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Mental Illness Quotes

Browse 1580 quotes about Mental Illness.

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Mental Illness Quotes

“Shortly after I began work with Teresa, I acquired another MPD client, a supposedly schizophrenic young man I will call Tony. He called in to the clinic on a day I was on telephone duty, saying he was having flashbacks of "ritual abuse.” I did not yet know what that was. Tony became my client. He could be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of him as a three-year-old, "Tiny Tony,” standing on his head on my office couch, and running down the hall to try unsuccessfully to make it to the bathroom. He had in his head the entire rock band of Guns’n’Roses, and I got to know Axl, the band leader, quite well. I remember the time Tony was in hospital and I went to visit him; Axl popped out and said, "Remember, we’re schizophrenic in here!”

Mental IllnessDissociationSchizophreniaMultiple Personality DisorderRitual AbuseSchizophrenicAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisorderMpdAltersDissociative StatesMisdignosis
Book:Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse
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“While you were busy trying to prove God stands behind you, God was before me lighting the trail, so he could lead us both.”

GodReligionRelationshipsConflictCommunicateRidiculousSillyMental IllnessPrivacyBe KindProblemsReach OutDogmaPreachingCommandmentsInsecureWorthlessRulesRelentlessPietyForgiveGospelNovelsLow Self EsteemPiousTalkMove OnFacebookSelf RighteousnessOver The TopReligionsLove EveryoneNeighborsSlightedPractice What You PreachHidden AgendasObviousnessJiltedBuilding People UpOut ThereMaking A PointEnd It With TalkingTearing People DownUpfront
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“The primary problem with modern psychiatry is its reduction of mental illness to bodily dysfunction. Objectification of those identified as mentally ill, by insisting on the somatic nature of their illness, may apparently simplify matters and help protect those trying to provide care from the pain experienced by those needing support. But psychiatric assessment too often fails to appreciate personal and social precursors of mental illness by avoiding or not taking account of such psychosocial considerations. Mainstream psychiatry acts on the somatic hypothesis of mental illness to the detriment of understanding people's problems.”

MedicineMental HealthMental IllnessPsychiatryAnti Psychiatry
Book:The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct
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“In a culture where the brain is considered the center of consciousness, an unraveling brain is an unraveling self. To let the mentally unstable live in our midst is to face the fearful fragility of the ego. So we whisper our fears over their heads, driving them into the wilderness of the streets or locking them away where they can’t be seen. We let them pale into husks of human beings, cut off from the mutual blood of society. Sometimes we toss them a coin; it’s a small price to pay for the relief of looking away.”

Mental IllnessHomelessScapegoatingHomelessness In AmericaHomelessnesss
Book:The Sea Once Swallowed Me: A Memoir of Love, Solitude, and the Limits of Language
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“Perfectionism is the unparalleled defense for emotionally abandoned children. The existential unattainability of perfection saves the child from giving up, unless or until, scant success forces him to retreat into the depression of a dissociative disorder, or launches him hyperactively into an incipient conduct disorder. Perfectionism also provides a sense of meaning and direction for the powerless and unsupported child. In the guise of self-control, striving to be perfect offers a simulacrum of a sense of control. Self-control is also safer to pursue because abandoning parents typically reserve their severest punishment for children who are vocal about their negligence.”

Mental HealthPunishmentMental IllnessChild AbuseSelf ControlEmotional AbuseAbandonmentDissociative Identity DisorderPerfectionismDissociationSurvivorsPowerlessnessDissociative DisorderPsychological AbuseSurvivors Of AbuseAbusive ParentsDefense MechanismChild NeglectEmotionally UnavailableConduct Disorder
Author:Pete Walker
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“Advances in biological knowledge have highlighted the potential chronicity of effects of childhood maltreatment, demonstrating particular life challenges in managing emotions, forming and maintaining healthy relationships, healthy coping, and holding a positive outlook of oneself.”

Relationship QuotesMental IllnessNeglectEmotional AbusePsychiatryEmotional HealthChildhood AbuseMental DisorderHealthy RelationshipsRelationship ProblemsChild NeglectHealthy Coping
Book:Childhood Maltreatment
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“There is clear evidence from internal investigations in the past that some raters actually see themselves as adversaries to veterans. If a claim can be minimized, then the government has saved money, regardless of the need of the veteran. Just recently, the press exposed an official e-mail from a high-level staff person who stated in essence that PTSD diagnosis was becoming too prevalent and offered ways to delay and deflect ratings in order to save the government money.”

