Mental Health Stigma Quotes

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

Some people don't understand depression. Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small stone or pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. ~ Fuad Alakbarov

Stigmas speak to the idea of difference and how difference shames us and those we know. ~ Michael Lewis

Mental imbalance is about as acceptable as herpes. It's never going to be accepted. But really, it's a disease just like cancer. It just happens, and eats away all the good parts of your brain, like judgment and happiness and perception and memory and life. And you can die from depression just like any other disease. And it's not as if people choose it. So why is it still a joke of medicine? "She died of cancer." is a lot more socially acceptable to people than "She committed suicide. ~ Sarahbeth Purcell

My story is not a sad story; it's a real one. It's a story about a girl who fought through a storm she thought would never end. ~ Hannah Blum

No one would ever say that someone with a broken arm or a broken leg is less than a whole person, but people say that or imply that all the time about people with mental illness. ~ Elyn R. Saks

It's an unfortunate word, 'depression', because the illness has nothing to do with feeling sad, sadness is on the human palette. Depression is a whole other beast. It's when your old personality has left town and been replaced by a block of cement with black tar oozing through your veins and mind. This is when you can't decide whether to get a manicure or jump off a cliff. It's all the same. When I was institutionalised I sat on a chair unable to move for three months, frozen in fear. To take a shower was inconceivable. What made it tolerable was while I was inside, I found my tribe - my people. They understood and unlike those who don't suffer, never get bored of you asking if it will ever go away? They can talk medication all hours, day and night; heaven to my ears. ~ Ruby Wax

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

self-stigma is not a person's fault; nor is it a part of the person's illness!
If the public did not hold negative and stigmatizing attitudes in the first place, these would never have become internalized, causing people the painful and disabling experience of self-stigma. ~ Patrick W. Corrigan

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.

Been under treatment for PTSD and bipolar since 1992. I'm not ashamed of my illness. I've been shunned by many and I feel for those shunned, too. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

we are adaptive rather than disordered ~ Bonnie Badenoch

Sometimes the people around you won't understand your journey. They don't need to, it's not for them. ~ Joubert Botha

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

This disease comes with a package: shame. When any other part of your body gets sick, you get sympathy. ~ Ruby Wax

No one would ever tell a cancer patient to 'just get over it.' Why people think they can tell those with a mental illness as much is baffling. ~ Sara Ella

There is a moral imperative to seeing mental health through the same lens we use for other pathologies or illnesses. Being sad or overwhelmed is normal, much as being short of breath after a run is normal. Both become abnormal when they happen with no apparent cause and are hard to stop. Those situations need medical attention. ~ Matthew Goldfinger

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. ~ Yassin Hall

It's vitally important that mental health care services are considered a basic human right."
-Shenita Etwaroo ~ Shenita Etwaroo

In my view, the spurning of DID is highly connected with knowing and not knowing about child sexual abuse. Side by side with denial of childhood trauma and of severe dissociation, is an unmistakable cognizance of dissociative processes as they are embedded in our language. We regularly say things such as, "pull yourself together", "he is coming unglued", "she was beside herself", "don't fall apart", "he's not all there", "she was shattered", and so on. ~ Elizabeth Howell

In reviewing his own moral career, the stigmatized individual may single out and retrospectively elaborate experiences which serve for him to account for his coming to the beliefs and practices that he now has regarding his own kind and normals. ~ Erving Goffman

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 had people saying 'it's all in your head'. Do you honestly think I want to feel this way? ~ Sonia Estrada

They thought I was stubborn. In the strict sense of the word there is no such thing as a stubborn insane person...When one possessed of the power of recognizing his own errors continues to hold an unreasonable belief-that is stubbornness. But for a man bereft of reason to adhere to an idea which to him seems absolutely correct and true because he has been deprived of the means of detecting his error- that is not stubbornness. It is a symptom of his disease, and merits the indulgence of forbearance, if not genuine sympathy. ~ Clifford Whittingham Beers

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

Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all. ~ Bill Clinton

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 ~ Heather Stuart

Somehow the disorder hooks into all kinds of fears and insecurities in many clinicians. The flamboyance of the multiple, her intelligence and ability to conceptualize the disorder, coupled with suicidal impulses of various orders of seriousness, all seem to mask for many therapists the underlying pain, dependency, and need that are very much part of the process. In many ways, a professional dealing with a multiple in crisis is in the same position as a parent dealing with a two-year-old or with an adolescent's acting-out behavior. (236) ~ Lynn I. Wilson

