Best Mental Illness Stigma Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“If you have a mental illness, people don't trust you. And if you take drugs to fix the illness, they trust you even less.”

Trust Mental Illness Stigma

Book:Headcase

Source: Headcase

“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.”

Emotion Depression Emotions Memoir Mental Illness Depressed Mental Illness Stigma

Book:The Emotional Gift: Memoir of a Highly Sensitive Person Who Overcame Depression

Source: The Emotional Gift: Memoir of a Highly Sensitive Person Who Overcame Depression

“Only those who have been on the receiving end of poverty, unemployment, homelessess, mental illness, domestic violence, racism, sexism or ageism can fully identify with others' reactions to those distressing experiences. Only those who have been members of marginalised minority can fully appreciate how that feels. [p50]”

Poverty Perspective Racism Adversity Sexism Ageism Mental Illness Stigma Empathy Diversity Marginalised Groups

Book:The Kindness Revolution: How we can restore hope, rebuild trust and inspire optimism

Source: The Kindness Revolution: How we can restore hope, rebuild trust and inspire optimism

“I keep moving ahead, as always, knowing deep down inside that I am a good person and that I am worthy of a good life.”

Depression Optimism Mental Health Mental Illness Recovery Optimistic Optimist Ptsd Mental Health Quotes Depression Quotes Schizophrenia Optimism Quotes Mental Health Stigma Depression Recovery Optimistic Quotes Fighting Mad Mental Illness Stigma Ptsd Quotes

Author:Jonathan Harnisch

“People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can’t answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It’s easy. And it is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.… …In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended. What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay at rest; and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction. Time, too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks; faces, flowers. These are facts you find out later, though. Another odd feature of the parallel universe is that although it is invisible from this side, once you are in it you can easily see the world you came from. Sometimes the world you came from looks huge and menacing, quivering like a vast pile of jelly; at other times it is miniaturized and alluring, a-spin and shining in its orbit. Either way, it can’t be discounted. Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.”

Empathy Stigma Mental Illness Stigma All Human Experience Is Valid Ethos Material Bich

Book:Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“You can’t be beaten by something you laugh at.”

Source: Freak

“Like a lot of people with mental illness, I spend a lot of time fronting. It’s really important to me to not appear crazy, to fit in, to seem normal, to do the things “normal people” do, to blend in. As a defense mechanism, fronting makes a lot of sense, and you hone that mechanism after years of being crazy. Fronting is what allows you to hold down a job and maintain relationships with people, it’s the thing that sometimes keeps you from falling apart. It’s the thing that allows you to have a burst of tears in the shower or behind the front seat of your car and then coolly collect yourself and stroll into a social engagement… We are rewarded for hiding ourselves. We become the poster children for “productive” mentally ill people, because we are so organized and together. The fact that we can function, at great cost to ourselves, is used to beat up the people who cannot function. Because unlike the people who cannot front, or who fronted too hard and fell off the cliff, we are able to “keep it together,” whatever it takes.”

Crazy Mental Illness Stigma Emotional Pain Fitting In Defense Mechanism Hiding Feelings Mental Illness Stigma Psychological Defense Faking Normal Pretending To Be Ok Faking Well Putting On A Brave Face Keeping It Together

Author:S.E. Smith

“Given that recent research has demonstrated the complex psychopathology of DID, equating the disorder with one specific but broadly denned behavior (multiple identity enactment) is clearly unwarranted. The latter should be conceptualized as one observable behavior that may or may not be related to a feature of the disorder (identity alteration). As an analogy, equating major depressive disorder with "acting sad" would be similarly unwarranted because the former is a complex depressive disorder characterized by a clear group of depressive symptoms, whereas the latter is one specific behavior that may or may not be related to one of the symptoms of the disorder (sad affect). One could also easily generate a list of factors that affect whether one acts sad that would have little relevance to the complex psychopathology of depressive disorders.”

Dissociative Identity Disorder Multiplicity Multiple Personalities Dissociative Disorder Mental Illness Stigma Minimization

Author:David H. Gleaves

“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.”

Mental Illness Ptsd Survivors Disclosure Discredit Mental Health Stigma Survivors Of Abuse Abuse Survivor Mental Disorders Mental Illness Stigma Psychiatric Disorders Disclosing

Book:Violence and Abuse Issues: Cross-Cultural Perspectives for Health and Social Services

Source: Violence and Abuse Issues: Cross-Cultural Perspectives for Health and Social Services

“The history of hysteria is a history of the relation between the colonizing father and the colonized devalued other.”