Mental IllnessDenialManipulationPtsdDiagnosisGovernment CorruptionGovernment AbuseMental DisorderVeteransPost Traumatic Stress DisorderPosttraumatic Stress DisorderMisuse Of PowerCombat PtsdVaVeterans AffairsMisuse Of AuthorityCost CuttingMental Disorder Bias
Author:Taylor Armstrong
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“I am possessed—not by devils from hell, but by nerves that scream louder than sin. Every breath is a betrayal. To fake calm in a corpse that still moves is the cruelest joke. The devil wears my skin now. And he lies.”

Mental IllnessChronic PainPsychological HorrorJonathan HarnischBenzo WithdrawalExistential TormentBody As PrisonPossessed By NervesSurvival Through SufferingTrauma Narrative
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia
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“I’ve found that it’s of some help to think of one’s moods and feelings about the world as being similar to weather. Here are some obvious things about the weather: It's real. You can't change it by wishing it away. If it's dark and rainy, it really is dark and rainy, and you can't alter it. It might be dark and rainy for two weeks in a row. BUT it will be sunny one day. It isn't under one's control when the sun comes out, but come out it will. One day. It really is the same with one's moods, I think. The wrong approach is to believe that they are illusions. Depression, anxiety, listlessness - these are all are real as the weather - AND EQUALLY NOT UNDER ONE'S CONTROL. Not one's fault. BUT They will pass: really they will. In the same way that one really has to accept the weather, one has to accept how one feels about life sometimes, "Today is a really crap day," is a perfectly realistic approach. It's all about finding a kind of mental umbrella. "Hey-ho, it's raining inside; it isn't my fault and there's nothing I can do about it, but sit it out. But the sun may well come out tomorrow, and when it does I shall take full advantage.”

DepressionAnxietyMental HealthMental IllnessWeatherEmotional PainValidationDepression QuotesMental Health StigmaMental DisorderAnalogyCoping StrategiesListlessnessPositive AttitudesWeathering Hard TimesAnti Stigma
Author:Stephen Fry
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“Other personalities are created to handle new traumas, their existence usually occurring one at a time. Each has a singular purpose and is totally focused on that task. The important aspect of the mind's extreme dissociation is that each ego state is totally without knowledge of the other. Because of this, the researchers for the CIA and the Department of Defense believed they could take a personality, train him or her to be a killer and no other ego stares would be aware of the violence that was taking place. The personality running the body would be genuinely unaware of the deaths another personality was causing. Even torture could not expose the with, because the personality experiencing the torture would have no awareness of the information being sought. Earlier, such knowledge was gained from therapists working with adults who had multiple personalities. The earliest pioneers in the field, such as Dr. Ralph Alison, a psychiatrist then living in Santa Cruz, California, were helping victims of severe early childhood trauma. Because there were no protocols for treatment, the pioneers made careful notes, publishing their discoveries so other therapists would understand how to help these rare cases. By 1965, the information was fairly extensive, including the knowledge that only unusually intelligent children become multiple personalities and that sexual trauma endured by a restrained child under the age of seven is the most common way to induce hysteric dissociation.”

ViolenceMilitaryAbuseVictimMental HealthSoldierTraumaMental IllnessTortureSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseSpyDissociative Identity DisorderCiaPsychiatristDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMind ControlChildhood TraumaMultiple Personality DisorderGovernment AbuseDissociativeSplit PersonalityTherapistMkultraTraumaticPsychotherapistExtreme AbuseSuper SoldierDepartment Of DefenseRalp Alison
Book:Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed to Kill for Their Country
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“Dissociation, a form of hypnotic trance, helps children survive the abuse…The abuse takes on a dream-like, surreal quality and deadened feelings and altered perceptions add to the strangeness. The whole scene does not fit into the 'real world.' It is simple to forget, easy to believe nothing happened.”

