Mental Health Stigma Quotes

“When people asked about his schizophrenia, Eric, who didn’t exactly flaunt his illness but wasn’t ashamed of it, either, offered up the comparison of alcoholism. Not every drunk is a single bourbon away from skid row, just like every schizophrenic is not a tatty-haired, crazy-eyed gunman who delights in murdering alien-people from clock towers. There are functioning alcoholics just as there are functioning schizophrenics, individuals who work, maintain homes, and have hobbies, goals, and relationships like every other slob on the planet.”
― Vivian Barz, Forgotten Bones

“You may not understand my mind, but that does not give you the right to judge it.”
― Hannah Blum, The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love

“It's feeling full of everything and empty of it all at the same time. This is mental illness.”
― Hannah Blum, The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love

“If you want to see the stars, you must be willing to travel through the dark.”
― Hannah Blum, The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love

“I have a soft spot in my heart for suicidal people. I know that others make presumptions about suicidal people, painting them with the darkest of paints; but the way that I see it, these are people who look out into the world and see how broken it is and they look into their lives and they remember all the people they've hurt and then they look into themselves and they are faced with how ruined they are and they think that if they can't make anything really better then they just shouldn't exist anymore. It's not a form of selfishness or mental illness. It's a form of extreme state of empathy and selflessness. Suicidal people really are the best kinds of people. But they need to know that this world has a place for them, that this world needs the kind of light that they carry with them as they walk through it, they need to know that they have a home. That their type of darkness is like the darkness of the universe: it's the type of darkness from whence comes forth the light! Some people are just okay with everything, they don't feel the pain and the guilt that comes with the way that this world is. And I don't think that the lack of feeling makes anybody healthier in the mind. Our world is sick. And some people know that. These are not the sick people, these are the beautiful creatures!”
― C. JoyBell C.

“If only you could command your brain to actually do that. It would be cool to have some kind of remote control to switch off your thoughts. Thoughts off, Siri. Or, more positive thoughts, Siri. Forget about this thought, Siri. if only.”
― Stefanie Sybens, Letters from the What-Went-Before

“Mental health is an important topic, and should be discussed more frequently. It's not "attention seeking.”
― Brien Blatt

“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.”
― Brien Blatt

“we are adaptive rather than disordered”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Sometimes I am high; sometimes I am low, but I love myself even when I hate myself.”
― Hannah Blum, The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love

“... even now, in the twenty-first century, mental health is still steeped in a lethal taboo which locks sick people up in themselves and leads to tragedy.”
― Chris Packham, Bird Therapy

“Beautiful soul, do not give up. What we believe to be the end is usually just the beginning.”
― Hannah Blum

“The light you are searching for can be found in your reflection.”
― Hannah Blum, The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love

“They told me to pursue acting, and I replied, "I live with mental illness. I've been an actress my whole life.”
― Hannah Blum, The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love

“And then you realize you were always a beautiful flower with a purpose and not a weed.”
― Shreve Gould

“DID survivors are failed twice: once at the initial point of their abuse/trauma and again when the system fails to acknowledge their needs, even doubting their diagnosis if they have been fortunate enough to obtain one. This cannot be right in the twenty-first century.”
― Joan Coleman

“Everyone needs to take care of their mental health, just like physical health. Going to a professional for your brain is no different than any other part of your body, so let’s stop stigmatizing that and mental “illness.”
― Brien Blatt

“DIVERSITY IS ABOUT RECOGNISING, VALUING AND TAKING ACCOUNT OF PEOPLE'S DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS, KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND EXPERIENCES.

HEALTH AND SAFETY SHOULD NOT BE USED TO JUSTIFY DISCRIMINATING AGAINST CERTAIN GROUPS OF EMPLOYEES”
― Lee Pinnock

“The first step to treat a mental illness is acceptance.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Diseases of the mind can be more torturous than the diseases of the body.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“The mental health problem is not just a health crisis; it's a social injustice. It's the mistreatment of the misunderstood.”
― Hannah Blum, The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love

“When you live with depression, anxiety, or any mental illness, you spend most of your time "trying to explain" yourself over taking care of yourself.”
― Hannah Blum, The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love

“Based on our own experiences, we know that despite the many challenges DID brings, with the right understanding, help, and treatment, all DID survivors can have a better future. So surely having to fight constantly for recognition, for understanding, and for funding to access the right care and treatment is utterly wrong.”
― Joan Coleman

“One of the great pains of peace is to see the heroes of a thousand battles retreat to a thousand bottles at the doctor's and the barman's. In the snares of alcoholism and PTSD, they who survived the battlefield now fall in the bottle-field.”
― Agona Apell

“Healing, like reward, is not gained without effort.”
― Shreve Gould

“The future will be decided in a thousand American urban neighborhoods and suburban conference centers and small-town church basements and library meeting rooms and rural kitchens... The future of mental health reform will depend upon whether enough people gather in enough of such venues as these to contemplate work of Dorothea Dix by joining to reject and extinguish our modern Bedlams, and replace these Bedlams with a reborn and more sophisticated and more enduring program of moral care. It will depend upon whether enough people will take notice of and be inspired by the rediscovery made by sociologists and psychiatrists: that kindness, companionship, and intimate care are demonstrable counterforces to deepening psychosis. Not cures, but counterforces, particularly when practiced in concert with psychotropic regimens that fit the specific nature of a person's affliction as well as that person's specific biosystem.”
― Ron Powers, No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America

“Breaking and rebuilding happen simultaneously. So when you are crumbling, remember it's from the bottom we rise again.”
― Hannah Blum, The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love

“Split is doing well at the box office around the world, but it misrepresents people with dissociative identity disorder (DID; previously called multiple personality disorder). The trailer is particularly gripping, luring in audiences by depicting a man with DID kidnapping and preparing to torture three teenage girls. Kevin (played by James McAvoy) juggles 24 personalities that are based on stereotypes: a cutesy 9-year-old infatuated with Kanye West, a flamboyant designer, and the “Beast,” a superhuman monster who sees the girls as “sacred food.” Kevin falsely represents people with DID through exaggerated symptoms, extreme violence, and unrealistic physical characteristics. The senior author, an expert in DID, has not seen any DID patient who is this violent in 25 years of clinical practice. Kevin’s ghastly personalities are so over-the-top that terrifying scenes are making audiences laugh.”
― Bethany L. Brand

“The DSM concept of pathological dissociation has evolved from the early inclusive concept of a dissociative reaction in DSM-I to five distinct dissociative disorders in DSM-IV: dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, depersonalization disorder, DDNOS, and MPD/DID [Dissociative Identity Disorder]. The first four disorders are rarely challenged, but the existence of MPD/DID has been more or less continually under attack for more than a century. I perceive many of these attacks as misdirected at a mass media stereotype that does not resemble the actual clinical condition.”
― Frank W. Putnam, Dissociation in Children and Adolescents: A Developmental Perspective

“Mental health is an important topic. It's not just for attention.”
― Brien Blatt