Mental Health Awareness Quotes

Anxiety is debilitating. "What's it like to live with anxiety"? One day your waters are calm, the seagulls are all around, gently landing on your shoreline, then suddenly a mountain falls into your ocean and there are waves shooting out in all directions, the seagulls scatter and leave you all alone, and there is a big hole in the middle of your stomach, where all the water jumped out of! And you can hardly walk or stand up or eat, because, there is a hole on your stomach! Somebody shot you and you can feel it, but no one else can see it. That's exactly what anxiety is like. You're walking around thinking all is well, then you get shot in the stomach with an invisible bullet and bleed out in a way that nobody else understands. ~ C. JoyBell C.

When people asked about his schizophrenia, Eric, who didn't exactly flaunt his illness but wasn't ashamed of it, either, offered up the comparison of alcoholism. Not every drunk is a single bourbon away from skid row, just like every schizophrenic is not a tatty-haired, crazy-eyed gunman who delights in murdering alien-people from clock towers. There are functioning alcoholics just as there are functioning schizophrenics, individuals who work, maintain homes, and have hobbies, goals, and relationships like every other slob on the planet. ~ Vivian Barz

If you have a monster inside of you, please teach it how to jump, and laugh, and fly and catch fish! Please teach it to climb mountains to watch sunsets and wade in ponds to feel moonlight. Please love your monster, tell it that it has a home, teach it that it has a place in this world, maybe it likes ice cream, maybe marshmallows make it smile, maybe it goes to beautiful places in its dreams at night. One day it will sit atop a clocktower and cast sunbeams onto everyone! Because it will learn that! Because angels are too busy to do that, but monsters are not. Monsters would love to catch sunbeams and eat sugar donuts. Teach your monsters, they will form moonbeams one day! ~ C. JoyBell C.

No one ever expects a man missing his limbs to perform the same as a whole person in normal society. Why do we expect the mentally unwell to perform equally to those without the handicap? ~ Aaron Daniel Behr

Isn't it amazing... how this life will break your heart, but then there's no special lane for the brokenhearted. There's no special lane for the broken minds, the broken souls, the broken hearts, the broken spirits. There's no special parking lot. There's no special space for you in this life. Life will break you and demand the same from you as she demands from the unbroken ones. Some of us are beasts; beasts of bravery! Getting up in the morning, deciding to be happy, deciding to be at peace, deciding to be unbroken. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I think that going on any reality show is not good for your mental health because you behave differently when you are being watched, and you constantly have an extra bit of awareness of what's going on all the time. ~ Ronda Rousey

I've always been so full of melancholy. But I've realized it's because I'm alive. I'm open. I feel. I carry all things in my heart and sometimes I mistake the weight of it for heaviness when it's really fullness. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

I recognize the fact that whatever a person is doing in their lives, and whoever they happen to be at that moment in time; they are exactly where they are and who they are, as a result of their own life story, as a result of the voices in their heads, as a result of the monsters that they battle. Everything that I see about a person, is their own animation of their very best fight at staying alive. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Like each morning he was putting his identity on inside out while dressing in the dark. ~ Vivian Barz

Some of us... we have worlds on the inside of us. I think that the age of the soul corresponds to the number of worlds (or to the depth of a single inner universe). We feel things, on the inside, at a universe-depth. I can look at people and wonder how things just bounce off the surface of them: things HAPPEN to them; things don't BECOME them. Then there's me: there are plenty of broken butterflies in a couple of dark forests within me, because when things happen: they really happen! But there are also oceans in the Sun and mountains made of rubies. There are immortal butterflies and fluffy living things that teach me how to fly. Depression happens to the people with the deepest universes, the densest worlds: because we FEEL things. But also: our happiness is unmatched by others'. There are feeling people in this world, walking around, wondering why things hurt too much. Sometimes, we walk through our dark forests and all we can see are the broken butterflies. And some people never make it out of there to the other side. But all of them: they were all good people, they were the best kinds of people. ~ C. JoyBell C.

It was hard to remember what I'd been so scared of. Being treated differently? Lack of acceptance? I was the one who hadn't accepted myself for who I was. I was the one who needed to be comfortable in my own skin. I hoped I could do that moving forward. ~ Kasie West

Some people just live out their whole lives with some sort of ache in their heart they never resolve. ~ Eda J. Vor

We must urge a national dialogue on better methods of curbing preventable gun violence, and address the need for mental health awareness and access to psychiatric services in this country. ~ Charles B. Rangel

Mental health is an important topic, and should be discussed more frequently. It's not "attention seeking. ~ Brien Blatt

Your mental health is more important than everything. ~ Juansen Dizon

You have good days and bad days, and depression's something that, you know, is always with you. ~ Winona Ryder

The great thing about reading diverse news from the fields of business, health, science, technology, politics, and more is that you automatically see patterns in the world and develop mental hooks upon which you can hang future knowledge. ~ Scott Adams