Sexism Sexual Abuse Hysteria Biased Hysterical Discredit Mental Health Stigma Devalue Mental Illness Stigma Mental Health Bias Melodramatic Stigmatized Dehumanize Colonized Devalued Perjorative

Book:Sexual Abuse Recalled: Treating Trauma in the Era of the Recovered Memory Debate

Source: Sexual Abuse Recalled: Treating Trauma in the Era of the Recovered Memory Debate

“Disclosures of childhood sexual abuse have frequently been discredited through the diagnosis of hysteria. In this view, women/female children were seen either as culpable seducers who were not really damaged by the sex abuse or as dramatic fantasizers projecting their own incestuous wishes onto the father. I will argue that this view pervades the false-memory movement and can be found, for example, in Gardner's work (1992).”

Source: Sexual Abuse Recalled: Treating Trauma in the Era of the Recovered Memory Debate

“Although, in principle, the psychoanalytical theory of borderlines is not punitive, in practice 'borderline' is almost always used to indicate that the patient is hostile, demanding, unpleasant, manipulative, attention-seeking, and prone to regression and dependency if admitted to hospital; in other words patient is a witch by Malleus Maleficarum criteria. The term 'borderline' functions to rationalize sadistic counter-transference, and to legitimize rejecting triaging decisions within the health-care system. Actually, most of the time, in my experience, the splitting is coming from the staff, not the patient, and it is the mental-health professionals who are using projection and denial. This is an example of 'blaming the victim,' which is a fundamental borderline psychodynamic.”

Denial Bias Projection Splitting Mental Health Stigma Borderline Personality Disorder Victim Blaming Mental Illness Stigma Personality Disorder Mental Illness Discrimination Psychological Defence Blame The Victim

Book:Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principles of Treatment

Source: Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principles of Treatment

“In this sense, Hitler´s painting supports [Hannah] Arendt´s theory of National Socialism--that it was defined by its banality and lack of empathy. The Nazis relied on the ability of people not to imagine themselves in someone else´s shoes. The lack of a connection was very much the point.”

Hitler S Germany Mental Illness Stigma Mental Illness Discrimination

Book:The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Modernism, and Hitler's War on Art

Source: The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Modernism, and Hitler's War on Art

“Although there are more than six million documents on the Internet addressing the issue of ritual abuse, few take as fair and comprehensive approach as this; many of the writings deny the existence of ritual abuse despite masses of evidence to the contrary. As a consequence, some victims are persistently re-abused psychologically by having to deal with the fact that organised abusers, their defenders and even police refute their realities and dismiss their reports as fantasy or mental illness. - Ritual Abuse & Torture in Australia (introduction)”

Reality Ritual Abuse Society Denial Satanic Ritual Abuse Psychological Abuse Mental Illness Stigma Organized Abuse Organised Abuse Abuse Deniers Child Abuse Deniers Invalidation Dismiss Abuse Denial Refute Dismissive Dismissively Ritualized Abuse

Author:Freda Briggs

“It’s hard to imagine a more squarely on-the-nose example of demonizing mental illness than portraying a mentally ill man as a literal demon.”

Mental Illness Dissociative Identity Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder Multiple Personalities Mental Health Stigma Mental Illness Stigma Split Stigmatization Stigmatized Demonization Split Personalities Demonized

Author:Charles Bramesco

“I attempted to be clear and straightforward in my approach to Dr Tate, deferring to his medical expertise and stating my desire merely to be helpful. Renee and Joan Frances, in turn, were clear and straightforward about their needs in a way that was new for them. Yet we were seen as manipulative multiple and puppet therapist. Renee had probably never been less manipulative in her life than when she was trying to reason with Dr. Tate.”

Mental Illness Dissociative Identity Disorder Psychiatrist Manipulative Mental Illness Stigma Mental Health Bias Mental Health System Psychiatric Abuse

Book:The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

Source: The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“I cut myself up really badly with the lid of a tin can. They took me to the emergency room, but I couldn’t tell the doctor what I had done to cut myself—I didn’t have any memory of it. The ER doctor was convinced that dissociative identity disorder didn’t exist. . . . A lot of people involved in mental health tell you it doesn’t exist. Not that you don’t have it, but that it doesn’t exist.”

