Best 89 quotes in «mental disorder quotes» category

In this paper I propose the existence of two distinct presentations of DID, a Stable and an Active one. While people with Stable DID struggle with their traumatic past, with triggers that re-evoke that past and with the problems of daily functioning with severe dissociation, people with Active DID are, in addition, also engaged in a life of current, on-going involvement in abusive relationships, and do not respond to treatment in the same way as other DID patients. The paper observes these two proposed DID presentations in the context of other trauma-based disorders, through the lens of their attachment relationship. It proposes that the type, intensity and frequency of relational trauma shape—and can thus predict—the resulting mental disorder. - Through the lens of attachment relationship: Stable DID, Active DID and other trauma-based mental disorders

Maybe my addictive tendencies weren't limited to my zest for things I could drink. Like maybe (I learned while working with my therapist) I had broader issues with control and addiction and using substances to dial down my anxiety. And maybe self-medication is a real dangerous way of trying to quiet the noise of a mental health disorder. And maybe alcoholism also runs in the family.

Interestingly, the patients who presented to me self-diagnosed [with Dissociative Identity Disorder] had tried to tell previous therapists of their plight, but had been disbelieved. These therapists had used fallacious "capricious criteria" (KIuft, 1988) to discredit the diagnosis; e.g., that the patient could not possibly have MPD because she was aware of the other alters [sic!].

It felt like this was never going to end. The world wasn't going to stop crashing down until there was nothing left of me but dust.

I think the stigma attached to mental illness will disappear just like it did for cancer years ago.

It is not unusual for subjects diagnosed with a Dissociative Disorder on the SCID-D to be surprised at having their symptoms validated by a clinician who understands the nature of their disorder.

It isn't depression, or anxiety, though it can sometimes appear as a symptom of these better—known conditions. Often, it emerges with cruel ferocity as a chronic disorder completely unto itself. Its destructive impact on an individual’s sense of self is implied in its very name—depersonalization.

I’ve found that it’s of some help to think of one’s moods and feelings about the world as being similar to weather. Here are some obvious things about the weather: It's real. You can't change it by wishing it away. If it's dark and rainy, it really is dark and rainy, and you can't alter it. It might be dark and rainy for two weeks in a row. BUT it will be sunny one day. It isn't under one's control when the sun comes out, but come out it will. One day. It really is the same with one's moods, I think. The wrong approach is to believe that they are illusions. Depression, anxiety, listlessness - these are all are real as the weather - AND EQUALLY NOT UNDER ONE'S CONTROL. Not one's fault. BUT They will pass: really they will. In the same way that one really has to accept the weather, one has to accept how one feels about life sometimes, "Today is a really crap day," is a perfectly realistic approach. It's all about finding a kind of mental umbrella. "Hey-ho, it's raining inside; it isn't my fault and there's nothing I can do about it, but sit it out. But the sun may well come out tomorrow, and when it does I shall take full advantage.

I was much crazier than I had imagined. Or maybe it was a bad idea to read DSM-IV when you're not a trained professional. Or maybe the American Psychiatric Association had a crazy desire to label all life a mental disorder.

Jail has become the biggest mental health hospital.

I'm Bipolar with PTSD there's no shortage of pain inside of me

Many people with Dissociative Disorders are very creative and used their creative capacities to help them cope with childhood trauma.p55

ME/CFS is not synonymous with depression or other psychiatric illnesses. The belief by some that they are the same has caused much con- fusion in the past, and inappropriate treatment. Nonpsychotic depression (major depression and dysthymia), anxiety disorders and somatization disorders are not diagnostically exclusionary, but may cause significant symptom overlap. Careful attention to the timing and correlation of symptoms, and a search for those characteristics of the symptoms that help to differentiate between diagnoses may be informative, e.g., exercise will tend to ameliorate depression whereas excessive exercise tends to have an adverse effect on ME/CFS patients.