It is hardly remarkable that we sicken and die; what is truly remarkable is that we don't usually sicken very often and we don't die very quickly. We can therefore say the same thing about physical disorders that we said about mental disorders: There is a force, the mechanism of which we do not fully understand, that seems to operate routinely in most people to protect and encourage their physical health even under the most adverse conditions. ~ M. Scott Peck

What's more insane? Hearing imaginary voices? Or not hearing the real ones? ~ Forrest Carr

Attitudes to mental health are slowly changing, there's less stigma among healthcare workers and a greater commitment to provide mental health treatment when doctors and nurses can see people do get better. ~ Reggie Fils-Aime

By now, ten trees must have been cut down just to document my mental health, which Nikki will hate hearing, as she is an avid environmentalist who gave me at least one tree in the rain forest every Christmas ~ Matthew Quick

Usually, we believe that our pain is a misfortune that needs to be fixed, but in fact, all pain (physical, mental, and emotional) is a necessary step towards becoming conscious. ~ Mada Eliza Dalian

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. ~ James Hillman

This feeling will pass. The fear is real but the danger is not. ~ Cammie McGovern

Reality comes in many different flavors. ~ Steven Magee

During this hour in the waking streets I felt at ease, at peace; my body, which I despised, operated like a machine. I was spaced out, the catchphrase my friends at school used to describe their first experiments with marijuana and booze. This buzzword perfectly described a picture in my mind of me, Alice, hovering just below the ceiling like a balloon and looking down at my own small bed where a big man lay heavily on a little girl I couldn't quite see or recognize. It wasn't me. I was spaced out on the ceiling.
I had that same spacey feeling when I cooked for my father, which I still did, though less often. I made omelettes, of course. I cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl, and as I reached for the butter dish, I always had an odd sensation in my hands and arms. My fingers prickled; it didn't feel like me but someone else cutting off a great chunk of greasy butter and putting it into the pan.
I'd add a large amount of salt - I knew what it did to your blood pressure, and I mumbled curses as I whisked the brew. When I poured the slop into the hot butter and shuffled the frying pan over the burner, it didn't look like my hand holding the frying-pan handle and I am sure it was someone else's eyes that watched the eggs bubble and brown. As I dropped two slices of wholemeal bread in the toaster, I would observe myself as if from across the room and, with tingling hands gripping the spatula, folded the omelette so it looked like an apple envelope. My alien hands wo ~ Alice Jamieson

I want you to remember that no matter what, your physical and mental health are the most important thing. That is not being selfish; that is protecting yourself, so you can participate in healthy relationships. Cutting toxic people from your life is necessary for your own personal health and growth. "I ~ Kristen Proby

It's almost selfishness, taking care of your mental health. You can't just not do it. ~ Roz Chast

I suspect the psychological pressure associated with that crisis caused the first mental blackout I had ever suffered. It contributed to a deterioration in my health that later required the insertion of a heart pacemaker. ~ Kamisese Mara

Without fear and illness, I could never have accomplished all I have ~ Edvard Munch

As you may already know, post-traumatic stress disorder is extremely complex. Each client has a unique, perhaps virtually unbelievable, set of experiences, and an almost equally set of reactions to those experiences. ~ Aphrodite Matsakis

In modern society, it is not enough to be an engineer, a doctor, a chemist, a biologist, or a physicist, you must be all of them to understand why human health is failing on such a massive scale. ~ Steven Magee

I think the relationship between mother and daughter is so interesting, even in a semi-normal family. Emily Thorne/Amanda Clarke's family relationship is going to be so interesting to explore. It is going to give me so many places to go. Obviously, it has been said that she is not the most stable of characters. What is interesting about that, when you think about mental health, is that young women will often come into those problems and difficulties in their 20's, so it is very possible that this will start to affect her psyche. ~ Emily VanCamp

And for three weeks I was trapped in my own mind again. But this time, I had weapons. One of them, maybe the most important, was this knowledge: I have been ill before, then well again. Wellness is possible. ~ Matt Haig

Many so-called disorders of the mind are simply disorders of thought. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

Best way to get away from negative feelings and emotions is to involve ourselves without getting involved. It comes by practice and is beneficial for our health; be it physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. ~ Mahesh Babu

It's a peculiar thing about liberals. When it comes to middle-class people who are fully capable of caring for themselves, liberals seek to undermine their independence in every way possible. With seductive 'entitlements' like guaranteed retirement, health care, nutrition, education, and jobs, liberals attempt to lure the middle class into dependence on the state. But when it comes to those who are truly incompetent, those whose mental afflictions render them unable to manage their lives at all, liberals are suddenly transformed into absolutists for personal autonomy. ~ Mona Charen

How about after I'm a hundred percent, we have a hot, torrid affair. It'd be good for my emotional and mental health."

"My man would crush you like a bug, skinny boy. It's too bad my sister's only eighteen."

"Eighteen's legal."

