Best 923 quotes in «mental illness quotes» category

We've eaten, but he looks hungry, and experience tells me that crazy takes a lot of calories to sustain.

We will discover, to our surprise, that we are all mentally ill. Our worst mental illness is not insanity. That is certainly a horrible sickness that we would wish on no one, but in comparison to other mental illnesses, it is at least "innocent". Our first mental illness is called unbelief. ... Unbelief is a kind of mental atrophy, an inability to see anything beyond and above our own minds.

What aided the mind made the body suffer. They could choose mental health or physical health, but they could not have both.

What daily life is like for “a multiple” Imagine that you have periods of “lost time.” You may find writings or drawings which you must have done, but do not remember producing. Perhaps you find child-sized clothing or toys in your home but have no children. You might also hear voices or babies crying in your head. Imagine that you can never predict when you will be able to have certain knowledge or social skills, and your emotions and your energy level seem to change at the drop of a hat, and for no apparent reason. You cannot understand why you feel what you feel, and, if you are in therapy, you cannot explore those feelings when asked. Your life feels disjointed and often confusing. It is a frightening experience. It feels out of control, and you probably think you are going crazy. That is what it is like to be multiple, and all of it is experienced by the ANPs. A multiple may also experience very concrete problems, even life-threatening ones.

What do you fear when you fear everything? Time passing and not passing. Death and life. I could say my lungs never filled with enough air, no matter how many puffs of my inhaler I took. Or that my thoughts moved too quickly to complete, severed by a perpetual vigilance. But even to say this would abet the lie that terror can be described, when anyone who's ever known it knows that it has no components but is instead everywhere inside you all the time, until you recognize yourself only by the tensions that string one minute to the next. And yet I keep lying, by describing, because how else can I avoid this second, and the one after it? This being the condition itself: the relentless need to escape a moment that never ends.

What do you know about bipolar disorder?” I almost say, What do you know about it? But I make myself breathe and smile. “Is that the Jekyll-Hyde thing?” My voice sounds flat and even. Maybe a little bored, even though my mind and body are on alert. “Some people call it manic depression. It’s a brain disorder that causes extreme shifts in mood and energy. It runs in families, but it can be treated.” I continue to breathe, even if I’m not smiling anymore, but here is what is happening: my brain and my heart are pounding out different rhythms; my hands are turning cold and the back of my neck is turning hot; my throat has gone completely dry. The thing I know about bipolar disorder is that it’s a label. One you give crazy people. I know this because I’ve taken junior-year psychology and I’ve seen movies and I’ve watched my father in action for almost eighteen years, even though you could never slap a label on him because he would kill you. Labels like “bipolar” say This is why you are the way you are. This is who you are. They explain people away as illnesses.

What I failed to see was that, by ending my life, I would cause interminable pain to my family and friends. I could not understand the heartbreak it would cause those around me. Nor did I consider that my brother, Joseph, might live the rest of his life in continual rage, or that my sister, Libby, might shut herself off from the world and fall into perpetual depression, silence, and sadness mistakenly blaming themselves for my death as many family members do when they lose someone they love to suicide. I certainly held no understanding of the enormous pain my mother and father would suffer because they lost their oldest son in such a terrifying and devastating way. They would not have a chance to watch me mature, marry, and perhaps have children. Instead, all of their hopes, aspirations, and dreams for me would be destroyed with my decision to end my life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

What if fighting was no longer your first answer but change is?

What is actually observed in so-called 'biplar children'? If you read the research reports carefully, they describe broad and persistent emotional dysregulation. Although these children have mood swings, they do not develop manic or hypomanic episodes. They are moody, irritable, oppositional and likely to misbehave—like all children with disruptive behavior disorders. Their grandiose thinking usually consists of little beyond boastfulness. No evidence from genetics, neurobiology, follow-up studies or treatment response shows that this syndrome has anything in common with classical bipolarity.

What is in your blood matters, but not as much as what is in your heart.

What I want everyone to know is that the sun is going to rise tomorrow whether you want it to or not. Life is tragic, but it's also beautiful.