My other client, whom I will call Teresa, thought Lorraine had MPD and hoped I could help her. Almost no one recognized this condition in those days. Lorraine was forty years old and had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals since she was thirteen. She had had various diagnoses, mainly severe depression, and she had made quite a few serious suicide attempts before I even met her. She had been given many courses of electric shock therapy, which would confuse her so much that she could not get together a coherent suicide plan for quite a while. Lorraine’s psychiatrist was initially opposed to my seeing her, as her friend Teresa had been stigmatized with the "borderline personality disorder" diagnosis when in hospital, so was seen as a bad influence on her. But after Lorraine spent a couple of months in hospital calling herself Susie and acting consistently like a child, he was humble enough to acknowledge that perhaps he could learn some new things, and someone else’s help might be a good idea.

My client who has only three alter personalities besides the ANP was unaware of her multiplicity until she encountered a work-related trauma at age sixty. She became symptomatic as the hidden parts emerged to deal with the recent trauma.

My own studies on the natural history of DID indicate only 20% of DID patients have an overt DID adaption on a chronic basis, and 14% of them deliberately disguise their manifestations of DID. Only 6% make their DID obvious on an ongoing basis. Eighty percent have windows of diagnosability when stressed or triggered by some significant event, interaction, situation or date. Therefore, 94% of DID patients show only mild or suggestive evidence of their conditions most of the time. Yet DID patients often will acknowledge that their personality systems are actively switching and/or far more active than it would appear on the surface (Loewenstein et al., 1987). R.P. Kluft (2009) A clinician's understanding of dissociation. pp 599-623.

Mental illness" is among the most stigmatized of categories.' People are ashamed of being mentally ill. They fear disclosing their condition to their friends and confidants-and certainly to their employers.

Our inner experience is that which we think, feel, remember, perceive, sense, decide, plan and predict. These experiences are actually mental actions, or mental activity (Van der Hart et al., 2006). Mental activity, in which we engage all the time, may or may not be accompanied by behavioral actions. It is essential that you become aware of, learn to tolerate and regulate, and even change major mental actions that affect your current life, such as negative beliefs, and feelings or reactions to the past the interfere with the present. However, it is impossible to change inner experiences if you are avoiding them because you are afraid, ashamed or disgusted by them. Serious avoidance of you inner experiences is called experiential avoidance (Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, & Follettte, 1996), or the phobia of inner experience (Steele, Van der Hart, & Nijenhuis, 2005; Van der Hart et al., 2006).

Pathological dissociation is characterized by profound, functional amnesias and significant alterations in identity; normal dissociation is expressed primarily in the form of intense absorption with internal stimuli (e.g., daydreams) or external stimuli (e.g., a fascinating book or television program).

People who live with mental illnesses are among the most stigmatized groups in society. Fighting the stigma caused by mental disorders: past perspectives, present activities, and future directions. World Psychiatry. Oct 2008; 7(3): 185–188. PMCID: PMC2559930

Patients with complex trauma may at times develop extreme reactions to something the therapist has said or not said, done or not done. It is wise to anticipate this in advance, and perhaps to note this anticipation in initial communications with the patient. For example, one may say something like, "It is likely in our work together, there will be a time or times when you will feel angry with me, disappointed with me, or that I have failed you. We should except this and not be surprised if and when it happens, which it probably will." It is also vital to emphasize to the patient that despite the diagnosis and experience of dividedness, the whole person is responsible and will be held responsible for the acts of any part. p174

Police intentionally murdering a mentally unstable person will always be unacceptable when there are numerous other non-lethal options available to them.