I hated these visits, because I kept feeling the visitors measuring my fat and stringy hair against what I had been and what they wanted me to be, and I knew they went away utterly confounded. ~ Sylvia Plath

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. ~ Lee Ann Hoff

And sometimes it's as simple as changing your environment. ~ Kierra C.T. Banks

To resist a compulsion with willpower alone is to hold back an avalanche by melting the snow with a candle. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. ~ David Adam

It's exhausting to fight a war inside your head every single day. Mental health issues are people's everyday lives. And, as a society, we need to accept that. ~ Fuad Alakbarov

Self-stigma refers to the state in which a person with mental illness has come to internalize the negative attitudes about mental illness and turns them against him- or herself. ~ Patrick W. Corrigan

The stigma of mental illness is first and foremost a social justice issue! ~ Patrick W. Corrigan

Holding one's self responsible is a critical feature in stigma and in the generation of shame since violation of standards, rules, and goals are insufficient in its elicitation unless responsibility can be placed on the self. Stigma may differ from other elicitors of shame and guilt, in part because it is a social appearance factor. The degree to which the stigma is socially apparent is the degree to which one must negotiate the issue of blame, not only for one's self but between one's self and the other who is witness to the stigma. Stigmatization is a much more powerful elicitor of shame and guilt in that it requires a negotiation not only between one's self and one's attributions, but between one's self and the attributions of others. ~ Michael Lewis

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

Anxiety is the monster that resides within. ~ Karon Waddell

In talking with people that have experienced it, I learned that PTSD is something that a person in a position of authority sometimes thinks they're not supposed to have. They don't always have an avenue to personally address it or even discuss it. ~ Stana Katic

Although enlightened people know that an extreme phobia wasn't a form of madness, hey could not help but regard it as odd. ~ Dean Koontz

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

Even though I know that breaking your brain is the same as breaking your arm, I'm still ashamed that my brain is broken. ~ A.S. King

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.

Beautiful things have been broken before… ~ S.R. Crawford

Sometimes I am high; sometimes I am low, but I love myself even when I hate myself. ~ Hannah Blum

It's so common, it could be anyone. The trouble is, nobody wants to talk about it. And that makes everything worse. ~ Ruby Wax

DID survivors are failed twice: once at the initial point of their abuse/trauma and again when the system fails to acknowledge their needs, even doubting their diagnosis if they have been fortunate enough to obtain one. This cannot be right in the twenty-first century. ~ Joan Coleman

The drug I take is called schizophrenia, among other labels, which I desperately want to put away. I want to put the drug of schizophrenia down, and I want to put down the stigma surrounding its label. ~ Jonathan Harnisch

Here I want to stress that perception of losing one's mind is based on culturally derived and socially ingrained stereotypes as to the significance of symptoms such as hearing voices, losing temporal and spatial orientation, and sensing that one is being followed, and that many of the most spectacular and convincing of these symptoms in some instances psychiatrically signify merely a temporary emotional upset in a stressful situation, however terrifying to the person at the time. Similarly, the anxiety consequent upon this perception of oneself, and the strategies devised to reduce this anxiety, are not a product of abnormal psychology, but would be exhibited by any person socialized into our culture who came to conceive of himself as someone losing his mind. ~ Erving Goffman

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

Stigma against mental illness is a scourge with many faces, and the medical community wears a number of those faces. ~ Elyn R. Saks

The stigmatized individual is asked to act so as to imply neither that his burden is heavy nor that bearing it has made him different from us; at the same time he must keep himself at that remove from us which assures our painlessly being able to confirm this belief about him. Put differently, he is advised to reciprocate naturally with an acceptance of himself and us, an acceptance of him that we have not quite extended to him in the first place. A PHANTOM ACCEPTANCE is thus allowed to provide the base for a PHANTOM NORMALCY. ~ Erving Goffman

Julian had heard stories-whispers really-of other Shadowhunter children who thought or felt differently. Who had trouble focusing. Who claimed letters rearranged themselves on the page when they tried to read them. Who fell prey to dark sadnesses that seemed to have no reason, or fits of energy they couldn't control.
Whispers were all there were, though, because the Clave hated to admit that Nephilim like that existed. They were disappeared into the 'dregs' portion of the Academy, trained to stay out of the way of other Shadowhunters. Sent to the far corners of the globe like shameful secrets to be hidden. There were no words to describe Shadowhunters whose minds were shaped differently, no real words to describe differences at all.
Because if there were words, Julian thought, there would have to be acknowledgement. And there were things the Clave refused to acknowledge. ~ Cassandra Clare

