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...

On Major Depression, quoted by the great William Styron of Sophie’s Choice & Darkness Visible:From Darkness Visible, William Styron”It is a positive and active anguish, a sort of psychical neuralgia, wholly unknown to normal life.

We’re all just people making decisions and accepting consequences as we march toward an impending and inevitable death.

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

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...

I had people saying ‘it’s all in your head’. Do you honestly think I want to feel this way?

The stigmatization and the excruciating pains of social alienationhave compelled most victims to conceal their status while themalevolent ones continue to distribute the virus free of charge tounsuspecting men and women

I could go into their reality any time I chose to, but they could never come into mine. This is what I called ‘helping’ them.

Why, when you have a mental disease, is it always considered an act of imagination? Why is it that every organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy except the brain?

The mentally ill frighten and embarrass us. And so we marginalize the people who most need our acceptance. What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation.

…it really struck me that, just as people might look at me and never imagine I’d worked as a prostitute, they must look at some of those girls and see only the alienation and disaffection...