Several themes describe misconceptions about mental illness and corresponding stigmatizing attitudes. Media analyses of film and print have identified three: people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared; they have childlike perceptions of the world that should be marveled; or they are responsible for their illness because they have weak character (29-32)." World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16–20. PMCID: PMC1489832 Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness PATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON

Public stigma Stereotype Negative belief about a group (e.g., dangerousness, incompetence, character weakness) Prejudice Agreement with belief and/or negative emotional reaction (e.g., anger, fear) Discrimination Behavior response to prejudice (e.g., avoidance, withhold employment and housing opportunities, withhold help) Self-stigma Stereotype Negative belief about the self (e.g., character weakness, incompetence) Prejudice Agreement with belief, negative emotional reaction (e.g., low self-esteem, low self-efficacy) Discrimination Behavior response to prejudice (e.g., fails to pursue work and housing opportunities) Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness. World Psychiatry. Feb 2002; 1(1): 16–20. PMCID: PMC1489832

Rikki looked over at me. “Why now?" she asked, looking back at Arly. “Why is this happening now?" "Hard to say." Arly [therapist] replied. "DID usually gets diagnosed in adulthood. Something happens that triggers the alters to come out. When Cam's father died and he came in to help his brother run the family business he was in close contact with his mother again. Maybe it was seeing Kyle around the same age when some of the abuse happened. Cam was sick for a long time and finally got better. Maybe he wasn't strong enough until now to handle this. It's probably a combination of things. But it sure looks like some of the abuse Cam experienced involved his mother. And sexual abuse by the mother is considered to he one of the most traumatic forms of abuse. In some ways it's the ultimate betrayal.

Schizo. It didn't matter how many times Dr. Gill compared it to a disease or physical disability, it wasn't the same thing. It just wasn't. I had schizophrenia. If I saw two guys on the sidewalk, one in a wheelchair and one talking talking to himself, which would I rush to open a door for, and which would I cross the road to avoid?

Psychological trauma is an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.… Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life.… They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, and evoke the responses of catastrophe.

Results of two independent factor analyses of the survey responses of more than 2000 English and American citizens parallel these findings (19,33): - fear and exclusion: persons with severe mental illness should be feared and, therefore, be kept out of most communities; - authoritarianism: persons with severe mental illness are irresponsible, so life decisions should be made by others; - benevolence: persons with severe mental illness are childlike and need to be cared for." World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16–20. PMCID: PMC1489832 Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness PATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON

Several themes describe misconceptions about mental illness and corresponding stigmatizing attitudes. Media analyses of film and print have identified three: people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared; they have childlike perceptions of the world that should be marveled; or they are responsible for their illness because they have weak character (29-32). Results of two independent factor analyses of the survey responses of more than 2000 English and American citizens parallel these findings (19,33): - fear and exclusion: persons with severe mental illness should be feared and, therefore, be kept out of most communities; - authoritarianism: persons with severe mental illness are irresponsible, so life decisions should be made by others; - benevolence: persons with severe mental illness are childlike and need to be cared for. - Although stigmatizing attitudes are not limited to mental illness, the public seems to disapprove persons with psychiatric disabilities significantly more than persons with related conditions such as physical illness (34-36).

She fails to see who I am, even, for her eyes do not, will not, take me in. Instead they transmit a powerful message. She is like a billboard flashing, starkly: 'Keep Out'.

...some patients resist the diagnosis of a post-traumatic disorder. They may feel stigmatized by any psychiatric diagnosis or wish to deny their condition out of a sense of pride. Some people feel that acknowledging psychological harm grants a moral victory to the perpetrator, in a way that acknowledging physical harm does not.

She was so shattered about what kind of man he was -- brutal, tender, passionate. There was little doubt he had some mental disorder.

Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they'd show up and he's look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him—the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn't matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he'd learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse.

Sometimes it seems like "pain" is too obvious a place to turn for inspiration. Pain isn't always deep, anyway. Sometimes it's awful and that's it. Or boring. Surely other things can be as profound as pain.

The central mechanism of the avoidance mechanism of PTSD is the ego defense of denial

Take it from me, that kind of torment causes you to retreat to a place in your mind where you are so strong that nothing and no one can bother you. Or so you think! What you don't realize is that each time an incident occurs, you retreat inside of yourself a little bit at a time, until one day you might not recognize who YOU are.

