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Mental Illness Quotes

Browse 1580 quotes about Mental Illness.

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Mental Illness Quotes

“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
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“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?
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“I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.”

PsychologyMental IllnessBipolarManicMania
Book:An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
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“There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against-- you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.”

PsychologyMental IllnessBipolar
Book:An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
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“Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren't alone, that there is hope, then I will have achieved one of my goals. A sad fact is that people with DID spend an average of almost seven years in the mental health system before being properly diagnosed and receiving the specific help they need. During that repeatedly misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated, simply because clinicians fail to recognize the symptoms. If this book provides practicing and future clinicians certain insight into DID, then I will have accomplished another goal. Clinicians, and all others whose lives are touched by DID, need to grasp the fundamentally illusive nature of memory, because memory, or the lack of it, is an integral component of this condition. Our minds are stock pots which are continuously fed ingredients from many cooks: parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, teachers, schoolmates, strangers, acquaintances, radio, television, movies, and books. These are the fixings of learning and memory, which are stirred with a spoon that changes form over time as it is shaped by our experiences. In this incredibly amorphous neurological stew, it is impossible for all memories to be exact. But even as we accept the complex of impressionistic nature of memory, it is equally essential to recognize that people who experience persistent and intrusive memories that disrupt their sense of well-being and ability to function, have some real basis distress, regardless of the degree of clarity or feasibility of their recollections. We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self.”

PsychologyAbuseMental HealthMemoryTraumaMental IllnessSurvivorChild AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMultiple Personality DisorderIncestPsychiatricMental Health StigmaAbusive ParentsPedophilesDidChild Range
Book:First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple
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“Dr. Talbon was struck by another very important thing. It all hung together. The stories Cheryl told — even though it was upsetting to think people could do stuff like that — they were not disjointed They were not repetitive in terms of "I've heard this before". It was not just she'd someone trying consciously or unconsciously to get attention. really processed them out and was done with them. She didn't come up with them again [after telling the story once and dealing with it]. Once it was done, it was done. And I think that was probably the biggest factor for me in her believability. I got no sense that she was using these stories to make herself a really interesting person to me so I'd really want to work with her, or something. Or that she was just living in this stuff like it was her life. Once she dealt with it and processed it, it was gone. We just went on to other things. 'Throughout the whole thing, emotionally Cheryl was getting her life together. Parts of her were integrating where she could say,"I have a sense that some particular alter has folded in with some basic alter", and she didn't bring it up again. She didn't say that this alter has reappeared to cause more problems. That just didn't happen. The therapist had learned from training and experience that when real integration occurs, it is permanent and the patient moves on.”

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Book:Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed to Kill for Their Country
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“Something was wrong, and I didn't know how to explain it in a way anyone would understand. It was as if there was an invisible thread between me and Chris, connecting us, and it didn't matter that he was over a thousand miles away in Florida. He was with me everywhere I went, invading my mind and body, stealing the life I could have had.”

PsychologyMental HealthTraumaMental IllnessPtsdSurvivors Of AbusePost Traumatic Stress DisorderStockholm SyndromeTrauma Bond
Book:Dissonance
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“If someone thinks you’re a fucking problem, an addict, a fuck-up, and broken, they’re going to treat you differently despite all their best intentions otherwise, which can foster a slow, steady reduction, stripping away confidence and self-love until it all becomes a repeated, entrenched story. The irony is that this contraction often occurs in the care of those who are genuinely trying to help.”

StoriesPsychologyMental IllnessBipolar DisorderAddiction QuotesTroubled Youth
Book:The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
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“Bipolar disorder was like that: a wild party that was constantly on the verge of ending, chaos and bright lights, an exaltation of the senses. That was mania. But all parties had their end, and when the shadows were long and the glitter had lost its sparkle and gathered to mingle with the dust on the unclean floors and all the food lost its flavor and the music finally died—that was depression, lurking in between all of the dark spaces of the noise and the laughter, as unavoidable as death or darkness.”

PsychologyDepressionMental IllnessBipolarManiaBipolar DisorderManic Depression
Book:Batter My Heart
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“It is my impression that whenever resistance is markedly severe, it is at least as much a spiritual as a psychological problem. The person is unwilling to suffer the slightest dethronement of his or her ego in submission to any higher power, even when that power is merely labeled “life” or “reality.” Something is seriously out of whack at a radical level in such a person’s relationship to the world.”

