Stigmas speak to the idea of difference and how difference shames us and those we know.

The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you’re suddenly going to believe.

But what if you simply don’t have a solid self to return to—if the way you are is seen as basically broken? And what if you can’t conceive of “normal” or “healthy” because pain and...

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.

It wasn’t that she was sad—sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only...

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,...

…all I could think about was how both sets of parents had needed to make their decision, on whether to medicate their child, in a scientific vacuum. (p. 35)

Mandy would much rather have imaginary friends who were real than real friends who were imaginary.

victimnoun ˈvik-təm 1. The moment you tell everyone you have a mental disorder, in order to excuse your behavior.

Deception’ is the word I most associate with anorexia and the treachery which comes from falsehood. The illness appears inviting. It would seem to offer something to those unwary or unlucky enough to suffer from...

Smiles are a funny thingand laughter is hilarious.I smile sometimeswhen I am delirious.

Pathological dissociation is characterized by profound, functional amnesias and significant alterations in identity; normal dissociation is expressed primarily in the form of intense absorption with internal stimuli (e.g., daydreams) or external stimuli (e.g., a fascinating...

I didn’t have the luxury of taking reality for granted. And I wouldn’t say I hated people who did, because that’s just about everyone. I didn’t hate them. They didn’t live in my world. But...

I repeat one of my mantras. ‘This is not happening. This is not real. This did not happen to you. That was someone else.

It felt like this was never going to end. The world wasn’t going to stop crashing down until there was nothing left of me but dust.

You’re surrounded by people and voices and noises, but there you are, alone and trembling inside. And you want to be invisible. (thinking) Please, don’t notice me.

There is such a thing as crazy-mother bonding. . . . It happens when one realizes the other also has had a crazy mother, and it is both painful and pleasurable. There are more crazy...

But pain’s like water. It finds a way to push through any seal. There’s no way to stop it. Sometimes you have to let yourself sink inside of it before you can learn how to...

After being hurt by the world so much, they began to see the demons within humans. So without hiding it through trickery, they worked to express it.

I admit I have Mental Illness so please no more ‘Fruit Cakes’ for Christmas Please

My heart keeps begging me for a reason to keep beating, but I’m running out of lies to tell it

Our culture treats people with depression is as if there is something wrong with them; a biological imbalance best treated with medication. But if it’s impossible to understand biology outside the context of environment, and...

We have a mental health system that is dominated by political and hidden forces that keep us stagnated and unable to see real, lasting change.

Well,’ said Can o’ Beans, a bit hesitantly,’ imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings.’Huh?’Quite so. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans’ insane...

I remembered during puberty, through the anorexic mists of intermittent menstrual cycles, that man, my father, lifting Shirley’s nightdress over her head and asking her in his mocking way to choose what colour condom she...

The sound of her phone shocked her out of the dark world that was currently playing in front of her eyes from the book in her lap. She wondered sometimes, why she bothered with books....

Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still

If only his mind were as easy to fix as his body.

what is being forced upon her.

This will sound strange, and yet I’m sure it was the point: it was a bit like being high. That, for me, anyway, had always been the attraction of drugs, to stop the brutal round...

According to Hoge and colleagues (2007), the key to reducing stigma is to present mental health care as a routine aspect of health care, similar to getting a check up or an X-ray. Soldiers need...

I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life.

As special as it is to listen to your friends argue over whether or not you have a mental illness,I’m starting to get the urge to go back to class.

1 in 5 people have dandruff. 1 in 4 people have mental health problems. I’ve had both.

I have suffered pains and torture of all natures. I have heard many say, “I am a survivor.” I am not in a boat in a sea of torture awaiting to be rescued. I am...

We got through it. Haven made excuses for me to friends, and made an appointment with a terrific doctor, who put me on Effexor, 150 milligrams a day, enough to get my brain straightened out.

There are so many moments in our life which we cannot describe with mere words. There are not enough adjectives to justify the emotions behind such moments. Those moments are your life- they define who...

Don’t ask me those questions! Don’t ask me what life means or how we know reality or why we have to suffer so much. Don’t talk about how nothing feels real, how everything is coated...

If you put the wrong foods in your body, you are contaminated and dirty and your stomach swells. Then the voice says, Why did you do that? Don’t you know better? Ugly and wicked, you...

Statistics say that a range of mental disorders affects more than one in four Americans in any given year. That means millions of Americans are totally batshit.but having perused the various tests available that they...

A nightmare has taken hold of my body. Lunacy has dug its way inside my mind.

J’ai des papillons noirs tous les jours (I have black butterflies every day)

One of them hasn’t got a uniform on or plainclothes either like the rest. He has on the white coat that is my nightmare and my horror. And in the crotch of one arm he...

In our family “whim-wham” is code, a defanged reference to any number of moods and psychological disorders, be they depressive, manic, or schizoaffective. Back in the 1970s and ’80s – when they were all straight...

We who were not so pathologically far out on the spectrum of self-involvement, we dwellers of the visible spectrum who could imagine how it felt to go beyond violet but were not ourselves beyond it,...

Sometimes the world is so much sicker than the inmates of its institutions.

In the life cycle of an intense emotion, if it isn’t acted upon, it eventually peaks and then decreases. But as Dr. Linehan explains, people with BPD have a different physiological experience with this process...

the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind’s flight made it very difficult for me to believe once i was better, that the illness was one i should willingly give up….moods are such an...

The amount of sympathy you get from having an illness is paid out like a Ponzi scheme and psychiatric disorders are all the way at the bottom.

the stigma of severe mental illness leads to prejudice and discrimination. Stigmas are negative and erroneous attitudes about these persons. Unfortunately, stigma’s impact on a person’s life may be as harmful as the direct effects...