The connection between religious faith and mental disorder is, from the viewpoint of the tolerant and the "multicultural," both very obvious and highly unmentionable.

The creature who lives inside my brain suggested I do it,” I offered tentatively. “It was very convincing.

The country is not growing because the mental state of the people are retarded

The most common emotional defense is avoidance (an ineffective coping skill for any stressor) as expressed through denial (e.g., "That wasn't really bad, I barely remember it").

The implication that the change in nomenclature from “Multiple Personality Disorder” to “Dissociative Identity Disorder” means the condition has been repudiated and “dropped” from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association is false and misleading. Many if not most diagnostic entities have been renamed or have had their names modified as psychiatry changes in its conceptualizations and classifications of mental illnesses. When the DSM decided to go with “Dissociative Identity Disorder” it put “(formerly multiple personality disorder)” right after the new name to signify that it was the same condition. It’s right there on page 526 of DSM-IV-R. There have been four different names for this condition in the DSMs over the course of my career. I was part of the group that developed and wrote successive descriptions and diagnostic criteria for this condition for DSM-III-R, DSM–IV, and DSM-IV-TR. While some patients have been hurt by the impact of material that proves to be inaccurate, there is no evidence that scientifically demonstrates the prevalence of such events. Most material alleged to be false has been disputed by someone, but has not been proven false. Finally, however intriguing the idea of encouraging forgetting troubling material may seem, there is no evidence that it is either effective or safe as a general approach to treatment. There is considerable belief that when such material is put out of mind, it creates symptoms indirectly, from “behind the scenes.” Ironically, such efforts purport to cure some dissociative phenomena by encouraging others, such as Dissociative Amnesia.

The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind," between "neurological" problems and "psychological" or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem.

There is clear evidence from internal investigations in the past that some raters actually see themselves as adversaries to veterans. If a claim can be minimized, then the government has saved money, regardless of the need of the veteran. Just recently, the press exposed an official e-mail from a high-level staff person who stated in essence that PTSD diagnosis was becoming too prevalent and offered ways to delay and deflect ratings in order to save the government money.

There are men who wants only the woman; such are tagged, 'real men', and there are ones who want only their bodies; such are tagged, 'fake men', and there are others who wants neither the woman, nor the body; such are tagged, 'GAY MEN

The unique stigma of PTSD. The stigma of PTSD remains one of the most formidable barriers to effective care.

The SCID-D may be used to assess the nature and severity of dissociative symptoms in a variety of Axis I and II psychiatric disorders, including the Anxiety Disorders (such as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] and Acute Stress Disorder), Affective Disorders, Psychotic Disorders, Eating Disorders, and Personality Disorders. The SCID-D was developed to reduce variability in clinical diagnostic procedures and was designed for use with psychiatric patients as well as with nonpatients (community subjects or research subjects in primary care).

The thesis that DID is merely a North American phenomenon has been refuted in the past decade by research reports based on standardized assessment from diverse countries, such as from The Netherlands, Turkey, and Germany (Boon & Draijer, 1993; Gast, Rodewald, Nickel, & Emrich, 2001; S ̧ar et al, 1996). Clinicians and researchers should be careful to avoid categorizing a universal human condition as culture-bound.

The truth is schizophrenic and has as many faces as there are people.

Trauma destroys the fabric of time. In normal time you move from one moment to the next, sunrise to sunset, birth to death. After trauma, you may move in circles, find yourself being sucked backwards into an eddy or bouncing like a rubber ball from now to then to back again. ... In the traumatic universe the basic laws of matter are suspended: ceiling fans can be helicopters, car exhaust can be mustard gas.

We got through it. Haven made excuses for me to friends, and made an appointment with a terrific doctor, who put me on Effexor, 150 milligrams a day, enough to get my brain straightened out.