SpiritualityPsychologyMental HealthMental Illness
Author:Scott Peck
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“Rikki looked over at me. “Why now?" she asked, looking back at Arly. “Why is this happening now?" "Hard to say." Arly [therapist] replied. "DID usually gets diagnosed in adulthood. Something happens that triggers the alters to come out. When Cam's father died and he came in to help his brother run the family business he was in close contact with his mother again. Maybe it was seeing Kyle around the same age when some of the abuse happened. Cam was sick for a long time and finally got better. Maybe he wasn't strong enough until now to handle this. It's probably a combination of things. But it sure looks like some of the abuse Cam experienced involved his mother. And sexual abuse by the mother is considered to he one of the most traumatic forms of abuse. In some ways it's the ultimate betrayal.”

PsychologyBetrayalMental IllnessTherapySurvivorSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbusePsychotherapyMultiplicityMultiple Personality DisorderIncestHealing InsightsMental DisorderDissociative DisorderDissociativeChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorMpdBetrayal TraumaAbusive MotherParental AbuseAttachment TraumaAbnormal PsychologyMale SurvivorSexual Abuse Of A ChildBetraying InnocenceBetrayal Quote
Book:First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple
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“Walking alone in the dark early the next morning, New Year's Day, the coming year stretched out like a bleak and endless highway, leading nowhere.... Having held on for months, thinking that that if only we can get through to the new year, now I felt plunged into black ice, in danger of drowning.... Suddenly I understood our friends' concern. Could this be what precedes some kind of breakdown--a sudden shift to feel oblivion as temptation, even as seduction?”

DeathLossGriefDepressionMental IllnessMourningBreakdowns
Book:Why Religion? A Personal Story
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“It was all so easy. My mum says it was denial. That I wanted life to pass me by, instead of standing there getting drenched in it like everyone else. She thought less of me now, that was hardly surprising. I thought less of her, too. We were standing on each side of a trench, measuring each other. Measuring each other with our eyes. Who was the stronger? Who was the weak? Who would come creeping in the night, sobbing and reaching out to be held?”

ChildhoodMental IllnessMothers And Daughters
Book:Welcome to America
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“I was bent over, my dress hiked up, my pale bottom sticking out, bluish in the dim light and Bryon behind me, lost in another world. His face was pressed into my shoulder and his profile visible. As his features were screwed up in the release of pleasure, his eyes shut tight and his mouth hanging open, I once again struggled not to laugh. There was something so comical and pathetic about his unabashed sincerity and tedious adoration. I hated to admit it, but it made me want to slap him and watch him weep with a smile on my face as I told him it was all over and he would never see me again.”

SexMental IllnessSexual Abuse
Book:Burnside Field Lizard and Selected Stories
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“This traumatic episode in history is proving to be one twisted psychological experiment on a massive scale, a testing whose effects on the mind will be studied for years to come for we know that after trauma comes the post-traumatic episodes and the world needs to be ready to help those of us who will need to be mentally supported once the worst is behind us.”

Mental HealthTraumaMental IllnessCoronavirusCovid 19PtsdCovid19Aysha TaryamSelf Isolation
Author:Aysha Taryam
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“We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self. At this point in time there are people who question the validity of the DID diagnosis. The fact is that DID has its own category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because, as with all psychiatric conditions, a portion of society experiences a cluster of recognizable symptoms that are not better accounted for by any other diagnosis.”

PsychologyAbuseMental HealthTraumaMental IllnessChild AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMultiple Personality DisorderIncestPsychiatricMental Health StigmaDid
Book:First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple
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“It is not unusual for subjects diagnosed with a Dissociative Disorder on the SCID-D to be surprised at having their symptoms validated by a clinician who understands the nature of their disorder.”

Mental IllnessDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisValidationMental DisorderDissociative DisorderDissociativeDissociative DisordersDidDdnosDepersonalization DisorderDiagnostic Criteria
Book:Interviewer's Guide to the Structured Clinical Interview for Dsm-IV Dissociative Disorders
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“In this chapter I restrict myself to exploring the nature of the amnesia which is reported between personality states in most people who are diagnosed with DID. Note that this is not an explicit diagnostic criterion, although such amnesia features strongly in the public view of DID, particularly in the form of the fugue-like conditions depicted in films of the condition, such as The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Typically, when one personality state, or ‘alter’, takes over from another, they have no idea what happened just before. They report having lost time, and often will have no idea where they are or how they got there. However, this is not a universal feature of DID. It happens that with certain individuals with DID, one personality state can retrieve what happened when another was in control. In other cases we have what is described as ‘co-consciousness’ where one personality state can apparently monitor what is happening when another personality state is in control and, in certain circumstances, can take over the conversation.”

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Book:Trauma, Dissociation and Multiplicity: Working on Identity and Selves
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