife's adultery sent him on a deranged killing spree. Hoping to resume a normal life, he makes his way to a quiet Midwestern town and establishes himself in a new practice under an assumed name. Things are starting to look up for Dr. 'Caine' – that is, until the day he catches his new love in the arms of someone else. As before, the impact of romantic betrayal sends him over the edge into madness and murder, with his unfortunate patients once again bearing the brunt of his hostility.

Trancers II: The Return of Jack Deth

Once again someone from the future has come back to create an army of Trancers, human zombies who do what they're told without question or pause. Now officer Jack Deth, a cop from the future stranded in the past, must once again go forth to stop them. This sci-fi action sequel chronicles his courageous actions as he struggles to save the future. His difficulties are compounded when his boss sends his first wife back from the future to help Deth who has unfortunately, married a 20th-century girl.

The Creeping Flesh

A scientist comes to believe that evil is a disease of the blood and that the flesh of a skeleton he has brought back from New Guinea contains it in a pure form. Convinced that his wife, a Folies Bergere dancer who went insane, manifested this evil he is terrified that it will be passed on to their daughter. He tries to use the skeleton's blood to immunise her against this eventuality, but his attempt has anything but the desired result.

David and Lisa

Teenager David Clemens develops a hysterical fear that he will die if he comes into physical contact with another person. Perturbed, David's overbearing mother places him in a home for mentally disturbed young people, but David remains withdrawn from the other patients and his psychiatrist. Over time, however, David grows interested in 15-year-old Lisa, who suffers from multiple personalities – one who can only speak in rhyme, and the other, a mute.

Family Life

A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life and consider their daughter to be “misbehaving” whenever she’s trying to find her own way in life.

Miss Firecracker

A girl from Yazoo City, Mississippi pins all her hopes on winning the local beauty pageant.

It's Kind of a Funny Story

A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.

Don Juan DeMarco

John Arnold DeMarco is a man who believes he is Don Juan, the greatest lover in the world. Clad in a cape and mask, DeMarco undergoes psychiatric treatment with Dr. Jack Mickler to cure him of his apparent delusion. But the psychiatric sessions have an unexpected effect on the psychiatric staff and, most profoundly, Dr Mickler, who rekindles the romance in his complacent marriage.

The Dream Team

This morning they were playing ping-pong in the hospital rec room. Now they're lost in New York and framed for murder. This was never covered in group therapy.

Don't Look in the Basement

A young psychiatric nurse goes to work at a lonesome asylum following a murder. There, she experiences varying degrees of torment from the patients.

Frances

The true story of Frances Farmer's meteoric rise to fame in Hollywood and the tragic turn her life took when she was blacklisted.

I Woke Up Early the Day I Died

A mental patient escapes from the looney bin in drag, robs a bank, and goes on the lam!

Miss Potter

Beatrix Potter, the author of the beloved children's book "The Tale of Peter Rabbit", struggles for love, happiness and success.

Grave Encounters

A crew from a paranormal reality television show lock themselves in a haunted psychiatric hospital. They search for evidence of paranormal activity as they shoot what ends up becoming their final episode.

Leolo

The story of an imaginative boy who pretends he is the child of a sperm-laden Sicilian tomato upon which his mother accidentally fell.

Lilith

Vincent Bruce, a war veteran, begins working as an occupational therapist at Poplar Lodge, a private psychiatric facility for wealthy people where he meets Lilith Arthur, a charming young woman suffering from schizophrenia, whose fragile beauty captivates all who meet her.

The Marijuana Conspiracy

In 1972, young women looking for a fresh start in life endure isolated captivity in a true 98-day human experiment studying the effects of marijuana on females.

What About ME?

Inside the dramatic search for a cure to ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). 17 million people around the world suffer from what ME/CFS has been known as a mystery illness, delegated to the psychological realm, until now. A scientist in the only neuro immune institute in the world may have come up with the answer. An important human drama, plays out on the quest for the truth.

