Quotessence
Home / Topics / Mental Health Quotes

Mental Health Quotes

Browse 2417 quotes about Mental Health.

Related topics

PeopleMental IllnessIfsThinkingIllnessProblemHelpingNeedsMindDepressionCareHumansKnowsWayWantWorldChildrenPersonsBipolarInspirationalRealityShouldDifferentFeelsGivingIdeasImportantIssuesAttitudeCrazyHealth ProblemsLifeSuicideWellsBelieveBrainCommunityCountryHappinessHas BeensHealth CareLongMeanMenMotivationalReasonSelfStigmaTryingWritingDoeDrugI CanMadeTreatmentBigsEventsFactsHealth IssuesKnowingLooksMadnessMayMentally IllPhysical HealthPrisonPsychiatristSaidShowsTherapyWhole

Mental Health Quotes

“Infant (hope)—trust versus mistrust Toddler (will)—autonomy versus shame Preschooler (purpose)—initiative versus guilt School-age child (competence)—industry versus inferiority Adolescent (fidelity)—identity versus role confusion Young adult (love)—intimacy versus isolation Middle-aged adult (care)—generativity versus stagnation Older adult (wisdom)—integrity versus despair”

HealingPsychologyMindfulnessMental HealthTherapyWellbeing
Book:Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
Create image

“Some people hope that therapy will help them find a way to be heard by whoever they feel wronged them, at which point those lovers or relatives will see the light and become the people they’d wished for all along. But it rarely happens like that. At some point, being a fulfilled adult means taking responsibility for the course of your own life and accepting the fact that now you’re in charge of your choices.”

HealingPsychologyMindfulnessMental HealthTherapyWellbeing
Book:Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
Create image

“The nurses gave us meds to alleviate our tingling skins. And more meds to soothe our burning brains. We were body searched twice weekly for any sharp objects, and sat in groups together purging ourselves, theoretically, of anger and self-hatred. We learned not to turn on ourselves. We learned to blame. After a month of good behaviour, we earned silky baths and massages. We were taught the goodness of touch.”

HealingMental HealthMental IllnessTherapy
Book:Sharp Objects
Create image

“Forgiveness, for me, is a long road that tickles the humane aspect of life. It lets me understand that people make mistakes and that we have a capacity to hurt others. A person may not think of your wellness at all times. Selfishness drives vested interest. This is why you have to forgive others and set yourself free. Fortunately, you can control the amount of forgiveness you give off.”

HealingForgivenessMental HealthSelf Help BookSelfishness Quotes
Book:True Stories of Forgiveness
Create image

“I often wonder how many others are sitting near me, stuck in their own quiet battles with physical or mental or spiritual health, afraid or unwilling or even unable to discuss them, silently pleading for someone to extend any added amount of grace.”

HealingAnxietyMental HealthMental Health QuotesHealing QuotesAnxiety QuotesAnxiety And Depression
Book:How the Light Comes In: A memoir of hope and healing on the path with anxiety.
Create image

“Of course, being crazy can instead be a stubborn expression of self-destructive willfulness. There appear to be many people who choose to go crazy (or become alcoholics, addicts, criminals, suicides) rather than have to bear the pain and ambiguity of a life situation that they have decided that they cannot stand. With such patients, I try to make clear that I cannot prevent their going mad, but that I will not follow their madcap course from home to hospital and back. They may have any crazy feelings and ideas they wish, but in their community they have to act as if they were sane, if they want me to accompany them on their pilgrimage. The irresponsible act of going crazy, in order not to have to face up to the mess they have created in their own lives, is not one to which I wish to be an accomplice.”

ResponsibilitySocietyMental HealthMeaningFitting In
Book:If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients
Create image

“Try yoga! Think about the good stuff! Keep yourself engaged! It’s all in your mind! Duh! It is! But is more of a chemical imbalance! I don’t know why people don’t take mental ailments as normal. People are accepting of AIDS, cancer, tuberculosis, etc. But mental ailments? They are just all in the mind!”

HumansSocietyDepressionMental HealthMental IllnessCynicalMental Health AwarenessMental Health Stigma
Book:The World's Most Frustrated Man
Create image

“My job didn't involve working directly with patients, but I thought about them a lot. I saw them as victims of our fucked-up, materialistic, impersonal, hectic, over-mechanized, dehumanizing society. There wasn't much mystery about why these people were so screwed up. The mystery was why everyone else wasn't nuts too. But somehow I never figured it could ever happen to me, that I could some day be shuffling around in slippers and pajamas, bumming cigarettes and mumbling to myself. There were too many people who loved me, who would never commit me to an institution, whose love would keep me from getting that spaced out.”

