Being Mentally Ill Quotes

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. ~ Elyn R. Saks

You know... the thing that is so wrong about being mentally ill is the terrible price you have to pay for survival. ~ Joanne Greenberg

I get lots of awards for being mentally ill. Apparently, I am better at being mentally ill than almost anything else I've ever done. Seriously - I have a shelf of awards for being bipolar. ~ Carrie Fisher

You get ill, you are accused of being mentally ill, denied effective treatment, then when you campaign for 'real science', you are accused of terrorising those who do not believe in your illness...after all, if your message is that people who say they are suffering from ME or CFS are mentally ill, then accusing them of irrational attacks adds strength to your case. ~ Martin J. Walker

There are such things as delusions, but not every unlikely vision that the mentally ill have is imaginary. ~ Shepherd Hoodwin

Neighborhood folk still came, in small vanquished numbers and mostly in the afternoon, before the two small dining rooms and the bar were taken over by the educated classes, an ill-dressed, underfed, overdrunken group of squatters with minds so highly developed that they were excused from good manners, tastes so refined in one direction that they were excused for having none in any other, emotions so cultivated that the only aberration was normality, all afloat here on sodden pools of depravity calculated only to manifest the pricelessness of what they were throwing away, the three sexes in two colors, a group of people all mentally and physically the wrong size. ~ William Gaddis

All I can say is, it's a sort of kinship, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch, the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of the sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

If a mentally ill person really works at self - control , she can do most things she could do otherwise . ~ Talitha Day Fair

Trump, what is a Trump. A vast ungainly hog who has scalped a lion somehow. And staggers around in it. The rotting mane and pelt. Day after day, and year after year, eyes clenched, chin jutting, squealing and snorting and wheezing, daring you to say it, to tell him what he is.

You're not a lion. You're a dumb bad pig. A mentally ill pig, and no one likes you, you're the worst, the worst one ever.

He was such a bad dumb little shit pig wasn't he. ~ Mark Doten

Let go!" I insisted. He ignored me. I staggered along sideways across the wet sidewalk until we reached the Volvo. Then he finally freed me – I stumbled against the passenger door.
"You are so pushy!" I grumbled
"It's open," was all he responded. He got in the driver's side.
"I am perfectly capable of driving myself home!" I stood by the car, fuming. It was raining harder now, and I'd never put my hood up, so my hair was dripping down my back.
He lowered the automatic window and leaned toward me across the seat. "Get in, Bella."
I didn't answer. I was mentally calculating my chances of reaching the truck before he could catch me. I had to admit it, they weren't good.
"I'll just drag you back," he threatened, guessing my plan. ~ Stephenie Meyer

You don't tell someone who's mentally ill or struggling, who's having a low time in their lives, to harden up, because it doesn't work. ~ John Kirwan

Start with this: not all pain matters. There are people whose attention is consistently drawn away from their purpose and toward their pain, like a moth to a light. Such people, who pay attention to every annoyance and obstacle in their way, are usually unsuccessful in their endeavors. In extreme cases they are mentally ill. A healthy person, a flourishing person, learns to move past a lot of annoyance and a good deal of pain. ~ Eric Greitens

He wondered at the atrocities human kind was capable of committing. The majority of those housed below were ill, mentally or physically, not witches. Most were poor victims
the outcasts of society; or the opposite, people so blessed, others coveted their lives. ~ Brynn Chapman

It is not the homeless, mentally ill or extremely cunning people that we have to be afraid of. When someone loses everything that meant something to them is when people should get very afraid. A person that has nothing to lose is the scariest person on earth. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Mental illness doesn't cause abusiveness any more than alcohol does. What happens is rather that the man's psychiatric problem interacts with his abusiveness to form a volatile combination. If he is severely depressed, for example, he may stop caring about the consequences his actions may cause him to suffer, which can increase the danger that he will decide to commit a serious attack against his partner or children. A mentally ill abuser has two separate - though interrelated - problems, just as the alcoholic or drug-addicted one does. ~ Lundy Bancroft

a manual for how to build a mentally ill child ~ David Foster Wallace

Use of a mentally ill person's involuntary confession is antithetical to the notion of fundamental fairness embodied in the due process clause. ~ William J. Brennan Jr.