Mental HealthMental IllnessChild AbuseSurrealUnrealNumbDissociationChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsNumbnessTrancePerception Of RealityUnrealityPerceptionsRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaTrauma MemoryDepersonalizationDissociatedTrauma MemoriesSurreal QuotesTrance StatesHypnotic TranceNumbness Quote
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
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“As a child I had been taken to see Dr Bradshaw on countless occasions; it was in his surgery that Billy had first discovered Lego. As I was growing up, I also saw Dr Robinson, the marathon runner. Now that I was living back at home, he was again my GP. When Mother bravely told him I was undergoing treatment for MPD/DID as a result of childhood sexual abuse, he buried his head in hands and wept. Child abuse will always re-emerge, no matter how many years go by. We read of cases of people who have come forward after thirty or forty years to say they were abused as children in care homes by wardens, schoolteachers, neighbours, fathers, priests. The Catholic Church in the United States in the last decade has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for 'acts of sodomy and depravity towards children', to quote one information-exchange web-site. Why do these ageing people make the abuse public so late in their lives? To seek attention? No, it's because deep down there is a wound they need to bring out into the clean air before it can heal. Many clinicians miss signs of abuse in children because they, as decent people, do not want to find evidence of what Dr Ross suggests is 'a sick society that has grown sicker, and the abuse of children more bizarre'. (Note: this was written in the UK many years before the revelations of Jimmy Savile's widespread abuse, which included some ritual abuse)”

AbuseVictimMental HealthTraumaMental IllnessDenialSurvivorSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMultiple Personality DisorderIncestRitual AbuseSociety DenialDissociativeSplit PersonalityPedophiliaMpdPaedophilesSavileSexually Transmitted Infections
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“It is hard to bring paedophile rings to justice. Thankfully it does happen. Perhaps the most horrific recent case came before the High Court in Edinburgh in June 2007. It involved a mother who stood by and watched as her daughter of nine was gang-raped by members of a paedophile ring at her home in Granton, in the north of Edinburgh. The mother, Caroline Dunsmore, had allowed her two daughters to be used in this way from the age of five. Sentencing Dunsmore to twelve years in prison judge, Lord Malcolm, said he would take into account public revulsion at the grievous crimes against the two girls. He told the forty-three-year-old woman: 'It is hard to imagine a more grievous breach of trust on the part of a mother towards her child.' Morris Petch and John O'Flaherty were also jailed for taking part in raping the children. Child abuse nearly always takes place at home and members of the family are usually involved.”

CrimeAbuseVictimMental HealthConvictionTraumaMental IllnessSurvivorDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMultiple Personality DisorderDissociativeChild RapeSplit PersonalityPedophiliaParental AbusePaedophile RingRapistParental NeglectGang Rape
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Incurable, hopeless, excessive, organic, ill: this is the language of chronic disease, of the static bodies it indexes and the defective temporalities it engenders. The modality of the chronic, then, is less safely habitual than the compromised, the unconjugated, the "would" in the sense of being able or unable to realize one's will.”

Mental IllnessDisabilityChronic IllnessAbleismDisability QuotesDisability StudiesMental Illness QuotesChronic Illness QuotesPhysical Illness
Book:Beside You in Time: Sense Methods and Queer Sociabilities in the American Nineteenth Century
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“At the clinic, they fed us pills like they were biscuits. Those pills made the tongue loose in my head, my left arm numb from the elbow down. Sometimes the world would smoulder at the edges. Patients came and went, people from every kind of background but all with one thing in common: no longer capable of contributing to society, they needed to be kept out of sight: losers, loners, dreamers, freaks; God forbid they ever make it onto a TV screen.”

DepressionSuicideMental HealthAddictionMental IllnessHelpDrugsPillsHospitalInpatient
Book:Hunger & Hallelujahs
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“Cheryl was aided in her search by the Internet. Each time she remembered a name that seemed to be important in her life, she tried to look up that person on the World Wide Web. The names and pictures Cheryl found were at once familiar and yet not part of her conscious memory: Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Dr. Louis 'Jolly' West, Dr. Ewen Cameron, Dr. Martin Orne and others had information by and about them on the Web. Soon, she began looking up sites related to childhood incest and found that some of the survivor sites mentioned the same names, though in the context of experiments performed on small children. Again, some names were familiar. Then Cheryl began remembering what turned out to be triggers from old programmes. 'The song, "The Green, Green Grass of home" kept running through my mind. I remembered that my father sang it as well. It all made no sense until I remembered that the last line of the song tells of being buried six feet under that green, green grass. Suddenly, it came to me that this was a suicide programme of the government. 'I went crazy. I felt that my body would explode unless I released some of the pressure I felt within, so I grabbed a [pair ofl scissors and cut myself with the blade so I bled. In my distracted state, I was certain that the bleeding would let the pressure out. I didn't know Lynn had felt the same way years earlier. I just knew I had to do it Cheryl says. She had some barbiturates and other medicine in the house. 'One particularly despondent night, I took several pills. It wasn't exactly a suicide try, though the pills could have killed me. Instead, I kept thinking that I would give myself a fifty-fifty chance of waking up the next morning. Maybe the pills would kill me. Maybe the dose would not be lethal. It was all up to God. I began taking pills each night. Each-morning I kept awakening.”