SocietyInstitutionsMental HealthInsanity
Book:The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
Create image

“You can't grow without exploration. Seeing the world is what I need to become a better artist. Maybe... maybe I can make something of my art, of myself. I'm scared to dream big." "If you dream small, you'll never even touch the ceiling." I give him a soft small. "But if you dream big you might be lucky enough to touch the sky." He takes my hand, crossing our fingers together. "Let's take over the world then." "World domination isn't really my thing." I fight a growing smile.”

RomanceHigh SchoolMental HealthNew Adult
Book:Sweet Dandelion
Create image

“You're different, that's all. And I know it feels like it's you, but it's really not. You're a special person and you deserve happiness. Just because you don't fit in with all the other millionaires' offspring doesn't make you the problem. It's another world out there and it will suit you better.”

RomanceFictionFeminismHigh SchoolMental HealthYoung AdultContemporaryComing Of AgeRealistic Fiction
Book:The Manifesto on How to Be Interesting
Create image

“There were also times when they didn't kiss and roam nonstop. The in-between times. That's when they just held each other and whispered. Marnie, of course, heard it all. Adam would try to make Robyn laugh, and she would, whether it was funny or not. She would tease him and he would tell her what it was like before. And they talked about what it would be like after. It was as if they were two normal kids in love, sitting on a sofa in a warm living room, telling each other almost everything and sorting out the world with someone's mom puttering annoyingly in the background. Except, of course, they weren't two normal kids. Would never be.”

LoveRomanceMental HealthMental IllnessTeenage Love
Book:The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B
Create image

“I like living in my head because in there, everyone is kind and innocent. Once you start integrating yourself into the world, you realize that people are nasty, mean creatures. They're worse than zombies. People try to crush your soul and destroy your happiness, but zombies just want to have a little nibble of your brain.”

PeopleWorldHumansKindMeanRealityHappinessHumanityBrainKindnessCrazyHuman NatureCreaturesLivingHumanMental HealthHappyMental IllnessInnocentRealizationInnocenceLiveNastyIntegrationApocalypseZombieYourselfLiving LifeZombiesIntegratingLikeCrazinessApocalypticMean PeopleHeadRealizeZombie ApocalypsePost ApocalypticBrainsNibblingNasty PeopleZompocNibbleLittle Nibble
Book:Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution
Create image

“Philip: I have vivid memories from those early volleyball training nights. Memories of looking under the (volleyball) net at this vivacious, sparkling, smiley-faced, bright-eyed vision of female sensuality dressed in her vest top and short shorts. I could not take my eyes off her, and my memory says she smiled at me every time she caught me looking at her. Was I flirting? If I was, it was not knowingly”

RomanceHumourMental HealthMemoirTrue Story
Author:Philip Elliott
Create image

“The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem. Feminist movement offered to men and women the information needed to challenge this psychic slaughter, but the challenge never became a widespread aspect of the struggle for gender equality. Women demanded of men that they give more emotionally, but most men really could not understand what was being asked of them. Having cut away the parts of themselves that could feel a wide rage of emotional response, they were too disconnected. They simply could not give more emotionally or even grasp the problem without first reconnecting, reuniting the severed parts.”

FeminismMental HealthPatriarchyMens Mental Health
Author:bell hooks;
Create image

“It's difficult not to read Vivien(ne) as this pathetic spectacle of illness and dependence. The ultimate grotesque of femininity, like Freud's hysteric/housewife (both Dora and her mother). But channeling her, imagining an interior life, I can sense her early inner spirit and see it squelched and doomed into sickness and submission. Under different circumstances and with more strength and less of a mother who crafted her as an invalid from childhood., she could have been an author. Maybe.”

FeminismMental HealthMental IllnessWomen Writers
Book:Heroines
Create image

“We must be clear that people's bodies are not the cause of our social maladies. [...] Our disconnection, trauma, lack of resources, lack of compassion, fear, greed, and ego are the sources of our contributions to human suffering not our bodies. We can accept humans and their bodies without understanding "why" they love, think, move, or look the way they do. Contrary to common opinion, freeing ourselves from the need to understand everything can bring about a tremendous amount of peace.”

