My painful memories sift through me like sand through stretched fingers. Only small pieces cling and stay around for me to keep, the rest just disappear. I know not where and I don’t

The depression was not incapacitating. It made it hard to take a lot of my suburban life seriously, but that was inextricably mingled with a growing consciousness of the larger brutalities of the world. Ethiopian...

Many so-called disorders of the mind are simply disorders of thought.

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...

Logan looked at her and wondered how someone so beautiful could be so oblivious to their own beauty, how someone so smart could be so foolish to the extent of their own intellect and how...

Have you ever suddenly realized it’s someone else’s mood swing and you’re just along for the ride?

The authors analyzed 695 news items. The content of 47.9% (n = 333) of the articles was not strictly related to mental illness, but rather clinical or psychiatric terms were used metaphorically, and frequently in...

The thing about people who are truly and malignantly crazy: their real genius is for making the people around them think they themselves are crazy. In military science this is called Psy-Ops, for your info.

I’ve never had anorexia, but I know it well. I see it on the street, in the gaunt and sunken face, the boney chest, the spindly arms of an emaciated woman. I’ve come to recognize...

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

Uncommon anxiety came to us in common hours when other people were doing mundane things like taking out the trash or checking their phones. But there was nothing to be done for this. We couldn’t...

Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel says we are who we are because of what we learn and what we remember. Who am I, then, if my memory is impaired?

Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don’t understand.

People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.

Haymitch isn’t thinking of arenas, but something else. “Johanna’s back in the hospital.”I assumed Johanna was fine, had passed her exam, but simply wasn’t assigned to a sharp shooters’ unit. She’s wicked with a throwing...

The vision I see in the mirror is me, who I am, supposedly, but that vision does not express the way my mind works or the way I feel inside. A realization creeps over me,...

The exegesis Fat labored on month after month struck me as a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one — in this case an attempt by a beleaguered mind to make sense out of the...

Social psychologist argued that even severe mental illness was the result of society labeling unusual behavior rather than of biochemical processes.

the essential feature of the Dissociative Disorders is a disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity,or perception

I’m not manic-just happy. It has been such a long time since I was happy. Please join me on my magic carpet for now.

Anger’s like a battery that leaks acid right out of meAnd it starts from the heart ’til it reaches my outer me

No one would ever say that someone with a broken arm or a broken leg is less than a whole person, but people say that or imply that all the time about people with mental...

If the social stress is physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, the way to treat the depression is to stop the abuse. Unfortunately, advocates of the biochemical treatment of depression have gone along with the view...

I was always asking myself why. Why am I feeling this? Thinking that if I knew the cause I could find the cure. But of course there was no reasonable why, at least not in...

Toni hears voices,” said Trapp. “But who is this Dr. Ellsworth to tell her she’s a schizophrenic? Maybe she just perceives better than the rest of us. Maybe the voices she hears are just uncommunicated...

But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it’s a very long fall, and we hit the ground...

It’s not about blame or wallowing…you are all molded by so much more than a dysfunctional past, and you must ultimately take responsibility for creating the life you want.

I’ll say it again – mental illness is a physical illness. You wouldn’t consider going up to someone suffering from Alzheimers to yell, “Come on, get with it, you remember where you left your keys?”...

My therapist told me that I over-analyze everything. I explained to him that he only thinks this because of his unhappy relationship with his mother.

There are sins much more serious than socio-pathologies which really are mental illnesses, whereas self-righteousness is an illness of the soul.

…if in the heat of the dispute he insists and asks, ‘Am I not the master of throwing myself out of the window?’ I shall answer him, no; that whilst he preserves his reason there...

Are you crazy? It’s a common phrase, I know. But it means something particular to me: the tunnels, the security screens, the plastic forks, the shimmering, ever-shifting borderline that like all boundaries beckons and asks...

You cannot make yourself have a flashback, nor will you have one unless you are emotionally ready to remember something. Once remembered, the memory can help you to face more of the truth. You can...

Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren’t alone, that there is hope, then...

Cause I’d rather stay hereWith all the madmenThan perish with the sadmen roaming freeAnd I’d rather play hereWith all the madmenFor I’m quite content they’re all as saneAs me

When i spend too much time in my head, focused on things in the past or things in the future… when i lose sight of the present, i fold in on myself, mentally, my thoughts...

I see things in windows and I say to myself that I want them. I want them because I want to belong. I want to be liked by more people, I want to be held...

Bipolar illness, manic depression, manic-depressive illness, manic-depressive psychosis. That’s a nice way of saying you will feel so high that no street drug can compete and you will feel so low that you wish you...

I do not have a split mind. I am not different people. I am myself, the same self I have always been, the one person I can never escape.

Prideful fool. It hurt his feelings that he couldn’t make my crazy go away. You know how men are. Always trying to fix things can’t be fixed.

Thirty seconds of pure awareness is a long time, especially after a lifetime of escaping yourself at all costs.

For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people’s faces.

Can you admit on here that you have an affliction for millions of other people to see? Then that is great and a huge step towards your recovery.

conditions”?

The depressed person is mired in the past; the manic person is obsessed with the future. Both destroy the present in the process.

Your mother is going to be fine,” the nurse says. I breathe more easily but the word settles into my stomach. Fine. Was she fine before?

it has to be emphasized that if the pain were readily describable most of the countless sufferers from this ancient affliction would have been able to confidently depict for their friends and loved ones (even...

I have suffered from depression for most of my life. It is an illness.

What’s the difference between sanity and madness anyway? We all play headgames with ourselves. We all have baggage. We all cope somehow. I’m not sure if I’m mad or sane. I mean, I hold my...

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...