CuttingCrazyAbuseVictimSuicideMental HealthTraumaMental IllnessInsaneSurvivorChild AbusePillsDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMind ControlMultiple Personality DisorderIncestSelf HarmDissociativeOverdoseSplit PersonalityMkultraExtreme AbuseEwen CameronLouis WestMartin OrneSidney Gottlieb
Book:Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed to Kill for Their Country
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“Repression. Her therapist, Dr. Solomon, loved the word. He'd say it slowly, letting it roll off his tongue. Sometimes he'd add a chin stroke for good measure. He always looked pleased when he did this, like he'd discovered the Caramilk secret or something.”

LossGriefSecretIssuesCrazyMental IllnessOld ManRebelTeenWeirdPsychiatryRepressionCreepyDoctorScratchCape BretonDispairShrinkSydney Tar PondsChinSydney MinesCaramilkHospital Humor
Book:Fossil Hunter of Sydney Mines
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“What daily life is like for “a multiple” Imagine that you have periods of “lost time.” You may find writings or drawings which you must have done, but do not remember producing. Perhaps you find child-sized clothing or toys in your home but have no children. You might also hear voices or babies crying in your head. Imagine that you can never predict when you will be able to have certain knowledge or social skills, and your emotions and your energy level seem to change at the drop of a hat, and for no apparent reason. You cannot understand why you feel what you feel, and, if you are in therapy, you cannot explore those feelings when asked. Your life feels disjointed and often confusing. It is a frightening experience. It feels out of control, and you probably think you are going crazy. That is what it is like to be multiple, and all of it is experienced by the ANPs. A multiple may also experience very concrete problems, even life-threatening ones.”

FeelingsFearPsychologyCrazyCommunicationAbuseShameTraumaMental IllnessConfusionTherapyTeamworkSecretsPsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisStigmaDissociationPsychotherapyAmnesiaMultiplicityMultiple Personality DisorderRitual AbuseMultiple PersonalitiesMental DisorderVoicesDissociative AmnesiaTherapistMpdDdnosHearing VoicesIntrusive ThoughtsAnpInternal VoicesMental ProblemsChild Identity
Book:Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
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“Em vez de atribuir aos indivíduos a responsabilidade de lidar com seus problemas psicológicos, aceitando a ampla privatização do estresse que aconteceu nos últimos trinta anos, precisamos perguntar: quando se tornou aceitável que uma quantidade tão grande de pessoas, e uma quantidade especialmente grande de jovens, estejam doentes? A epidemia de doença mental nas sociedades capitalistas deveria sugerir que, ao invés de ser o único sistema que funciona, o capitalismo é inerentemente disfuncional, e o custo para que ele pareça funcionar é demasiado alto.”

Mental IllnessLate Capitalism
Book:Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
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“...some patients resist the diagnosis of a post-traumatic disorder. They may feel stigmatized by any psychiatric diagnosis or wish to deny their condition out of a sense of pride. Some people feel that acknowledging psychological harm grants a moral victory to the perpetrator, in a way that acknowledging physical harm does not.”

HealingPridePrejudiceMental HealthDefeatTraumaMental IllnessRecoveryDenialTherapyDefeatedPtsdStigmaAbuse SurvivorsPsychotherapyPowerlessnessTraumatic ExperiencesLabelingMental Health StigmaMental DisorderPost Traumatic Stress DisorderHealing From AbusePosttraumatic Stress DisorderTorturedSelf StigmaLabellingTorture SurvivorsMale SurvivorPolitical Refugees
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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