What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation about illnesses that affect not only individuals, but their families as well.

What people don't understand about depression is how much it hurts. It's like your brain is convinced that it's dying and produces an acid that eats away at you from the inside, until all that's less is a scary hollowness. Your mind fills with dark thoughts; you become convinced that your friends secretly hate you, you're worthless, and then there's no hope. I never got so low as to consider ending it all, but I understand how that can happen to some people. Depression simply hurts too much.

What people never understand is that depression isn't about the outside; it's about the inside. Something inside me is wrong. Sure, there are things in my life that make me feel alone, but nothing makes me feel more isolated and terrified than my own voice inside my head.

What’s more insane? Hearing imaginary voices? Or not hearing the real ones?

What's the difference between sanity and madness anyway? We all play headgames with ourselves. We all have baggage. We all cope somehow. I'm not sure if I'm mad or sane. I mean, I hold my life together, I pay my bills, I raise my kids. But the world is so polarized and bizarre now that for some people, none of these these things matter if they're not wearing the right shoes or don't have the right credit score or a fancy family car. Some people think the most important things to worry about are handbags and tan lines. Meanwhile, war and crime and poverty unfold all around us, and we ignore it. In that environment, how can we even begin to talk about sanity and madness?

What sticks with me now is that this man said he needed to get to a hospital. He probably needed to reach his destination more than anyone else on the bus, yet he lacked the capacity to ride without getting kicked off. Maybe he reached the hospital eventually, and maybe he was connected with social workers and housing specialists who will help him transform his life. But I fear he got on another bus, and another bus after that, without going anywhere at all.

What to do with life? Get out of bed, Derek. That’s what you do. You get out of bed, and you get yourself a cup of fucking coffee. That’s all you can do.

What will life be like without her? I am dreadfully sad she is leaving. What if she just disappears; gets tired of all this trouble at home? What if she leaves me too? How heavy is a dresser when you're the only one pushing it against the door? I feel truly on my own.

When both she and I had to deal with our respective demons, my sister saw the darkness as being within and part of herself, the family and the world. I, instead, saw it as a stranger; however lodged within my mind and soul the darkness became, it almost always seemed an outside force that was at war with my natural self.

When he first said my diagnosis, I couldn't believe it. There must be another PTSD than post-traumatic stress disorder, I thought. I have only heard of war veterans who have served on the front lines and seen the horrors of battle being diagnosed with PTSD. I am a Beverly Hills housewife, not a soldier. I can't have PTSD. Well, I was wrong. Housewives can get PTSD, too, and yours, truly did.

...when different identity states convey contradictory information and then have amnesia for what the other identity states said, the patient may be thought to be lying. This can appear to be characterological mendacity when it is not.

When Gran finally came home she stepped into the house and wept. She grabbed Sophie and I to her and cried, “Oh my dears…” and though Gran was usually a harsh woman and we were uncomfortable with her affection, we were grateful for it this day. In the months she was gone we realized she was what held us all together. Broken or not, crazy or not—Gran kept us and made us a family. Truly she did.

When had I stopped being a person with Paranoid Schizophrenia, and become a Paranoid Schizophrenic; defined by my illness?

When you are cursed with a bipolar mind racing thoughts are the ones that you find

When I sleep, which isn't very often—even with the tablets—I get right down under the sheets, pulling them over my head. The air gets a bit stale but I feel safer, more secure, doing that. It's my white cocoon where I can be a caterpillar, a grub, never to turn into a butterfly or even a moth. It's the safest place I know. It's the only time and the only place where I can feel some peace.

When i spend too much time in my head, focused on things in the past or things in the future... when i lose sight of the present, i fold in on myself, mentally, my thoughts become toxic and distorted, my emotions, darken.

When mental [illness] increases until it reaches the danger point, do not exhaust yourself by efforts to trace back to original causes. Better accept them as inevitable and save your strength to fight against the effects.

