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Mental Illness Quotes

Browse 1580 quotes about Mental Illness.

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Mental Illness Quotes

“A more fundamental problem with labelling human distress and deviance as mental disorder is that it reduces a complex, important, and distinct part of human life to nothing more than a biological illness or defect, not to be processed or understood, or in some cases even embraced, but to be ‘treated’ and ‘cured’ by any means possible—often with drugs that may be doing much more harm than good. This biological reductiveness, along with the stigma that it attracts, shapes the person’s interpretation and experience of his distress or deviance, and, ultimately, his relation to himself, to others, and to the world. Moreover, to call out every difference and deviance as mental disorder is also to circumscribe normality and define sanity, not as tranquillity or possibility, which are the products of the wisdom that is being denied, but as conformity, placidity, and a kind of mediocrity.”

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Book:The Meaning of Madness
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“If two people with no symptoms in common can both receive the same diagnosis of schizophrenia, then what is the value of that label in describing their symptoms, deciding their treatment, or predicting their outcome, and would it not be more useful simply to describe their problems as they actually are? And if schizophrenia does not exist in nature, then how can researchers possibly find its cause or correlates? If psychiatric research has made so little progress in recent decades, it is in large part because everyone has been barking up the wrong tree. It is not a question of getting a bigger and better scanner, but of going right back to the drawing board. What’s more, medical-type labels can be as harmful as they are hollow. By reducing rich, varied, and complex human experiences to nothing more than a mental disorder, they not only sideline and trivialize those experiences but also imply an underlying defect that then serves as a pseudo-explanation for the person’s disturbed behaviour. This demeans and disempowers the person, who is deterred from identifying and addressing the important life problems that underlie his distress.”

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Book:The Meaning of Madness
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“I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence--whether much that is glorious--whether all that is profound--does not spring from disease of thought--from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable", and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi". We will say then, that I am mad.”

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Book:Eleonora
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“What's the difference between sanity and madness anyway? We all play headgames with ourselves. We all have baggage. We all cope somehow. I'm not sure if I'm mad or sane. I mean, I hold my life together, I pay my bills, I raise my kids. But the world is so polarized and bizarre now that for some people, none of these these things matter if they're not wearing the right shoes or don't have the right credit score or a fancy family car. Some people think the most important things to worry about are handbags and tan lines. Meanwhile, war and crime and poverty unfold all around us, and we ignore it. In that environment, how can we even begin to talk about sanity and madness?”

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Author:A.S. King
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“Although both home and mental illness are complex, modern ideas, we have fallen into the habit of using phrases such as "housing the homeless" and "treating the mentally ill" as if we knew what counts as housing a homeless person or what it means to treat mental illness. But we do not. We have deceived ourselves that having a home and being mentally healthy are our natural conditions, and that we become homeless or mentally ill as a result of "losing" our homes or our minds. The opposite is the case. We are born without a home and without reason, and have to exert ourselves and are fortunate if we succeed in building a secure home and a sound mind.”

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Book:Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted
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“It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true but just put on, I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days. Three weeks later Sybil reaffirmed her belief in the existence of her other selves in a letter to Miss Updyke, the school nurse of undergraduate days.”

TruthMental IllnessDenialTherapyDependenceDissociative Identity DisorderPsychotherapyMultiple Personality DisorderTruth And LiesPretenceMultiple PersonalitiesDenial Of RealitySybilRuseNot PretendingFaking NormalNot Fake
Book:Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
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“False humility is a form of psychosis which was imprinted on most of us since birth. It is a mental illness because it locks us in a victim state of keeping our light turned down, denying who we really are and silently begging for permission to simply show up as ourselves in the world. But there is good news. This is a jail whose lock is broken. We can walk free whenever we know the truth, and by so doing we show others an example of an end to madness. An example of freedom.”

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Author:Jacob Nordby
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“There are hundreds of ways we accommodate physical disabilities--or at least understand them. We get angry when people fail to recognize the need for thoughtful and compassionate assistance when it comes to the physically disabled, but because mental disabilities aren't visible in the same way, we tend to be dismissive of the needs of the disabled and quick to judge their deficits and failures.”

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Book:Just Mercy
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“The fault in our stars is the inability to see that the world falls in love with fantasy, fairytales and magic in movies. Even religion asks us to believe in the most unlikely of situations. However, despite all the great movies we love, we choose to see so many real life spiritual experiences as delusion, mania, psychosis or wishful thinking. Our society gives great devotion to the arts. However, they solve so many problems with realism, rather than giving into the possibilty of God's plan for a person, that doesn't involve their theological views about how God helps write his children's stories.”

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Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind," between "neurological" problems and "psychological" or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem.”

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Book:Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain
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“Fiction is a blessing to those of us who suffer from mental illness; I'm sure many would agree. To be able to escape into the minds and hearts of other people, is such a uniquely thrilling experience, that everyone should indulge in this freedom as often as possible. It will not only expand your mind in what is possible, but your heart as well, growing empathy for those who live lives so different from your own.”

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Book:With a Reckless Abandon
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“Humans grow a tree within their minds. A tree known as the self. It's a tree that is nourished through wisdom and experience, emotion and love. Each person has their own variety and type of tree. What kind of flowers will it grow? What kind of fruit will it bear? Who will it fascinate, what will it yield, how will it keep the pests away? What kind of poison will it possess? How tall will it grow?”

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Book:Yume Nikki: I Am Not in Your Dream
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“A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their time studying subjects most of them hate. When skilled workers are put out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo “retraining,” no one asks whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to technical necessity, and for good reason: If human needs were put before technical necessity there would be economic problems, unemployment, shortages or worse. The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.”

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Book:Industrial Society and Its Future
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“When John and his colleagues added up the data, they were startled. Feeling lonely, it turned out, caused your cortisol levels to absolutely soar - as much as some of the most disturbing things that can happen to you. Becoming acutely lonely, the experiment found, was as stressful as experiencing a physical attack. It's worth repeating. Being deeply lonely seemed to cause as much stress as being punched by a stranger.”

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Book:Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions
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“There’s nothing worse than bottling something up inside and letting it eat at you. It’s like being shot, and leaving the bullet inside our bodies. The wound would never heal. Instead, we need to let it out.”

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Book:From My Suffering: 25 Ways to Break the Chains of Anxiety, Depression & Stress
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“It’s easy to put the links between the increases in mental illness, depression, ADHD, and the like, with the speed of the modern world. People never get the chance to do nothing, or when they do, they lack the control to prevent their mind from racing off in a thousand different directions. So much so that their doing nothing becomes a thousand different things and the thousand different things becomes stress, anxiety, worry and fear. Left untreated these simple everyday things become well entrenched in our psyches and start to dominate our lives. We have a chronic addiction with doing and we love to use our busyness as a stamp of our hard work and hectic lives and we get stuck in this busy trap of always doing.”

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Book:Solitude: How Doing Nothing Can Change the World
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“Its little wonder anxiety, depression and other mental illness is at such a high point at this time in the world; people have little control over the mental capacities, of their thoughts, perceptions, feelings and emotions. People never get a moments silence from the constant bombardment and when they do they don’t know how to manage their thoughts so the endless barrage of noise simply continues giving them no time or space for clarity.”

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Book:Solitude: How Doing Nothing Can Change the World
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“If the social stress is physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, the way to treat the depression is to stop the abuse. Unfortunately, advocates of the biochemical treatment of depression have gone along with the view of academic theory and popular culture that the problem is entirely within the skull of the victim. Enthusiasm for biochemical treatment and research is partly due to the fact that it helps perpetuate the myth that suicide and depression should be treated by changing the victim, not by changing ourselves. As long as we have a narrow view of the causes of biochemical imbalance, such as limiting it to innate genetic defects, we can practice denial on the social complicity in the causation of suicide. The narrow view does nothing to help reduce pain and increase resources for the millions of people whose problems do not respond to medications. It also deprives us of an opportunity for progress in a much broader area for social reform. The dynamics behind the oppression of the suicidal is similar to the dynamics of other forms of injustice; progress in one area can support progress in other areas.”

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Book:Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain
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“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain.”

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Book:Darkness visible: a memoir of madness
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“The essence of deep and profound suffering, as articulated through the lens of individuals grappling with akathisia, reveals a universal truth about human resilience and the quest for meaning amidst adversity. Suffering, in its most unbearable forms, strips away the superficial layers of our existence, confronting us with the rawest facets of our being. It is in this crucible of despair that the depth of human strength is truly tested, and paradoxically, where the seeds of hope are sown. Throughout history, philosophers, poets, and survivors of great hardship have all echoed a similar sentiment: there is a profound transformation that occurs in the heart of suffering. It is not merely an ordeal to be endured but a powerful catalyst for growth and self-discovery. The pain that once seemed to diminish us eventually serves to expand our empathy, deepen our understanding of life's fragility, and enhance our appreciation for moments of joy and connection. In the narrative of overcoming akathisia, the raw and relentless nature of such suffering becomes a testament to the indomitable human spirit. This condition, characterized by an inner restlessness that can torment the mind and body, becomes a battleground upon which the battle for mental and emotional freedom is fought. The victory, hard-won, lies not in eradicating the condition but in mastering the art of resilience, in discovering that hope is not obliterated by despair but made more precious by it. To conclude, deep and profound suffering is an unyielding force, capable of either crushing the human spirit or refining it into something stronger and more beautiful. The choice of which direction we turn depends largely on our ability to find meaning in our pain, to reach out for support, and to believe in the possibility of regeneration. Like the phoenix rising from its ashes, individuals who traverse the dark night of the soul can emerge transformed, bearing the scars of their battles as badges of honor. These experiences whisper to us of the extraordinary resilience that resides within, urging us to keep moving forward, even when every step seems impossible. The power of the human spirit to transcend suffering reminds us that even in our darkest moments, there is always a path leading towards the light.”

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Book:Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia
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