He loved the idea that he was mentally ill," said his daughter Monica, "and hated the idea he was an alcoholic" - that is, bipolar disorder was a bona fide illness, while alcoholism smacked of a shameful personal failing. ~ Blake Bailey

Mentally ill people come from all belief systems. ~ Penn Jillette

The difference between a healthy person and one who is mentally ill is the fact that the healthy one has all the mental illnesses, and the mentally ill person has only one. ~ Robert Musil

Actually insane, as in mentally ill, or mad as a hatter insane? ~ Abbi Waxman

Fracturing of the psyche is said to be conducive to creating the phenomenon that has been termed sleeper assassins. According to such theories, the first psychiatrists employed to master mind control studied mental patients who had been diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, which medical science has since renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder. Many of those psychiatrists are said to have been Paperclip Nazi doctors who were brought to the US after conducting radical psychiatric experiments on patients during the Holocaust – the same doctors whose victims not only included Jews, Gyspies, political agitators and homosexuals, but also the mentally ill. ~ Lance Morcan

I spend a fair bit of time in Los Angeles, and there is much I love about the place - the weather, the food, the beaches and the golf. And a few things I don't. Like the way an enormous number of mentally ill people seem to be forced to live on the streets with little or nothing in the way of government assistance. ~ John Niven

The world now understands the concept of a 'desk murderer.' We know that one doesn't need to be fanatical, sadistic, or mentally ill to murder millions; that it is enough to be a loyal follower eager to do one's duty. ~ Simon Weisenthal

Let me get this straight. A mentally ill madman goes on a shooting spree to assassinate a United States Congressperson ... and the lesson learned by liberals is that guns must be taken away from law-abiding citizens? Really? What's the connection between a mentally ill nutcase and perfectly sane, responsible people? There is none. ~ Wayne Allyn Root

I wake up, and I'll just start reading and trying to brace myself for the rest of the day, and all the while I'm doing that, I'm kicking myself mentally. ~ Phil Anselmo

We're going to change. We're going to throw out what's worse in us
and keep what's best. But come hell or high water, we three will stick
together, all for one, one for all. We're going to grow, Cathy,
physically, mentally, and emotionally. Not only that, we're going to
reach the goals we've set for ourselves. I'll be the best damned
doctor the world's ever known and you will make Pavlova seem like an
awkward country girl. ~ V.C. Andrews

Madness in Civilization is a brilliant, provocative, and hugely entertaining history of the treatment and mistreatment of the mentally ill. Packed with bizarre details and disturbing facts, Andrew Scull's book offers fresh and compelling insights on the way medicine's inability to solve the mystery of madness has both haunted and shaped two thousand years of culture. Required reading for anyone who has ever gone to a shrink! ~ Dirk Wittenborn

An estimated 3.5 million people with serious mental illnesses are going without treatment (Kessler et al. 2001). That is scandalous. But mentally ill people are not the cause of the violence problem. If schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression were cured, our society's problem of violence would diminish by only about 4% (Swanson 1994). ~ Daniel W. Webster

Those who fail to exhibit positive attitudes, no matter the external reality, are seen as maladjusted and in need of assistance. Their attitudes need correction. Once we adopt an upbeat vision of reality, positive things will happen. This belief encourages us to flee from reality when reality does not elicit positive feelings. These specialists in "happiness" have formulated something they call the "Law of Attraction." It argues that we attract those things in life, whether it is money, relationships or employment, which we focus on. Suddenly, abused and battered wives or children, the unemployed, the depressed and mentally ill, the illiterate, the lonely, those grieving for lost loved ones, those crushed by poverty, the terminally ill, those fighting with addictions, those suffering from trauma, those trapped in menial and poorly paid jobs, those whose homes are in foreclosure or who are filing for bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills, are to blame for their negativity. The ideology justifies the cruelty of unfettered capitalism, shifting the blame from the power elite to those they oppress. And many of us have internalized this pernicious message, which in times of difficulty leads to personal despair, passivity and disillusionment. ~ Chris Hedges

When a man's face contorts in bitterness and hatred, he looks a little insane. When his mood changes from elated to assaultive in the time it takes to turn around, his mental stability seems open to question. When he accuses his partner of plotting to harm him, he seems paranoid. It is no wonder that the partner of an abusive man would come to suspect that he was mentally ill.
Yet the great majority of my clients over the years have been psychologically "normal." Their minds work logically; they understand cause and effect; they don't hallucinate. Their perceptions of most life circumstances are reasonably accurate. They get good reports at work; they do well in school or training programs; and no one other than their partners - and children - thinks that there is anything wrong with them. Their value system is unhealthy, not their psychology. ~ Lundy Bancroft

After Huguette Clark died in 2011 at age 104, 19 relatives challenged her will, claiming she was mentally ill and had been defrauded by her nurse, attorney and accountant. ~ Bill Dedman

When I said that the mentally ill should be in institutions, public universities weren't the kind of institutions I had in mind. ~ Robert Stacy McCain

I do not believe that I will ever write an adult novel from an animal's point of view unless someday it becomes suddenly appealing to me to make a narrator a mentally ill pet. Never say never. ~ Andrea Seigel

