But Hey, Guess What Crazy means I’m not liablefor my actions. So screw it, I’ll go home, propped up on Prozac against distractions

She continued her own studies, principally attending to German, and to Literature; and every Sunday she went alone to the German and English chapels. Her walks too were solitary, and principally taken in the allée...

Suffering is just about the easiest of all human activities; being happy is just about the hardest. And happiness requires, not surrender to guilt, but emancipation from guilt.

Even if we’re among the lucky few who benefit from civilization, we find ourselves curiously unsatisfied, plagued by stress, worry, and conflict… Like the addict who believes against all evidence that what he can’t give...

The result was I went nowhere.

I felt Mr Willard had deserted me. I thought he must have planned it all along, but Buddy said No, his father simply couldn’t stand the sight of sickness and especially his own son’s sickness,...

So, what role does memory play in the understanding and treatment of trauma? There is a form of implicit memory that is profoundly unconscious and forms the basis for the imprint trauma leaves on the...

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...

As a child I had been taken to see Dr Bradshaw on countless occasions; it was in his surgery that Billy had first discovered Lego. As I was growing up, I also saw Dr Robinson,...

Well, I totally understand why people take huge drugs. Like heroin, or cocaine. I can understand why you would want to be literally out of your own head, because being in your own head is...

They’re simply seeking an interlude from emotional pain and searing mental agony, a sleep from which they’ll awaken to discover they’re the person they always wanted to be.

Breathe. Relax. This too shall pass.

Severe mental illness has been likened to drug addiction, prostitution, and criminality (37,38). Unlike physical disabilities, persons with mental illness are perceived by the public to be in control of their disabilities and responsible for...

Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome.

Results of two independent factor analyses of the survey responses of more than 2000 English and American citizens parallel these findings (19,33):- fear and exclusion: persons with severe mental illness should be feared and, therefore,...

Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system and this is plausible because when an individual doesn’t fit into the system it causes...

It is not depression or anxiety that truly hurts us. It is our active resistance against these states of mind and body. If you wake up with low energy, hopeless thoughts, and a lack of...

Dishonoring what we feel is an epidemic that has us self-medicating as a culture and trying to numb ourselves.

You know how most illnesses have symptoms you can recognize? Like fever, upset stomach, chills, whatever. Well, with manic depression, it’s sexual promiscuity, excessive spending, and substance abuse – and that just sounds like a...

There may not be any romance to mental illness but who needs romance when the preferable route is agency? The prevailing conversation around mental health issues is agency and the lack thereof on the part...

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...

The most terrifying aspect of human health is our refusal to take steps to help ourselves and the fact that we are so often responsible for our own demise through lack of positive action.

me.”As if we could scrape the color off the iris and still see.

The men and women who continue to hold Lynn’s mind hostage against her will believe the future will be tilled with terrorism, death, destruction and a challenge to the survival of America. They believe Lynn...

What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but it empties today of its strength. It does not make you escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with...

Then the weeks rolled by in a sinister psych ward haze filled with white-coated orderlies and rocking whack-job patients torn straight from some old Jack Nicholson film, all anti-psychotic meds and padded lonely cells…

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...