Shock

In this thriller, psychiatrist Dr. Cross kills his wife and expects to get away with murder, until he discovers that the slaying was observed by a next-door neighbor, Janet Stewart. As Janet attempts to convince her husband of the doctor's dastardly deed, Cross shows up to advise him that Janet is in dire need of some in-depth counseling.

Fleshburn

A soldier who deserted because of spiritual beliefs was tried and evaluated by four psychiatrists, and they all concluded that he was unable to distinguish right from wrong, so he was sentenced to a mental hospital. One day, he escapes and kidnaps them and leaves them all in the middle of the desert.

Hare Brush

The corporate board has Elmer committed to an asylum because he thinks he's a rabbit. At the sanitarium, Bugs agrees to trade places with Elmer.

Helen

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.

I'm a Cyborg, but That's OK

Young-goon, mentally deranged and frequently electro-charging herself with a transistor radio, has been admitted into a mental institution. Firmly believing herself to be a cyborg, she refuses to consume like a human being. Il-soon is another patient, who catches the eye of Young-goon and soon becomes a close friend. Il-soon is now confronted with the biggest task: to cure Young-goon's mental problem and have her eat real food.

In Dreams

A suburban housewife learns that she has psychic connections to a serial killer, and can predict this person's motives through her dreams.

Madhouse

A young psychiatric intern unearths secrets about the mental health facility in which he works.

Manic

Follows the fate of Lyle, a violent adolescent who, in lieu of prison, is placed in a juvenile mental institution where he encounters a group of equally troubled teens. This motley crew - abused, sexually confused, violent, and yet hanging on by their grit and anger - becomes Lyle's last lifeline as he fights to find meaning in a world that seems to defy understanding.

Music

Zu, a free spirit estranged from her family, suddenly finds herself the sole guardian of her half-sister, Music, a teenager on the autism spectrum whose whole world order has been beautifully crafted by her late grandmother. The film soon challenges whether it is Zu or Music who has a better view of the world, and that love, trust, and being able to be there for each other is everything.

Puzzle of a Downfall Child

Lou Andreas Sand, a once famous model, recalls her past as she tries to make success in the modeling world of New York, her stressfull workdays, her affair with Mark, an advertising executive, her friendship with photographer Aaron, and her downward spiral into ruin.

She's So Lovely

After being released from a psychiatric institution, a man tries to redeem himself in the eyes of his now-ex wife from the events that led up to his incarceration.

Snow Cake

A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.

Talk to Her

Two men share an odd friendship while they care for two women who are both in deep comas.

Tender Is the Night

Against the counsel of his friends, psychiatrist Dick Diver marries Nicole Warren, a beautiful but unstable young woman from a moneyed family. Thoroughly enraptured, he forsakes his career in medicine for life as a playboy, until one day Dick is charmed by Rosemary Hoyt, an American traveling abroad. The thought of Dick possibly being attracted to someone else sends Nicole on an emotional downward spiral that threatens to consume them both.

The Cobweb

Patients and staff at a posh psychiatric clinic clash over who chooses the clinic’s new drapes - but drapes are the least of their problems.

55 Steps

The inspiring true story of Eleanor Riese, a mental illness patient herself, who brings a class action suit to give competent mental patients the right to have a say in their medication while they’re in a hospital, and Colette Hughes, the lawyer appointed to her case.

Defining Moments

A touching story of eight very different people who are at a crossroads in life and must make decisions that will forever change who they are. Jack must decide to spend the rest of his life with his girlfriend Terri. Marina must reconnect with her aging father. Laurel must embrace her new pregnancy and come to terms with her father’s early Alzheimer's. And Dave must learn why life is worth living.

Mental

A charismatic, crazy hothead transforms a family's life when she becomes the nanny of five girls.

Smile

After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can't explain. As an overwhelming terror begins taking over her life, Rose must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality.

Home Before Dark

A young woman returns home after being institutionalized in a mental hospital.

