I can’t answer you in a nutshell. We wouldn’t fit unless we saw the same shrink.

We all have problems, but let’s not kid ourselves: it’s how we deal with them that makes the difference.

You can actually eat yourself into a better mood and get rid of depressive thoughts and melancholy.

My mother smiled. “I knew my baby wasn’t like that.”I looked at her. “Like what?””Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital.” She paused. “I knew you’d decide to be all right...

When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain...

They’ll want to kill the crazies first. Big fish eat little fish — always have, always will.

If you aren’t paranoid before you arrive in this city, give it a few weeks and you will soon notice it creeping in, dripping into your subconscious like a leaky tap. The trick is not...

We are particularly concerned with the question to what degree approval and implementation of an explanatory model minimising collective or institutional responsibility for certain problems and emphasising individual responsibility promotes detrimental perceptions and behaviours amongst...

Self-esteem is not a luxury; it is a profound spiritual need.

There’s something to that in both directions,” said Ekaterin mildly. “Nothing is more guaranteed to make one start acting like a child than to be treated like one. It’s so infuriating. It took me the...

The process is important, regardless of the outcome, just ask Schacter.(…)mental health… is not a destination but a process. It’s about how you drive, not where you’re going. The therapist is like a driving instuctor,...

Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well...

Accelerated Rehabilitation had a scientific sound, as if Pierre would rehabilitate faster and faster in an elliptical path until evaporating in a blue flash of pure mental health.

A disruption of the circadian cycle—the metabolic and glandular rhythms that are central to our workaday life—seems to be involved in many, if not most, cases of depression; this is why brutal insomnia so often...

It’s hard to feel supported when you can’t tell people everything. People haven’t really got a clue what it’s like. It’s hard to trust anyone. It’s hard to believe people won’t let you down. I’m...

Bipolar robs you of that which is you. It can take from you the very core of your being and replace it with something that is completely opposite of who and what you truly are....

What was wrong with me? Why could I not just flip the switch and see all the brightness ahead if only I chose the correct path? Or rather, why could I see the correct path...

The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die.

The healing process is best described as a spiral. Survivors go through the stages once, sometimes many times; sometimes in one order, sometimes in another. Each time they hit a stage again, they move up...

Lucy had to guard her reputation – her reputation for sanity – the way that a woman a hundred years before would have had to guard her reputation for virtue.

At cocktail parties, I played the part of a successful businessman’s wife to perfection. I smiled, I made polite chit-chat, and I dressed the part. Denial and rationalization were two of my most effective tools...

Why should one think thay are okay mentally? Making a study of ourselves is the best solution to our society.Our minds are so complex and if we don’t have an avenue to explore, we just...

Watch your thoughts, for they will become the words of people you draw to yourself.

Be present and aware of the privilege of living.

One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. In my opinion, living with...

You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.

Maybe we all have darkness inside of us and some of us are better at dealing with it than others.

Holding one’s self responsible is a critical feature in stigma and in the generation of shame since violation of standards, rules, and goals are insufficient in its elicitation unless responsibility can be placed on the...

An intensely gripping narrative…expertly crafted and totally addictive…a must read!

To the men and women who changed Cheryl Hersha’s life, she was a continuation of the research that had first been conducted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Dr. Morton Prince. He...

Pierre Janet, a French professor of psychology who became prominent in the early twentieth century, attempted to fully chronicle late- Victorian hysteria in his landmark work The Major Symptoms of Hysteria. His catalogue of symptoms...

Fat realized that one of two possibilities existed and only two; either Dr. Stone was totally insane – not just insane but totally so – or else in an artful, professional fashion he had gotten...

Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor?Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest.Macbeth: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,...

When the black thing was at its worst, when the illicit cocktails and the ten-mile runs stopped working, I would feel numb as if dead to the world. I moved unconsciously, with heavy limbs, like...

Everybody struggles with this stuff, you know. With social discomfort and grief and fitting in. People with syndromes, people with disorders, people with diagnoses, and without. People who would be classified as neurotypical. Idiots and...

Nothing. That’s why it’s funny. It’s so bad I just think it’s funny,’ Renee says, tilting her head back so the chips don’t fall out of her mouth.‘Do you really?’‘If I don’t laugh about it...

Genuine self esteem – please understand this – genuine self esteem is not competitive or comparative. Genuine self esteem isn’t expressed by self-glorification at the expense of others, or by trying to make yourself superior...

Nobody feels ashamed of going to the dentist; it’s socially appropriate to take care of your teeth, even preventively. In short, it’s more normal to take care of our dental health than our mental health...

The reason I don’t Kill Myselfis because I know I can.

I moved in front of the medicine cabinet. If I looked in the mirror while I did it, it would be like watching somebody else, in a book or a play.

Suicide and mental health problems have no boundaries.

I remember, when I was about ten years old, working out that I would be thirty-six in the year 2000. It seemed so far away, so old, so unreal. And here I am, a fucked,...

Just as sometimes I wondered if Grandpa had ever existed, sometimes I wondered if I truly existed myself. As I was running, I could see myself from outside myself: a skinny girl with the flapping...

The doctor’s words made me understand what happened to me was a dark, evil, and shameful secret, and by association I too was dark, evil, and shameful. While it may not have been their intention,...

I have spent years … clinging to the understanding that Iwas a defective biological unit …. This may truly be a valuableperspective for those who observe mental illness, but forme, as a subject, this tree...

The DSM-IV-TR is a 943-page textbook published by the American Psychiatric Association that sells for $99…There are currently 374 mental disorders. I bought the book…and leafed through it…I closed the manual. “I wonder if I’ve...

The most important thing in defining child sexual abuse is the experience of the child. It takes very little for a child’s world to be devastated. A single experience can have a profound impact on...

When you are depressed you feel alone, and that no one is going through quite what you are going through. You are so scared of appearing in any way mad you internalise everything, and you...

Truth and justice are commonly found in the personality of the paranoid delusional

I resolved to come right to the point. “Hello,” I said as coldly as possible, “we’ve got to talk.””Yes, Bob,” he said quietly, “what’s on your mind?” I shut my eyes for a moment, letting...