When you go into the psych ward, you can't have anything with you except colored pencils. You can't have any electronics. If you have a drawstring on your pants, a belt, shoelaces, a hood, or extra-long fabric, your very clothes are ripped off your back. They search you with a metal detector like you're a criminal, doing everything short of putting their hand up your butt. Before you go through those cold, automatic, barred doors, you know your life is not your own. This is especially true during the first week, while you stare at florescent lighting and wait impatiently for your meds to kick in. I wish I had remembered the psych ward prison cell a week ago. If I had, maybe I wouldn't be wearing this hospital gown that they gave me until I can get more compliant clothes. ~ Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

At the base of whatever form of mood swing are individual experiences, the gradual or complete focus on issues that we have no control over. These are issues or circumstances that naturally trigger worry. ~ Precious Avwunuma Emodamori

... even now, in the twenty-first century, mental health is still steeped in a lethal taboo which locks sick people up in themselves and leads to tragedy. ~ Chris Packham

If I had known his favorite game was mental twister, I would have suggested a movie over game night. ~ Alfa Holden

The writer's life is frightful. I have experienced deep dispair, mental ill and attempt of suicide. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

ME/CFS has a greater negative impact on functional status and well-being than other chronic diseases, e.g., cancer or lung diseases[8], and is associated with a drastic decrement in physical functioning[9]. In a comparison study[10] ME/CFS patients scored significantly lower than patients with hypertension, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and multiple sclerosis (MS), on all of the eight Short Form Health Survey (SF-36)[11] subscales. As compared to patients with depression, ME/CFS patients scored significantly lower on all the scales, except for scales measuring mental health and role disability due to emotional problems, on which they scored significantly higher. ~ Frank Twisk

It got to the point where it became logical: if a woman was fiercely intelligent, outspoken and passionate, I'd look towards her arms for the scars. They were almost always there. ~ Sabrina Chapadjiev

Charlie tried to focus on what she was saying, but his head felt packed with gauze. Like no one could reach him in here, where it hurt. ~ Garth Risk Hallberg

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

Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a 'sound mind in a sound body'. ~ Jostein Gaarder

Reducing social services and replacing them with punitive social control mechanisms works less well and is more expensive. The cost of housing people and providing then with mental health services is actually lower than cycling them through emergency rooms, homeless shelters, and jails, as numerous studies have shown. ~ Alex S. Vitale

Keedwell cites a study of depression in the Netherlands that found that most people coped better with adversity after experiencing depression. ~ Jan Wong

Thanks to President Obama, I am able to get medical treatment in the USA for the long term effects of very high altitude sickness and unnatural electromagnetic radiation exposures. ~ Steven Magee

Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs ~ M. Scott Peck

Because now people use the phrase OCD to describe minor personality quirks. "Oooh, I like my pens in a line, I'm so OCD."
NO YOU'RE FUCKING NOT.
"Oh my God, I was so nervous about that presentation, I literally had a panic attack."
NO YOU FUCKING DIDN'T.
"I'm so hormonal today. I just feel totally bipolar."
SHUT UP, YOU IGNORANT BUMFACE. ~ Holly Bourne

You know, having a panic attack feels like you're
collapsing, like your organs are rebelling against
you, and that you'd throw them up. It's like
you're on a swing ride in an amusement park. At
first, you're there waiting for things to happen,
and for gravity to mess up with you. After a while
of waiting, it starts working, and slowly you're
reaching a frightening height. And it's not like you
have phobia, but you certainly feel things as your
chest starts tightening, you think it'd explode.
Then, it's swinging and you just want to scream
or jump or whatever, but you can't do that.
You're tied and scared and there is no way you'd
reach a solid ground. ~ Nesrine BENAHMED

I'm by no means condemning prescription medicine for mental health. I've seen it save a lot of people's lives. ~ Zach Braff

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

Social-enterprise employees earn wages and pay taxes, reducing their recidivism rates and dependence on government assistance. They also receive crucial on-the-job training, job-readiness skills, literacy instruction and, if necessary, the counseling and mental-health services they need to move into the mainstream workforce. ~ George R. Roberts