Hot-Blooded Woman

Backwoods bombshell Myrtle marries George, only to find out that George neither can nor wants to satisfy her desires. Lots of heavy breathing, roughing-up and weirdo moralism ensues.

Captain Newman, M.D.

In 1944, Capt. Josiah J. Newman is the doctor in charge of Ward 7, the neuropsychiatric ward, at an Army Air Corps hospital in Arizona. The hospital is under-resourced and Newman scrounges what he needs with the help of his inventive staff, especially Cpl. Jake Leibowitz. The military in general is only just coming to accept psychiatric disorders as legitimate and Newman generally has 6 weeks to cure them or send them on to another facility. There are many patients in the ward and his latest include Colonel Norville Bliss who has dissociated from his past; Capt. Paul Winston who is nearly catatonic after spending 13 months hiding in a cellar behind enemy lines; and 20 year-old Cpl. Jim Tompkins who is severely traumatized after his aircraft was shot down. Others come and go, including Italian prisoners of war, but Newman and team all realize that their success means the men will return to their units.

Trick or Treats

A baby sitter is stuck watching over a young brat on Halloween night who keeps playing vicious pranks on her. To add to her trouble the boy's deranged father has escaped from an asylum and is planning on making a visit.

Losing Chase

An intimate and turbulent relationship develops between Chase, a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown and Elizabeth, the caretaker employed to look after her.

Twists of Terror

Stuck in the attic, Phillip, (Joseph Ziegler) recounts several different tales to an unknown listener in order to explain the dangers of the world.

Disturbed

10 years ago the perverse Dr. Russell couldn't resist the beauty of a young patient in his mental clinic and raped her one night. When she plunged herself from the roof shortly after, he described it as consequence of her heavy depressions. Now the same urge overcomes him with his new patient Sandy. He doesn't know that she's the daughter of his previous victim and that she's come for revenge.

The 11th Commandment

A murderous psycho breaks out of a mental hospital and goes after his rich uncle who killed his father and raped his mother.

Asylum of Satan

A young woman is brought to an asylum to receive special treatment from a mysterious doctor. Dr. Spector does more than just run the hospital -- he offers his patients as sacrifices to Satan.

The Deadly Intruder

A serial killer escapes from a mental hospital and hides out in a small town. A local cop must catch him before he starts on another killing spree.

Sweet Hostage

An escaped mental patient kidnaps an illiterate teenage farm girl and takes her to his mountain hide-away, where they soon become friends and, eventually, lovers.

Escapee

While on a class observation trip at a local mental hospital, young psychology major Abby Jones, has a chilling encounter with high-risk patient, Harmon Porter. She returns home for an evening of normal study with her two roommates unaware of the darkness she’s awakened within him.

Shock Treatment

A private investigator endures the rigors of an insane asylum in order to locate $1 million in stolen loot.

Out on the Edge

Danny is a troubled teen with a difficult home life. His parents' marriage has disintegrated, and his father's already found someone else he'd like to wed. So, Danny turns to drugs to soothe his lost soul, and when he goes too far, his mother checks him into a psychiatric unit. Can Danny finally turn his life around, and will his father help?

Dark Asylum

Asylum is a taut psychological thriller about a deranged fearsome killer running lose in an abandoned high security Asylum. Pitting the county psychiatrist Dr. Maggie Belham against the psychotic maniac, Dr Belham is trapped in a maze of corridors, and her only help is the janitor, Quitz who may in fact be a forgotten asylum inmate.

House of Dust

College students exploring an abandoned insane asylum accidentally shatter canisters holding the cremains of former mental patients. Inhaling the dusty ash filling the air, they're soon possessed by the souls once held within them. One is a convicted serial killer from 1950.

Psycho Ward

A group of urban researchers set about exploring an abandoned psychiatric hospital with a terrible history, but are they prepared for the horrifying, possibly supernatural secrets hidden within its crumbling walls? No sooner do they get there than the would-be explorers begin to vanish mysteriously, and soon they must band together and use their wits, knowledge and resourcefulness to survive the terror of the Pyscho Ward.

Don't Look In The Cellar

A group of college students regret their decision to sneak into the cellar of a haunted asylum on Halloween. One by one they encounter Smiley, the last of a flawed bloodline.

Crazy People

A bitter ad executive, who has reached his breaking point, finds himself in a mental institution, where his career actually begins to thrive with the help of the hospital's patients.

A Wonderful Spell

Set in the summer of 1942 during WWII, the film traces the trajectory of simple people thrown into extraordinary lives, revealing the heart-warming flame of hope and humanity that endures, even in times of war and dispair. As young Julien, his family and a group of friends traverse the French countryside after fleeing the institution they called home, Julien must deal with his father's extreme violence and his mother's rosy fantasies and once again form a family that society tries to forget.

Will There Really Be a Morning?

This is the story of actress Frances Farmer, her struggles with mental illness and involuntary confinement in an insane asylum.

The Bad Mother's Handbook

Karen Cooper wants to domineer her family and believes she's its pillar. In fact she does everything wrong. Thus she messes up all their lives and futures, rather then help her loved-ones.

Harvey

Elwood P. Dowd's constant companion is Harvey, a six-foot tall invisible rabbit. To his sister, his obsession with Harvey has been a thorn in her plans to marry off her daughter. However, when she decides to put Elwood in a mental institution, a mix-up occurs, and she finds herself committed instead. It's now up to Elwood and "Harvey" to straighten out the mess.

Witchfire

When her psychiatrist is killed in an auto accident, his mentally deranged patient and two of her even crazier companions hide out in a house in a rural area where, years ago, the woman had set fire to her parents.

The Real St. Nick

A pretty psychiatrist is saved from an accident by a man who, after hitting his head on a rock, believes he is Santa Claus. As she nurses him back to health at her institute, he brings the spirit of Christmas to the hospital.

Behind Locked Doors

Behind the locked doors of a mental institution resides crooked politico Judge Drake, free from prosecution so long as he pretends to be crazy. To get the goods on Drake, private detective Ross Stewart has himself committed to the asylum as a patient. Meanwhile, reporter Kathy Lawrence, posing as Stewart's wife, acts as his liaison to the outside world.

Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace

A shocking exposé of the deplorable conditions and abuses from the Willowbrook State School for children with intellectual disabilities.

Reimagining A Buffalo Landmark

The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.

The Thirteenth Tale

Biographer Margaret Lea travels to the isolated rural mansion of the famous writer Vida Winter, who asks her to write her biography. Although initially she is reluctant, as Vida is known for constantly distorting the facts of her life, Margaret soon becomes fascinated with the story of a dark childhood, a disturbing tale that leads her to finally confront the traumas of her own past.

At Home in Mitford

With a case of writer’s block, a children’s author escapes to small town Mitford for a change of scenery. She soon finds the heart and soul of the southern town in a priest as they work together to care for a young boy who’s lost his family. With heartbreak in their pasts, each must find the courage and faith to grab an unexpected chance at true love.

The Caretakers

This movie chronicles the trials of the mentally ill and their care-givers in an over-crowded ward of a hospital.

Gabriela

Mike is romantic, persistent, and a social worker at a psychiatric clinic. He falls for a new intern, Gabriela, who is passionate and engaged.

Pretty Dead

After killing and cannibalizing several men and being found unfit for trial, Regina Stevens desperately tried to convince her psychiatric caregivers that she wasn't mentally ill, but was in fact slowly becoming a real life zombie.

Rats

The Brookedale Psychiatric Hospital is a crumbling institution which barely has enough money to remain open. Formerly a prison, it sits atop a warren of tunnels and sewage system viaducts. But Brookdale has a secret - a secret known by only one person. There's something living in the tunnels - something that's developed a taste for human blood...

Obsession: Her Final Vengeance

After her brother is killed in self-defense by his ex (Madison) whom he'd kidnapped, Lisa decides to take revenge on Madison by using a trauma support group to become her friend.

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