Chronic Illness Stigma Quotes

And now he had acquired the wisdom to admit that sometimes experienced his disdain for "weak, sick people" because he was frightened by any suggestion he could ever become that. ~ James C. Coyne

He said that my problem was that I was perfectly healthy and had the illusion that I would be able bodied forever. I could only begin understanding his problem if I gave up that illusion and that would be very difficult, given how healthy I was. I understand, I mistakenly said, and he said no you don't. ~ James C. Coyne

Eighteen months ago, after seeing thirteen different doctors and undergoing multiple tests and investigations, not only was I given a diagnosis of a condition that I didn't know about or understand, it was an illness I didn't believe in. ~ Nina Muirhead

Self-stigma can be just a big a problem as the negative attitudes of others. ~ Megan A. Arroll

Living with long-term suffering in American culture feels like being off-key. Suffering quiets and slows, but our culture prefers a crescendo. ~ K.J. Ramsey

We've gone from a preponderance of acute and infectious disease as a source of premature death to chronic diseases, which are the preponderance of the burden of illness in most of the world. That puts a much higher premium on the prevention of chronic disease than ever in history. ~ Harvey V. Fineberg

They entered the summer parlor, where the Ravenels chatted amiably with his sisters, Phoebe and Seraphina.
Phoebe, the oldest of the Challon siblings, had inherited their mother's warm and deeply loving nature, and their father's acerbic wit. Five years ago she had married her childhood sweetheart, Henry, Lord Clare, who had suffered from a chronic illness for most of his life. The worsening symptoms had gradually reduced him to a shadow of the man he'd once been, and he'd finally succumbed while Phoebe was pregnant with their second child. Although the first year of mourning was over, Phoebe hadn't yet returned to her former self. She went outdoors so seldom that her freckles had vanished, and she looked wan and thin. The ghost of grief still lingered in her gaze.
Their younger sister, Seraphina, an effervescent eighteen-year-old with strawberry-blonde hair, was talking to Cassandra. Although Seraphina was old enough to have come out in society by now, the duke and duchess had persuaded her to wait another year. A girl with her sweet nature, her beauty, and her mammoth dowry would be targeted by every eligible man in Europe and beyond. For Seraphina, the London Season would be a gauntlet, and the more prepared she was, the better. ~ Lisa Kleypas

In the midst of pain, we begin to understand the price Jesus paid for our salvation. ~ Cindee Snider Re

I wanted to relay a first hand experience to an audience possibly struggling to understand just what living with an autoimmune condition means," Connery says. "It's a difficult journey and very much misunderstood by our friends and family – I hope this book can help to change that. ~ Richard Connery

In my community, mental health isn't taken seriously enough. Therapy is replaced by prayer. Tears are a sign of weakness. When you are different, you are told to change. And really, what does that do? It isolates desperate, vulnerable people and creates victims. ~ Frida R.

We know that no algorithm can solve global poverty; no pill can cure a chronic illness; no box of chocolates can mend a broken relationship; no educational DVD can transform a child into a baby Einstein; no drone strike can end a terrorist conflict. Sadly, there is no such thing as 'One Tip to a Flat Stomach.' ~ Carl Honore

While there is a real urgency for caution, there is also an overwhelming urgency for calm. My greatest concern is that the driving force of this pandemic may cause those who have no signs or symptomology to develop other chronic fears, anxieties and medical conditions. Heightened fears and anxieties will not make you feel safer. Compulsive and impulsive purchases will not protect you from the virus. It is important that you take care of your physical and mental health. Follow what your state and county are advising you to do. The sky is not falling and life will return to normal. The most prudent thing that people can do at this time, is to take commonsense approaches to reduce your risk of exposure. ~ Asa Don Brown

Severe mental illness has been likened to drug addiction, prostitution, and criminality (37,38). Unlike physical disabilities, persons with mental illness are perceived by the public to be in control of their disabilities and responsible for causing them (34,36). Furthermore, research respondents are less likely to pity persons with mental illness, instead reacting to psychiatric disability with anger and believing that help is not deserved (35,36,39).
Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness. World Psychiatry. Feb 2002; 1(1): 16–20.
PMCID: PMC1489832
PATRICK W. CORRIGAN and AMY C. WATSON ~ Matthew W. Corrigan

I want to break down some of the stigma associated with mental illness. ~ Gail Porter

Living in the past is like choosing to cling to a chronic illness. ~ Asa Don Brown

AIDS today is not a death sentence. It can be treated as a chronic illness, or a chronic disease. ~ Yusuf Hamied

He mistook my frustration for anger towards him, which seemed to be typical for us lately. The longer the distance between a correct diagnosis, the greater the silence we shared. ~ Tracey Berkowitz