When the madness came, he would be like a man staggering along the rim of the abyss – which was his rage – and when the edge gave way or he missed his step, he might clutch at anyone within reach and drag that person with him over the precipice.

when they find out you have a mental illness, they’ll treat you like glass and anticipate you breaking at any given moment.

When we asked him to sum up his impression of the girls' emotional state at that point, he said, "Buffeted but not broken.

When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive.

When it comes to mental illness most of the diagnoses are similar or the same yet they can never display how we individually go through our pain.

When John and his colleagues added up the data, they were startled. Feeling lonely, it turned out, caused your cortisol levels to absolutely soar - as much as some of the most disturbing things that can happen to you. Becoming acutely lonely, the experiment found, was as stressful as experiencing a physical attack. It's worth repeating. Being deeply lonely seemed to cause as much stress as being punched by a stranger.

When my mind plays tricks on me I can deal. But when my mind plays tricks on my mind I can not tell what's real

When the Jo personality first told him of the diagnosis, he called MPD "clinical bullshit." Then, seeing Jo's stricken look, he softened and showed her how the possibility of many personalities in a single body was philosophically untenable. MPD did not fit into Steve's system of beliefs, and therefore it did not exist.

When we are told what is healthy we are being told what is right to think and feel. When we are told what is mentally ill we are being told what ideas, behaviour, and fantasies are wrong. [...] The avenues of escape are blocked by the professioal abuse of pathologizing. To refuse the mental health approach confirms one's 'sickness'. One needs 'therapy', [...] How can we take back therapy [...] from a system which must find illness in order to promote health and which, in order to increase the range of its helping, is obliged to extend the area of sickness. Ever deeper pockets of pathology to be analyzed, ever earlier traumata: primal, prenatal, into my astral body; ever more people into the ritual: the family, the office force, community mental health, analysis for everyone. [...] Its practice may differ [...] but the premise is the same. The work of making soul requires professional help. Soul-making has become restricted by therapy and to therapy. And psychopathology has become restricted to therapy's negative definition of it, reduced to its role in the therapy game.

When you become bipolar you break things that you can't later fix.

When your heart cries because it wants to be free, But your mind feels as though it is stuck in concrete. This is the reality of those who suffer depression and mental health issues.

When you have mental illness it's common to be shunned by your family or friends it wouldn't happen if they knew the pain you were in.

When you read my poems or quotes remember you're stepping into the mind that steps outside of me

When your heart cries because it wants to be free, But your mind feels as though it is stuck in cement. This is the reality of those who suffer depression and mental health issues.

When you speak of my insanity, please let it be with the beauty only art knows. Let it bleed till it becomes creativity and maybe, just maybe, for that single moment my soul will finally be adorned in its own skin.

Who am I fooling? Bad dreams never end. We just pretend they aren’t there.

While binge drinking is a significant issue, it is likely that many members of the public would be surprised by its categorisation as a mental illness, particularly at the milder end." Public confusion caused by differing understandings of the term 'mental illness'. Jorm AF, Reavley NJ. Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2012 May;46(5):397-9. PMID: 22535288

Who cares about fault? As my dad would say, ‘Blame is like your rear-end and reflection. Seeing either always leaves you looking back.’ I’m more worried about what’s in front of me. And right now . . . the view is all messed up.” ~ Ellia

While a psychiatric diagnosis can serve a purpose in treatment plans, it should not become a tool to discredit a person's disclosure of abuse.

While she is still hospitalised, I take Emma out for strengthening walks, for her muscles and been under-used for a long time. She is sometimes breathless, I notice with concern, and there are other changes in her, either through a nerve her therapy touches, or through her illness, or both, which make her, quite often, disagreeable to be with.

Why did things have to get so backwards in our house? Since she couldn’t be the adult, I knew that it had to be me. But that didn’t stop me from hating it--from wishing it was just over. I’d give anything to be a kid again and not to be the responsible one in the house. It was like I was trapped in a horrible virtual-reality game, except there was no way for me to quit.

Why do they always prescribe thyroid medicine to go with the mental illness cocktails they whip up?