Loneliness doesn't come from missing someone it comes from being disconnected with yourself. ~ Renae A. Sauter

Dentists encourage us to use dental floss daily to promote the health of our teeth; we need to use mental floss to get rid of old thinking and promote the health of our leadership. ~ John C. Maxwell

Telling my story was supposed to be a good thing but it had just made everything worse. ~ Sara Novic

Meditation increases your vitality and strengthens your intelligence ... your mental clarity and health improve. You acquire the patience and fortitude to face any problem in life. So, meditate! Only through meditation will you find the treasure you are seeking. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

No food will ever hurt you as much as an unhealthy mind. ~ Brittany Burgunder

We all talk to ourselves. Those we call mad just talk a little louder. ~ Marty Rubin

There are scars on my heart, just as thick, as disfiguring as those on my face. I know they're there. I hope some undamaged tissue remains, a patch through which love can come in and flow out. I hope. ~ Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Everyone who is alive can find something to be grateful for if they look for it. If you are among the few that can't find anything, start with the fact that you are ALIVE and continue from there. Counting ones blessings is a barometer of mental health. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

Have you ever suddenly realized it's someone else's mood swing and you're just along for the ride? ~ Alex Bosworth

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

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

Nobody can make a putt that breaks to the right. It's unnatural. Unless you're left-handed, of course. Standing over a putt that breaks to the right can actually make you dizzy. I've long thought that right-breaking putts are a major contributor to mental and physical ill health. ~ Dan Jenkins

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

These men had good cause to pursue nuptials; if there's one pattern that psychological studies have established, it's that the institution of marriage has an overwhelmingly salutary effect on men's mental health. "Being married," the prominent government demographer Paul Glick once estimated, "is about twice as advantageous to men as to women in terms of continued survival. ~ Susan Faludi

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

I'm not crazy, I was abused.
I'm not shy, I'm protecting myself.
I'm not bitter, I'm speaking the truth.
I'm not hanging onto the past, I've been damaged. I'm not delusional, I lived a nightmare.
I'm not weak, I was trusting.
I'm not giving up, I'm healing.
I'm not incapable of love, I'm giving.
I'm not alone. I see you all here.
I'm fighting this. ~ Rene Smith

no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine -- not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their lives on that business. But above all that thought was kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful [...] Their usefulness did not depend on making the patient swallow substances for the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible because they were given in small doses) but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and those who loved her -- and that is why there are, and always will be, pseudo-healers, wise women, homoeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that something should be done, which is felt by those who are suffering. ~ Leo Tolstoy

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

Well, I totally understand why people take huge drugs. Like heroin, or cocaine. I can understand why you would want to be literally out of your own head, because being in your own head is unbearable. In fact, the reason I haven't taken drugs like that is because I know that it would be so good to be out of my own head that I wouldn't be able to stop ~ Alyssa Brugman

But that is what these people do - the Steves of this world - they all try and make something out of nothing. and they all do it for themselves. ~ Nathan Filer

Stop searching for wizards
and wands. Don't buy into
the belief that you don't
have the brains, heart, and
courage to make it. Link
arms with your fellow travelers
and never let go. Hold
each other up so that you
can see your own magic. ~ Kristen Lee

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher. His writing included critiques of religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive style and displaying a fondness for aphorism. Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism and postmodernism. Nietzsche began his career as a philologist before turning to philosophy. At the age of 24 he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems, which would plague him for most of his life. In 1889 he exhibited symptoms of a serious mental illness, living out his remaining years in the care of his mother and sister until his death in 1900. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Collectively, our mental health relies heavily on supporting one another, but sometimes that's not enough. On a basic level, I think therapy is a slightly more structured way of getting what we probably all need when we are struggling, which is to talk and to be heard. ~ Ruby Elliot

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

Don't be afraid of emptiness. Emptiness is divine. Let the divine fill up the space in a way that is truly right for you. Trying to fill it up too soon blocks your gifts. ~ Renae A. Sauter

My heart is sinking and my chest physically aches from the heavy sadness that it carries within. ~ Shannon Perry

A desire to be in charge of our own lives, a need for control, is born in each of us. It is essential to our mental health, and our success, that we take control. ~ Robert Foster Bennett

If you know of someone who is homeless; or by chance you are homeless yourself; you are not alone. ~ Asa Don Brown