I liked hurting girls.
Mentally, not physically, I never hit a girl in my life. Well, once. But that was a mistake. I'll tell you about it later. The thing is, I got off on it. I really enjoyed it.
It's like when you hear serial killers say they feel no regret, no remorse for all the people they killed. I was like that. Loved it. I didn't care how long it took either, because I was in no hurry. I'd wait until they were totally in love with me. Till the big saucer eyes were looking at me. I loved the shock on their faces. Then the glaze as they tried to hide how much I was hurting them. And it was legal. I think I killed a few of them. Their souls, I mean. It was their souls I was after. ~ Anonymous

The sane man does not know that everything is possible." In other words, the mentally ill person at one time or another knew too much. And, as a result, so to speak, his head shut down. ~ Philip K. Dick

I've always been very Type-A, so a friend of mine got me into cycling when I was living in L.A. I lived right on the beach in Santa Monica, where there's this great bike path in the sand that goes for, I think, 25 miles. I'd go onto the bike path, and I would [go] head down and push it - just red-faced huffing, all the way, pushing it as hard as I could. I would go all the way down to one end of the bike path and back, and then head home, and I'd set my little timer when doing this. . . .

"I noticed it was always 43 minutes. That's what it took me to go as fast as I could on that bike path. But I noticed that, over time, I was starting to feel less psyched about going out on the bike path. Because mentally, when I would think of it, it would feel like pain and hard work. . . . So, then I thought, 'You know, it's not cool for me to associate negative stuff with going on the bike ride. Why don't I just chill? For once, I'm gonna go on the same bike ride, and I'm not going to be a complete snail, but I'll go at half of my normal pace.' I got on my bike, and it was just pleasant.

"I went on the same bike ride, and I noticed that I was standing up, and I was looking around more. I looked into the ocean, and I saw there were these dolphins jumping in the ocean, and I went down to Marina del Rey, to my turnaround point, and I noticed in Marina del Rey, that there was a pelican that was flying above me. I looked up. I was like, 'Hey, a pelican!' and he shit in ~ Derek Sivers

I've been mentally preparing myself to come out all over again, but I've been doing that for a while now. That was one of the things I realized early. If you're queer, your life has the potential to become one long coming-out moment. If I ever want to be called the right pronouns, I'll have to correct people and put myself out there first and who knows what could happen. ~ Mason Deaver

It just baffles me how badly evolution is bombing on the fertility front; it makes no sense that when I was the least equipped mentally and financially to have a kid, I was the most able to. I've said it once, and I'll say it again: Biology is a raging, sexist psychopath. ~ Whitney Cummings

The difference between my fans and Kurt's is that my fans know they're mentally ill. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I don't buy that there's nothing we can do to stop criminals and the mentally ill from killing if they want to. ~ Mike Quigley

It is no coincidence then that doctors and patients and the entire Lyme community report - anecdotally, of course, as there is still a frustrating scarcity of good data on anything Lyme-related - that women suffer the most from Lyme. They tend to advance into chronic and late-stage forms of the illness most because often it's checked for last, as doctors often treat them as psychiatric cases first. The nebulous symptoms plus the fracturing of articulacy and cognitive fog can cause any Lyme patient to simply appear mentally ill and mentally ill only. This is why we hear that young women - again, anecdotally - are dying of Lyme the fastest. This is also why we hear that chronic illness is a women's burden. Women simply aren't allowed to be physically sick until they are mentally sick, too, and then it is by some miracle or accident that the two can be separated for proper diagnosis. In the end, every Lyme patient has some psychiatric diagnosis, too, if anything because of the hell it takes getting to a diagnosis. ~ Porochista Khakpour

Clearly, there are a thousand and one scenarios for how someone can slip through the cracks. I'll walk down the street and see a homeless person, and I'll want to stop them and say, How did this happen? Where's your mother? Are you physically ill? Mentally ill? ~ William Baldwin

I would pay to have those adjudications enrolled into the federal background system so we could detect people who are mentally ill before they buy a gun. That is a real problem. ~ Rand Paul

I was thrilled when this year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature went to Neal Schusterman's 'Challenger Deep.' This brilliant book takes you into the mind of a mentally ill teenager and deserves all the accolades it's received. ~ John Corey Whaley

Most Radiohead songs are actually REM songs, I just have a mentally ill child read the lyrics aloud and then I change the melodies a bit. ~ Thom Yorke

All vets are mentally ill in some way and government should prevent them from owning firearms. ~ Dianne Feinstein

I could mentally lift the vision wholesale and stick it into the already overflowing "crazy shit I'll deal with later" box in my brain. ~ Kelley Armstrong

Suicides do not end their lives because they are weak, mentally ill, or depressed - though certainly they may be all those things. They are in blinding, all-consuming psychic pain, and perhaps on that final poisonous day they can find no reason not to. ~ Jill Bialosky

Texas is a great place to be rich and a terrible place to be poor. It's got the highest percentage of people without health insurance in the country. If you get injured on the job, good luck getting workers' comp. And God help you if you're poor and mentally ill. ~ Gail Collins

You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein