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Mental Illness Quotes

Browse 1580 quotes about Mental Illness.

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Mental Illness Quotes

“We shall therefore compare the concept of homosexuality as heresy, prevalent in the days of the witch-hunts, with the concept of homosexuality as mental illness, prevalent today.”

TodayConceptsIllnessMental IllnessCompareWitchHomosexualityHuntsHeresyWitch Hunt
Book:The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement
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“The disease concept of homosexuality as with the disease concept of all so-called mental illnesses, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide conceals the fact that homosexuals are a group of medically stigmatized and socially persecuted individuals. ... Their anguished cries of protest are drowned out by the rhetoric of therapy just as the rhetoric of salvation drowned out the [cries] of heretics.”

FactsIndividualGroupsCryDrugDiseaseConceptsSuicideSalvationAddictionIllnessMental IllnessTherapyProtestRhetoricHomosexualityHomosexualAlcoholismDrug AddictionHereticDrug AddictPersecuted
Book:The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement
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“So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick (homosexual, addicted, insane, and so forth) so that the madman can always be considered the Other, never the Self mental illness will remain an easily exploitable concept, and Coercive Psychiatry a flourishing institution.”

MenLongSelfConceptsSickInstitutionsIllnessMental IllnessInsaneHomosexualPsychiatryMadmenFlourishing
Book:The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement
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“Schizophrenia --its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it--remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the "double bind"--a situation in which no matter what a person does, he "can't win." It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms”

KindMayPersonsDoeMatterUseWinningSituationConditionsTheoryCommunicationTypeNo Matter WhatRemainsPatientCaughtIllnessMental IllnessObservationAnalysisTherapyDescriptionLogicalSymptomsSchizophreniaCan't WinSchizophrenicPuzzling
Book:Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology
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“The constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been established only on the basis of such a silence.”

Has BeensMadeEndsReasonLanguageSilenceCenturyBrokenEvidenceBasesConstitutionMadnessIllnessSeparationMental IllnessDialogueFixedImperfectOblivionPsychiatryThrustMonologuesSyntax
Book:Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry
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“The trouble is with socialism, which resembles a form of mental illness more than it does a philosophy. Socialists get bees in their bonnets. And because they chronically lack any critical faculty to examine and evaluate their ideas, and because they are pathologically unwilling to consider the opinions of others, and most of all, because socialism is a mindset that regards the individual and his rights as insignificant, compared to whatever the socialist believes the group needs, terrible, terrible things happen when socialists acquire power.”

NeedsBelieveDoeIdeasPhilosophyHappensFormIndividualOpinionRightsTroubleGroupsTerribleRegardIllnessCriticalMindsetThings HappenSocialismMental IllnessAcquireFacultyBeesSocialistInsignificantTerrible ThingsUnwillingEvaluateBonnets
Author:L. Neil Smith
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“Even with all that - excellent treatment, wonderful family and friends, supportive work environment - I did not make my illness public until relatively late in life, and that's because the stigma against mental illness is so powerful that I didn't feel safe with people knowing. If you hear nothing else today, please hear this: There are not 'schizophrenics'. There are people with schizophrenia, and these people may be your spouse, they may be your child, they may be your neighbor, they may be your friend, they may be your coworker.”

PeopleIfsFeelsMayChildrenTodayPowerfulKnowingEnvironmentWonderfulPleaseSafeLateOur ChildrenIllnessNeighborMental IllnessExcellentYour ChildrenTreatmentFamily And FriendsSpouseSupportiveStigmaSchizophreniaCoworkerWork EnvironmentWonderful Family
Author:Elyn Saks
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“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. ... You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're 'not at all like yourself but will be soon,' but you know you won't.”

KnowsFeelingsJobsLostGoneLike YouBrokenDepressionIllnessDivorceMental IllnessFlatsFrightenedFrighteningHollowBroken UpLike YourselfUnendurableClinical Depression
Book:An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
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“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.”

MindEndsRealityMovingMadnessAngryIllnessMental IllnessFrightenedGrainCavesUncontrollable
Book:An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
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“Madness to us means reversion; to such people as Una and Lena it meant progression. Now their uncle had entered into a land beyond them, the land of fancy. For fifty years he had been as they were, silent, hard-working, unimaginative. Then all of a sudden, like a scholar passing his degree, he had gone up into another form.”

PeopleYearsMeanHardFormGoneLandHard WorkDegreesMadnessSilentIllnessPassingMental IllnessPassingsFancyFiftyScholarUnclesProgression
Book:Vivid and Repulsive as the Truth: The Early Works of Djuna Barnes
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“Above all, Alzheimer wanted the medical world to recognize that mental illnesses have an undeniable material component. There was an obvious political reason for taking such a position because it could then be established that dementia-like conditions are not part of the spiritual/theological domain, but undeniably biological in origin and therefore not attributable with moral implications.”

WorldReasonWantedSpiritualPoliticalMoralConditionsPositionMaterialsIllnessObviousMedicalMental IllnessComponentsDomainImplicationsTheologicalDementiaAlzheimer
Author:Margaret M. Lock
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“In other words, homosexuality was no longer to be considered an illegal form of debauchery or perversion in which one willingly engaged a person of his own sex, but a mental illness which one blamed on his mother. Consequently, a homosexual is not responsible for his behavior - it's his mother's fault!”

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Book:The unhappy gays: what everyone should know about homosexuality
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“The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.”

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Book:Wars I have seen
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“Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift.... The self is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.”

MenSelfHardFacesBehindsPersonalityShapesBandOriginalsIllnessPossessionMythMental IllnessMaskStableShiftingInner SelfRubberDisturbanceNuggetsSnappingRubber Bands
Book:Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays
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“When one of us dies of cancer, loses her mind, or commits suicide, we must not blame her for her inability to survive an ongoing political mechanism bent on the destruction of that human being. Sanity remains defined simply by the ability to cope with insane conditions.”

MindHumansPoliticalDiesLosesHuman BeingsAbilityConditionsDestructionBlameRemainsSuicideCancerIllnessCommitMental IllnessInsaneOppressionDefinedSanityMechanismBentInabilityOngoing
Book:Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma
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“Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available.”

PeopleSelfProblemSeemsSpiritualSpiritualityTermMillionsConsciousFellowsAtheistIllnessAvailableMental IllnessDeceptionMysticismFraudElsewhereMysticalSelf Deception
Author:Sam Harris
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“A broken leg can be remembered and located: "It hurt right below my knee, it throbbed, I felt sick at my stomach." But mental pain is remembered the way dreams are remembered-in fragments, unbidden realizations, like looking into a well and seeing the dim reflection of your face in that instant before the water shatters.”

WayWellsDreamPainFacesFeltWaterHurtSeeingBrokenDepressionReflectionSickIllnessLegsMental IllnessRealizationRememberedKneesInstantYour FaceStomachIt HurtsFragmentsBroken LegMental Pain
Author:Tracy Thompson
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“Having a mood disorder is not synonymous with having artistic talent, but it is true that people in the so-called creative professions-writers, actors, artists, musicians-have a higher than normal incidence of such illnesses, and there are also a disproportionate number of alcoholics in these fields whose drinking may be an attempt to medicate the anxiety of depression.”

PeopleMayArtistActorsNumbersCreativeTalentFieldsHigherDepressionNormalAnxietyMusicianDrinkingIllnessProfessionMoodMental IllnessArtisticDisorderAlcoholicsIncidenceArtistic TalentMood Disorders
Author:Tracy Thompson
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“I'm getting less good at faking it. People in my family are noticing and asking what's wrong. My friends give me invitations to talk, to cry. I love them for their caring, but I want to run from it. I have lost their language, their facility with words that convey feelings. I am in new territory and feel like a foreigner in theirs.”

PeopleWantGivingFeelsFeelingsRunningLostLanguageCryDepressionMy FriendsMy FamilyGive MeAskingIllnessCaringMental IllnessTerritoryInvitationsFacilityForeignersNoticingFaking ItNew Territory
Author:Martha Manning
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