"You go near my baby sis, I'll put you back in this hospital. ~ Nora Roberts

I think I just said it, but I think it's worth repeating. They gave me hope that there is good in the world out there. There really is. It really does exist. Regardless of how bad things can be, and how down on your luck you can be, or how bad your trust is broken when it comes to warming up to people and all that stuff, I know that there's people out there that genuinely wanna help. Putting yourself in that position is a huge step, and it's a very risky and fragile step, but it's also a step that needs to be taken because there is help. And you can get through something like this. You really can. - Jim, from To the Survivors ~ Robert Uttaro

the bureaucracy has arrogated the right to define certain states of mind as 'diseased.' A lack of desire to spend money becomes a symptom of disease that requires expensive medication. Which medication then destroys the libido, in other words destroys the appetite for the one pleasure in life that's free, which means the person has to spend even more money on compensatory pleasures. The very definition of mental 'health' is the ability to participate in the consumer economy. When you buy into therapy, you're buying into buying. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Guard your heart, mind and time. Those three things will determine the health of everything else in your life. ~ Andrena Sawyer

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

I'm not super-comfortable with it. I feel the less you project of yourself the more you can be believable as a character. I also think it's just better for your own mental health. Then you can be a human being and change your mind and nobody asks you questions about it! ~ Evelyne Brochu

It's worth burning myself out like a match
so long as others receive the light and warmth I dispatch. ~ Shannon Perry

One thing I want to clarify - that every service member, veteran, wants us to remember - is that the vast majority of people returning from service come back completely healthy. But when we do come across someone who is struggling. We have to develop a culture of open arms and acceptance so that they feel comfortable saying, "I'm a veteran. And by the way, I need little help." This is something we need to do in this country around mental health as a whole - destigmatizing mental health. ~ Michelle Obama

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

I remember a scared, young girl hiding in the guise of arrogance and rebellion. I remember feeling lost in a world where everyone else seemed to have it all figured out. I remember the tears of pain, the rants of anger and the hell that seemed to have swallowed me whole. Although I remember these things, it is now, over a decade later, more like a story that I find hard to believe. Did it all really happen? Even as I write this, my eyes begin to swell. It really did happen. I was that girl. And I'm sorry she had to suffer so. But, that is over now... ~ Karen Michelle Miller

If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved. ~ Maurice Chevalier

It is very sad that most of us just aren't grateful for what we have. If you're reading this, I think it's safe to assume that you're not homeless. You're not blind. You might be ill, but you're still alive. And yet, we find it hard to be thankful. To see the gift each day brings us. It is from this lack of true gratitude that we become sad. We have told ourselves over and over that we aren't happy. That our lives aren't good. That we're no good. ~ S.R. Crawford

One frustration with anxiety is that it is often hard to find a reason behind it. There may be no visible threat and yet you can feel utterly terrorized. ~ Matt Haig

Although both home and mental illness are complex, modern ideas, we have fallen into the habit of using phrases such as "housing the homeless" and "treating the mentally ill" as if we knew what counts as housing a homeless person or what it means to treat mental illness. But we do not. We have deceived ourselves that having a home and being mentally healthy are our natural conditions, and that we become homeless or mentally ill as a result of "losing" our homes or our minds. The opposite is the case. We are born without a home and without reason, and have to exert ourselves and are fortunate if we succeed in building a secure home and a sound mind. ~ Thomas Szasz

There is a source within us that always works to bring things into the light. ~ John A. Sanford

A healthy society begins with healthy individuals. ~ Sabina Nore

As the result of some observations I have made in recent years, I propose to add two new and previously undescribed varieties to the various forms of insanity with fixed ideas, whose underlying phenomenology is essentially phobic. The two new terms I would like to put forth, following the nomenclature currently accepted by leading clinicians, are dysmorphophobia and taphephobia.

The first condition consists of the sudden appearance and fixation in the consciousness of the idea of one's own deformity; the individual fears that he has become deformed (dysmorphos) or might become deformed, and experiences at this thought a feeling of an inexpressible disaster… The ideas of being ugly are not, in themselves, morbid; in fact, they occur to many people in perfect mental health, awakening however only the emotions normally felt when this possibility is contemplated.

But, when one of these ideas occupies someone's attention repeatedly on the same day, and aggressively and persistently returns to monopolise his attention, refusing to remit by any conscious effort; and when in particular the emotion accompanying it becomes one of fear, distress, anxiety, and anguish, compelling the individual to modify his behaviour and to act in a pre-determined and fixed way, then the psychological phenomena has gone beyond the bounds of normal, and may validly be considered to have entered the realm of psychopathology.

The dysmorphophobic, indeed, is a veritably unh ~ Enrico Agostino Morselli

You have to make peace with food. You have to learn, and program your brain to understand: your body needs food. ~ Callie Bowld

You see, people are everywhere. They are everything. No matter who we are, or what we do, people are involved in our lives. If those people are poisonous, our lives will be poisonous also. ~ S.R. Crawford

Breathe. Relax. This too shall pass. ~ Lee Horbachewski

The medication given during mental-ill health makes you rather weaker in body, in soul and in spirit. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita