Mental Illness Quotes - Page 16

• Rituals, even unhappy ones, provide a measure of comfort. Like a superstitious ballplayer who will only use certain bats, my depression rituals have become a fixed, normal part of my life. ... I need rituals to prevent unnecessarily rocking my already shaky emotional boat.

  David Karp

  Depression, Emotional, Unhappy

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• You have lost all delight in life. Ahead is a large array of blind alleys. You are half-deliberately, half-desperately cutting off your grip on creative life. You are becoming a neuter machine. You cannot love, even if you knew how to begin to love. Every thought is a devil, a hell-if you could do a lot of things over again, ah, how differently you would do them! You want to go home, back to the womb. You watch the world bang door after door in your face, numbly, bitterly. You have forgotten the secret you knew, once, ah, once, of being joyous, of laughing, of opening doors.

  Sylvia Plath

  Depression, Home, Cutting

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.67, Anchor

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• The worst thing about the fantasies of the mentally ill is that they're so damned consistent. They never let up. They never give you any rest.

  Orson Scott Card

  Giving, Fantasy, Worst

  Orson Scott Card (1992). “The Changed Man: Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card”, p.119, Macmillan

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• I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.

  Sylvia Plath

  Depression, Illness, Womb

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.84, Anchor

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• The mind commands the body, and it obeys forthwith; the mind commands itself, and is resisted. The mind commands the hand to be moved, and such readiness is there that the command is scarce to be distinguished from the obedience. Yet the mind is mind, and the hand is body. The mind commands the mind to will, and yet, though it be itself, it obeyeth not. Whence this monstrous thing? and why is it?

  Saint Augustine

  Mind, Command, Monstrous

  "The Confessions of St. Augustine".

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• Over recent years, urbanisation, globalisation and the destruction of local cultures has led to a rise in the prevalence of mental illness in the developing world.

  Iain McGilchrist

  Years, Culture, World

  Iain McGilchrist (2009). “The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World”, p.436, Yale University Press

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• Each sporadic burst of work, each minor success and disappointment, each moment of calm and relaxation, seemed merely a temporary halt on my steady descent through layer after layer of depression, like an elevator stopping for a moment on the way down to the basement.

  Al Alvarez

  Depression, Disappointment, Relaxation

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• There is nothing worse that you can do to a human being in America today than give them a mental illness kind of label and tell them they need drugs and these children are 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years-old being treated in this manner.

  Peter Breggin

  Children, Years, America

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• There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.

  Antonin Artaud

  Depression, Ideas, Delirium Tremens

  "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society". Essay by Antonin Artaud, 1947.

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• Mental illness is a very powerful thing. If it is with you it is probably going to be there until the day you die. I am trying so hard to break mine, but it is not easy. It is my toughest fight ever.

  Frank Bruno

  Powerful, Fighting, Bipolar

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• One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

  William James

  Forgiveness, Heart, Wrestling

  William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.132, Harvard University Press

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• The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.

  Leonard Cohen

  Depression, Depressing, Psychics

  The International Herald Tribune, November 4, 1988.

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• We're becoming so much better at destigmatizing all sorts of things, including mental illness in 'Silver Linings'.

  Jacki Weaver

  Becoming, Silver, Including

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• When I was hospitalized in 1992 with severe clinical depression I thought I was the only one. I didn't know of one other Christian struggling with any form of mental illness. What I didn't know then was that there are thousands and thousands of men and women who love God yet are struggling alone, in silence, full of shame. This has to end. It's time to shine the brightest light into the darkest corners of the church

  Sheila Walsh

  Christian, Struggle, Men

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• The less control people had over their work, the higher their blood pressure during work hours. Moreover, blood pressure at home was unrelated to the level of job control, indicating that the spike during work hours was specifically caused by lack of choice on the job. People with little control over their work also experienced more back pain, missed more days of work due to illness in general, and had higher rates of mental illness-the human equivalent of stereotypies, resulting in the decreased quality of life common to animals reared in captivity.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Jobs, Pain, Home

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• Forty percent of the people who are being treated for mental illness are not addressing the physical body.

  Linda Hamilton

  People, Body, Forty

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• Talk ought always to run obliquely, not nose to nose with no chance of mental escape.

  Frank Moore Colby

  Running, Noses, Chance

  Frank Moore Colby (1926). “The Colby essays ...”

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• The pool is terrible, but that doesn't have much to do with my record swims. That's all mental attitude.

  Mark Spitz

  Sports, Attitude, Swim

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• Words for mental processes are all derived from physical things.

  Robert Smithson

  Illness, Process, Physical Things

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.61, Univ of California Press

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• The strongest predictor of unhappiness is anyone who has had a mental illness in the last 10 years. It is an even stronger predictor of unhappiness than poverty - which also ranks highly.

  Polly Toynbee

  Years, Stronger, Lasts

  "It is not fanciful to make the pursuit of happiness a political imperative" by Polly Toynbee, www.theguardian.com. June 15, 2006.

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• There is a very fine line between hobby and mental illness.

  Dave Barry

  Lines, Hobbies, Fine

  Dave Barry (1998). “Dave Barry Turns 50”, Crown

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• Before you can kill a demon, you have to be able to say it's name. Names have power. While the word Alzheimer's terrorizes us, it has power over us. When we are prepared to discuss it aloud, we might have power over it. It's thought of as a mental illness and it is a physical illness, affecting the brain. There should be no shame in having it, yet people still don't talk about it

  Terry Pratchett

  Alzheimer's, Names, People

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• Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw. The second you meet someone that you're going to fall in love with you deliberately become a moron. You do this in order to fall in love, because it would be impossible to fall in love with any human being if you actually saw them for what they are.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Broken Heart, Falling In Love, Love You

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• The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.

  Walter Bagehot

  Knowing, People, Mind

  Walter Bagehot (1858). “Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen”, p.337

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• The prevalence of mental illness compels me to give it - and the people suffering from it - a voice.

  Mariel Hemingway

  Voice, People, Giving

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