Mental Health Denial Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Health Stigma Dissociative Amnesia Dissociative Disorders Mental Illness Stigma Mental Health Bias Invalidation Mental Illness Discrimination

Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

Source: Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“I was shocked and terrified to hear Dr. Summer say I had what was formerly known as multiple personality disorder. Is that like Sybil? Am I like the woman in The Three Faces of Eve? My head began to spin. What do I have inside of me? Is there a crazy person in there? What am I? I felt like a freak. I was afraid to have anyone know. I have a mental illness. People make fun of people like me. Upon hearing my diagnosis, I stopped thinking of myself as smart, creative, or clever. Even though Dr. Summer had worked hard to help me understand that I had developed an amazingly adaptive survival technique, I no longer thought of it that way at all. I was overwhelmed by fear and shame. The words multiple personality disorder echoed in my mind. I thought of all the ways people with multiple personalities were ridiculed and marginalized: They're locked away in mental institutions. They are really sick. I'm not going to be the subject of people's jokes. I am a lawyer. I work at the U.S. Department of Justice. The more I thought about it, the deeper my despair grew.”

Crazy Mental Illness Ridicule Dissociative Identity Disorder Stereotypes Multiple Personality Disorder Mental Illness Stigma Mental Hospital Sybil Self Stigma

Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

Source: The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Some people, who never engaged in any research about DID, claim that there is no connection between child abuse and DID. Then they unwittingly contradict themselves by stating DID doesn’t even exist. DSM-5 concluded from the rigorous research into DID: “Interpersonal physical and sexual abuse is associated with an increased risk of dissociative identify disorder. Prevalence of childhood abuse and neglect in the United States, Canada and Europe among those with the disorder is close to 90%.”

Mental Illness Psychiatry Dissociative Identity Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder Multiple Personalities Split Personality Mental Illness Stigma Psychiatric Disorders

Author:Patrick Suraci

“Half the time you refuse to even acknowledge that I have a fucking mental illness, and the other half you try as hard as possible to make me feel like I'm the last person you ever wanted as a child!”

Charlie Mental Illness Stigma Parent And Child Family Is Very Hard

Book:This Winter

Source: This Winter

“Psychotropic drugs have also been organized according to structure (e.g., tricyclic), mechanism (e.g., monoamine, oxidase inhibitor [MAOI]), history (first generation, traditional), uniqueness (e.g., atypical), or indication (e.g., antidepressant). A further problem is that many drugs used to treat medical and neurological conditions are routinely used to treat psychiatric disorders.”

Depression Anxiety Drugs Psychiatry Medication Psychosis Mental Health Stigma Antidepressants Mental Illness Stigma Neurological Psychiatric Drugs Anti Depressants Psychotropic Anti Depressant Depressant Psychiatric Treatment

Book:Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry: Behavioral Sciences/Clinical Psychiatry

Source: Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry: Behavioral Sciences/Clinical Psychiatry

“And if we do speak out, we risk rejection and ridicule. I had a best friend once, the kind that you go shopping with and watch films with, the kind you go on holiday with and rescue when her car breaks down on the A1. Shortly after my diagnosis, I told her I had DID. I haven't seen her since. The stench and rankness of a socially unacceptable mental health disorder seems to have driven her away.”

Source: Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

“Schizo. It didn't matter how many times Dr. Gill compared it to a disease or physical disability, it wasn't the same thing. It just wasn't. I had schizophrenia. If I saw two guys on the sidewalk, one in a wheelchair and one talking talking to himself, which would I rush to open a door for, and which would I cross the road to avoid?”

Mental Illness Schizophrenia Mental Disorder Invisible Illness Mental Illness Stigma Mental Illness Discrimination

Book:The Summoning

Source: The Summoning

“A phenomenon that might seem only backwards or silly when expressed at a social level becomes madness at the individual level.”

Mental Illness Cultural Differences Mental Illness Stigma Mental Illness Discrimination

Author:Caitlín R. Kiernan

“In exchange for institutionalization, people with mental illness today have been provided with splendid autonomy. But this particular bland of autonomy comes with a price. It’s an autonomy that allows them to survive however they may: on their own if they can, in the homes of their families available to support them–if they happen to have families available to support them–or on the streets and in prisons if they don’t. In any case, the beauty of this system is that the treatment they presently receive is killing them earlier than ever, so there will be less cost to the system than ever.”

