I had some experience in dealing with people who have mental illness and depression, but I didn't see the signs in myself. I couldn't ask for help because I didn't know I needed help.
Supposedly there's an actual, researched link between extreme creativity and mental illness, and I believe it because I've seen it with my own eyes.
We have to get the word out that mental illnesses can be diagnosed and treated, and almost everyone suffering from mental illness can live meaningful lives in their communities.
The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.
Most people, if you live in a big city, you see some form of schizophrenia every day, and it’s always in the form of someone homeless. “Look at that guy - he’s crazy. He looks dangerous.” Well, he’s on the streets because of mental illness. He probably had a job and a home...
It's really important to share the idea that being different might feel like a problem at the time, but ultimately diversity is a strength.
The guilt I felt for having a mental illness was horrible. I prayed for a broken bone that would heal in six weeks. But that never happened. I was cursed with an illness that nobody could see and nobody knew much about.
I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and feeling are thick and dense.
It is an odd paradox that a society, which can now speak openly and unabashedly about topics that were once unspeakable, still remains largely silent when it comes to mental illness.
You can't patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.
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.
You can feel like a mental patient, but that doesn't mean you have to act like one.
The only way past the pain is through it. Pain, grief, anger, misery...they don't go away-they just increase and compound and get worse. You have to live through them, acknowledge them. You have to give your pain its due.
In an ideal world, it would not take a film star to get the media focused on mental illness.
Once my loved one accepted the diagnosis, healing began for the entire family, but it took too long. It took years. Can't we, as a nation, begin to speed up that process? We need a national campaign to destigmatize mental illness, especially one targeted toward African Americans. The message must go on billboards and in radio and TV public service announcements. It must be preached from pulpits and discussed in community forums. It's not shameful to have a mental illness. Get treatment. Recovery is possible.
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.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.
Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.
The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.
For too long we have swept the problems of mental illness under the carpet... and hoped that they would go away.
Mental illness can happen to anybody. You can be a dustman, a politician, a Tesco worker... anyone. It could be your dad, your brother or your aunt.
Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses, not lifestyle choices.
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