RacePsychologyFeminismSelf HelpSocial JusticeMental HealthNonfictionQueer
Book:The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
Create image

“Natural intelligence does not require we do anything to achieve it. Natural intelligence imbues us with all we need at this exact moment to manifest the highest form of ourselves, and we don't have to figure out how to get it. We arrived on this planet with this source material already present. I am by no means implying that the work you may have done up to this point has been useless. To the contrary, I applaud whatever labor you have undertaken that has gotten you this far. Survival is damn hard. Each of us has traversed a gauntlet of traumas, shames, and fears to be where we are today, wherever that is. Each day we wake to a planet full of social, political, and economic obstructions that siphon our energy and diminish our sense of self. Consequently, tapping into this natural intelligence often feels nearly impossible. Humans unfortunately make being human exceptionally hard for each other, but I assure you, the work we have done or will do is not about acquiring some way of being that we currently lack. The work is to crumble the barriers of injustice and shame leveled against us so that we might access what we have always been, because we will, if unobstructed, inevitably grow into the purpose for which we were created.”

RacePsychologyFeminismSelf HelpSocial JusticeMental HealthNonfictionQueer
Book:The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
Create image

“From the beginning, our relationship was formula for disaster. Depressed people often attract unhealthy relationships and inadvertently subject themselves and their already battered self-image, to additional abuse… You feel as if you are worthless so you attach yourself to someone who you think will give your life some meaning, be a safe harbor for your souls. But only you can protect what’s inside.”

RacePsychologyFeminismMental HealthMemoirNonfictionRace And Racism In America
Book:Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
Create image

“White women who suffer from mental illness are depicted as idle, spoiled, or just plain hysterical. Black men are demonized and pathologized. Black women with psychological problems are certainly not seen as geniuses; we are generally not labeled ‘hysterical’ or ‘eccentric’ or even ‘pathological’. When a black woman suffers from a mental disorder, the overwhelming opinion is that she is weak. And weakness in black women is intolerable.”

RacePsychologyFeminismMental HealthMemoirNonfictionRace And Racism In America
Book:Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
Create image

“I’ve frequently been told things like: “Girl, you’ve been hanging out with too many white folk” ; “What do you have to be depressed about? If our people could make it through slavery, we can make it through anything” ; “Take your troubles to Jesus, not no damn psychiatrist.”

RacePsychologyFeminismMental HealthMemoirNonfictionRace And Racism In America
Book:Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
Create image

“The illusion of strength has been and continues to be of major significance to me as a black woman. The one myth that I have had to endure my entire life is that of my supposed birthright to strength. Black women are supposed to be strong – caretakers, nurtures, healers of other people – any of the twelve dozen variations of Mammy. Emotional hardship is supposed to be built into the structure of our lives. It went along with the territory of being both black and female in a society that completely undervalues the lives of black people and regards all women as second-class citizens. It seemed that suffering, for a black woman, was part of the package. Or so I thought.”

RacePsychologyFeminismMental HealthMemoirNonfictionRace And Racism In America
Book:Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
Create image

“I came to two conclusions. One, being a woman, in this world, ultimately makes you crazy. And, two, you're more likely to be labeled crazy anyway if you're female." I pulled out some sheets from the World Health Organization. "Look, these guys are in charge of the health of the entire WORLD. And they're basically saying gender is the cause of loads of mental health problems. People don't wake up one day and think, Oooh, I think I'll go completely gaga. It's usually a case of spiraling circumstances. And, if you're a woman, think about it, we have a shitload of spiraling circumstances. We're paid less, we're told we have to beautiful, and thin, but we're also told to eat chocolate all the time otherwise we're not 'fun', and we're constantly being objectified and told to calm down when we care about something...Isn't all this likely to make us a little mental? Isn't being subjected to daily inequality going to be a spiraling circumstance?”

FeminismMental HealthGenderDiscriminationMental IllnessSexismPatriarchy
Book:Am I Normal Yet?
Create image

“The DSM-IV-TR is a 943-page textbook published by the American Psychiatric Association that sells for $99...There are currently 374 mental disorders. I bought the book...and leafed through it...I closed the manual. "I wonder if I've got any of the 374 mental disorders," I thought. I opened the manual again. And instantly diagnosed myself with twelve different ones.”

PsychologyMental HealthMental Disorders
Book:The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
Create image