There are a lot of myths around Mental Health sufferers. People are very biased towards them. This should change. People should try to understand and not outcry them. The stigma should be erased. ~ Maria Karvouni

I have a soft spot in my heart for suicidal people. I know that others make presumptions about suicidal people, painting them with the darkest of paints; but the way that I see it, these are people who look out into the world and see how broken it is and they look into their lives and they remember all the people they've hurt and then they look into themselves and they are faced with how ruined they are and they think that if they can't make anything really better then they just shouldn't exist anymore. It's not a form of selfishness or mental illness. It's a form of extreme state of empathy and selflessness. Suicidal people really are the best kinds of people. But they need to know that this world has a place for them, that this world needs the kind of light that they carry with them as they walk through it, they need to know that they have a home. That their type of darkness is like the darkness of the universe: it's the type of darkness from whence comes forth the light! Some people are just okay with everything, they don't feel the pain and the guilt that comes with the way that this world is. And I don't think that the lack of feeling makes anybody healthier in the mind. Our world is sick. And some people know that. These are not the sick people, these are the beautiful creatures! ~ C. JoyBell C.

Within that tired body, lies a soul so persistent in love, repentant in serving others before yourself. I see the person who can sympathize all layers of the human experience. I see you. ~ Karen A. Baquiran

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

The general public is bewildered and fascinated by Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder. Through books, television and movies, a distorted view of MPD/DID is often presented. While it may make for good entertainment, it fails to truly present the depth and intensity of the inherent trauma. Outside the ordinary day-to-day life experience of most people, it is hard to understand. ~ David Yeung

There's nothing worse than bottling something up inside and letting it eat at you. It's like being shot, and leaving the bullet inside our bodies. The wound would never heal. Instead, we need to let it out. ~ S.R. Crawford

Processed foods cause inflammation, a source of most chronic illnesses as well as stress. ~ Kris Carr

It is food - we now know that food is information, not just calories, and that it can upgrade your biologic software. The majority of chronic disease is primarily a food borne illness. We ate ourselves into this problem and we have to eat ourselves out of it. ~ Mark Hyman, M.D.

Not that he had come anywhere near attaining her skill at managing hope. She could balance it like a juggler -- let it soar and curb it and pass it from hand to hand. She could spin hope and spin herself through it. Forget mere juggling; she was a veritable trapeze artist with this hope thing. ~ Sonali Dev

With psychiatric medications, you solve one problem for a period of time, but the next thing you know you end up with two problems. The treatment turns a period of crisis into a chronic mental illness. - Amy Upham (203) ~ Robert Whitaker

Physiological stress, then, is the link between personality traits and disease. Certain traits - otherwise known as coping styles - magnify the risk for illness by increasing the likelihood of chronic stress. Common to them all is a diminished capacity for emotional communication. Emotional experiences are translated into potentially damaging biological events when human beings are prevented from learning how to express their feelings effectively. That learning occurs - or fails to occur - during childhood. The way people grow up shapes their relationship with their own bodies and psyches. The emotional contexts of childhood interact with inborn temperament to give rise to personality traits. Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood.

There is an important distinction between an inherent characteristic, rooted in an individual without regard to his environment, and a response to the environment, a pattern of behaviours developed to ensure survival. What we see as indelible traits may be no more than habitual defensive techniques, unconsciously adopted. People often identify with these habituated patterns, believing them to be an indispensable part of the self. They may even harbour self-loathing for certain traits - for example, when a person describes herself as "a control freak." In reality, there is no innate human inclination to be controlling. What there is in a "controlling" ~ Gabor Mate

Even the littlest things were now a challenge, one I didn't understand. ~ Sarah Todd Hammer

Somewhere inside that hurting body, there is something better, something stronger, something real. ~ R. M. Drake

Sure, society understands visible shackles-- they get the symbolism of the wheelchair, of prosthetics, of a bumper sticker reading disabled veteran, but they still struggle for comprehension of the profound, invisible shackles that an illness such as [Chronic Fatigue] puts on a person's body. ~ Peggy Munson

Chronic disease is a foodborne illness. We ate our way into this mess, and we must eat our way out. ~ Mark Hyman, M.D.

