On Memoir

An editor at a major publishing house recently sent me a memoir about bipolar disorder. She wanted me to consider writing a blurb for it, and I said sure. So I read the memoir--and basically it's the story of a totally out of control woman who has bp--it goes through many of her dysfunctional relationships, and also her attempts at recovery, and it does almost everything I hate that writing about bp can do, in its narcissism, its glorification of illness, its use of illness to excuse flaws, its utter lack of insight for others, etc, etc, etc. This is a book that lets you gawk at a crazy person, but doesn't transcend that very limited, and arguably useless experience. Needless to day I declined the opportunity to blurb it. But this has been a creative preoccupation of mine for years, and now, as I am about to start teaching writing this summer, I am wanting to clarify: how do you make writing about mental illnes artful, relevant, useful? Does any body want to cite books they felt did or did not achieve that goal?