Mental Illness Mental Illness Stigma Mental Illness Discrimination

Book:Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness

Source: Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness

“In his recent guest editorial, Richard McNally voices skepticism about the National Vietnam Veteran’s Readjustment Study (NVVRS) data reporting that over one-half of those who served in the Vietnam War have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or subclinical PTSD. Dr McNally is particularly skeptical because only 15% of soldiers served in combat units (1). He writes, “the mystery behind the discrepancy in numbers of those with the disease and of those in combat remains unsolved today” (4, p 815). He talks about bizarre facts and implies many, if not most, cases of PTSD are malingered or iatrogenic. Dr McNally ignores the obvious reality that when people are deployed to a war zone, exposure to trauma is not limited to members of combat units (2,3). At the Operational Trauma and Stress Support Centre of the Canadian Forces in Ottawa, we have assessed over 100 Canadian soldiers, many of whom have never been in combat units, who have experienced a range of horrific traumas and threats in places like Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. We must inform Dr McNally that, in real world practice, even cooks and clerks are affected when faced with death, genocide, ethnic cleansing, bombs, landmines, snipers, and suicide bombers ... One theory suggests that there is a conscious decision on the part of some individuals to deny trauma and its impact. Another suggests that some individuals may use dissociation or repression to block from consciousness what is quite obvious to those who listen to real-life patients." Cameron, C., & Heber, A. (2006). Re: Troubles in Traumatology, and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory/Reply: Troubles in Traumatology and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory. Canadian journal of psychiatry, 51(6), 402.”

Denial Ptsd Society Denial Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Mental Illness Stigma Combat Ptsd Mental Illness Discrimination Iatrogenic Malingering

Author:Colin Cameron

“Mental illness do not designate a set path to failure. It’s simply a chemical or hormone imbalance that causes individuals to accept and process new information in a different way.”

Mental Illness Stigma Mental Health Advocate Mental Illness Quotes Mental Illness Discrimination Mental Illness Coping

Book:In His Service, Love Always, Ms. Jackson

Source: In His Service, Love Always, Ms. Jackson

“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.”

Mental Illness Mental Health Stigma Mental Illness Stigma Self Stigma Labelling

Book:Challenging the Stigma of Mental Illness: Lessons for Therapists and Advocates

Source: Challenging the Stigma of Mental Illness: Lessons for Therapists and Advocates

“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.”

Stigma Mental Health Stigma Mental Illness Stigma Internalizing Self Stigma

Book:Challenging the Stigma of Mental Illness: Lessons for Therapists and Advocates

Source: Challenging the Stigma of Mental Illness: Lessons for Therapists and Advocates

“In 1973 Flora Schreiber wrote SYBIL, a case history of a person with DID. After Schreiber’s death in 1988 there have been several unsuccessful attempts to prove this case was a fraud. Some of these people, enflamed by the success of the book, have falsified and distorted documents in Flora Schreiber’s archives to prove their theories. Furthermore, some did not engage in logical thinking. If the three women in "SYBIL" were clever enough to dupe the whole world, would they would not be clever enough to destroy so-called incriminating documents which Flora Schreiber bequeathed to John Jay College? Some people, who never engaged in any research about DID, claim that there is no connection between child abuse and DID. Then they unwittingly contradict themselves by stating DID doesn’t even exist.”

Dissociative Identity Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder Dissociative Disorder Mental Illness Stigma Sybil Sybil Exposed

Author:Patrick Suraci

“My initial response on being told I suffered Dissociative Identity Disorder all those years earlier had been denial. I'd denied it to Rob Hale, I'd denied it to Valerie Sinason, to Evelyn Laine and John Morton. You could have lined up everyone from Lady Gaga to the Queen of Sheba and I'd have denied it to them as well. There was absolutely no way I shared my body with other personalities.”

Denial Dissociative Identity Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder Mental Illness Stigma Mental Health Diagnosis

Book:All of Me

Source: All of Me

“Both men and women can have mental health issues, and neither should be ashamed of that. We shouldn't have to act like everything's okay and try to "fit in" with society's expectations, because that is JUST an act in most cases. Let's change this.”

Mental Health Mental Health Stigma Mental Illness Stigma Fit Into Society Fit Into The World

Author:Brien Blatt

“FLATOW: So you would - how would you treat a patient like Sybil if she showed up in your office BRAND: Well, first I would start with a very thorough assessment, using the current standardized measures that we have available to us that assess for the range of dissociative disorders but the whole range of other psychological disorders, too. I would need to know what I'm working with, and I'd be very careful and make my decisions slowly, based on data about what she has. And furthermore, with therapists who are well-trained in dissociative disorders, we do keep an eye open for suggestibility. But that research, too, is not anywhere near as strong as what the other two people in the interview are suggesting.It shows - for example, there's eight studies that have a total of 11 samples. In the three clinical samples that have looked at the correlation between dissociation and suggestibility, all three clinical samples found non-significant correlations. So it's just not as strong as what people think. That's a myth that's not backed up by science." Exploring Multiple Personalities In 'Sybil Exposed' October 21, 2011 by Ira Flatow”

Reality Fake Fraud Exposed Dissociative Identity Disorder Dissociation Multiple Personality Disorder Multiple Personalities Dissociative Disorders Mental Illness Stigma Sybil Suggestibility Controversory Suggestible

Author:Bethany L. Brand