Listen, I wanted to say, I don't need your judgment, okay? I have enough to deal with without you contributing, so can we just get on with this so I can get out of here?
But I couldn't form the words. Dr. Johnson viewed me as a child, and somehow, under his contemptuous gaze, I had regressed to one. I was frightened and shy, and it was all I could do to answer his questions and count the seconds until the end of the visit. ~ Jessica Verdi

The power to label is the power to destroy. ~ Allen Frances

Telling a person who is depressed to have positive thoughts is the same as telling a sick person not to be sick. It doesn't work. ~ Yong Kang Chan

Trying is an art even when you try and fail every time you get up and keep going. When you stop dreaming and fight for what you want and what is necessary that's when the real change and growth begins. ~ Keah Brown

Chronic illness is hard. Pain is hard. Isolation is hard. The financial cost is hard. Grieving is hard and necessary and sometimes takes far longer than we every imagined. ~ Cindee Snider Re

I'm really tired", you come to understand, is meaningless, giving the impression all will be well with a good rest and that if you've ever been tired, you know what it is to be exhausted. ~ Frances Ryan

The unique stigma of PTSD. The stigma of PTSD remains one of the most formidable barriers to effective care. ~ Michael A. Cucciare

Psychologisation describes the emphasis on psychological factors where there is little or no evidence to justify it (1). It's a process where relevant findings are ignored or downplayed in favour of data from incomplete examinations, flawed research or anecdotal reports.
In a clinical context, differential diagnoses may be dismissed prematurely while psychological explanations are readily accepted.
Psychologisation does not refer to situations where there is sound evidence that psychological factors play a significant role, or where all the arguments are discussed and the psychological explanations are deemed the most persuasive. ~ Ellen Goudsmit

Even with all that - excellent treatment, wonderful family and friends, supportive work environment - I did not make my illness public until relatively late in life, and that's because the stigma against mental illness is so powerful that I didn't feel safe with people knowing. If you hear nothing else today, please hear this: There are not 'schizophrenics'. There are people with schizophrenia, and these people may be your spouse, they may be your child, they may be your neighbor, they may be your friend, they may be your coworker. ~ Elyn Saks

Let us be today's Christians. Let us not take fright at the boldness of today's church. With Christ's light let us illuminate even the most hideous caverns of the human person: torture, jail, plunder, want, chronic illness. The oppressed must be saved, not with a revolutionary salvation, in mere human fashion, but with the holy revolution of the Son of Man, who dies on the cross to cleanse God's image, which is soiled in today's humanity, a humanity so enslaved, so selfish, so sinful. ~ Oscar A. Romero

If I had to pull an all-nighter studying for a test or too many looming deadlines had me pulling out my hair, I wouldn't end up with just some trendy coffee addiction. I'd end up in a mini-coma, face down in the middle of the studio or on the floor of the community showers. ~ Laekan Zea Kemp

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

1 in 5 people have dandruff. 1 in 4 people have mental health problems. I've had both. ~ Ruby Wax

I am a person suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and I am appalled that it has been given such a trivial name.

Here is a disease that totally disables most of its victims; a disease that causes balance disorders, resulting in some of us requiring wheelchairs, cognitive disorders that leave us unable to perform formerly simple mental tasks, and immune disorders that lay us open to multiple infections and to autoimmune problems.

And all the medical profession can come up with to define this syndrome to the general population is "fatigue! ~ Jane Cuozzo

Luckily, we are seeing less and less post-exertional malaise, the symptom that stops Danny's body and brain recovering properly after expending any energy, even just watching TV. ~ Sonya Chowdhury

Too often the mentally ill are marginalized as people who just can't pull up their socks. If only it were that simple. ~ Suzanne F. Kingsmill

No matter what stage of illness we are in, whether we've just been diagnosed or we have lived with chronic migraines for decades, there are adjustments we can make to increase joy in our lives and to live more fully. ~ Sarah Hackley

Chronic illness, with its invisible symptoms of fatigue and pain, is largely the burden of women. And it's worth considering to what extent its relative neglect by the medical system is because it mostly affects women, whose complaints are so often heard not as a roar but as a whine. ~ Maya Dusenbery

Chronic anxiety is a form of illness. It's not something you bring on yourself by how you feel on any given day. It isn't about happiness and sadness. Anxiety doesn't care if you're happy or not, just like cancer doesn't care if you're happy. ~ Sara (Barnard) Harris

Stigma takes many forms, comes from all directions, is sometimes blatantly overt, but can also be remarkably subtle. It is the cruel comment, the unkind smirk, the extrusion from the group, the lost job opportunity, the rejected marriage proposal, the ineligibility for life insurance, the inability to adopt a child or pilot a plane.

But it is also the reduced expectation, the helping hand when none is needed or wanted, the solicitous sympathy that one cannot really be expected to measure up.

And the secondary psychological and practical harms of having a mental disorder come only partly from how others see you. A great deal of the trouble comes from the change in how you see yourself: the sense of being damaged goods, feeling not normal or worthy, not a full fledged member of the group.

It is bad enough that stigma is so often associated with having a mental disorder, but the stigma that comes from being mislabeled with a fake diagnosis is a dead loss with absolutely no redeeming features. ~ Allen Frances

To think how different ones life would be had one moment not altered it all - just don't sit there too long or you'll self sabotage all your growth. ~ Nikki Rowe