Quotes About Stigma

When you're depressed, everyone has an opinion about what you should do. People seem to think that not only are you depressed, you are also stupid.

Suffer from depression. That's right. It is suffering. A person does not just have depression. She suffers from it.

Call someone 'a schizophrenic' or 'a borderline' [and it] lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers.

I look at other people and think, He lives without meds. She does. What is wrong with me? Am I so biochemically screwed up, so neurotic, so narcissistically self-absorbed that every hour is an obstacle course for me?

Reverend Ipe realized that his daughter had by now developed a "reputation" and was unlikely to find a husband. He decided that since she couldn't have a husband there was no harm in her having an education.

Someone else said she was a rapevictim (which was a word in every language).

He's too obese, I thought to myself.

Doctors may recommend the operation out of concern for their patients' health, but the stigma of obesity is clearly what drives many patients to the operating room.

He was raised without a proper diagnosis.

You're at the crack addict's apartment? Having a little sandwich? he says. From the tone of his voice, you'd think I just told him I was hanging out at a playground wearing a NAMBLA t-shirt.

When strangers saw him cowering and shivering and skittering, they all assumed he'd had a dramatically abusive past. And by "all," I mean every single person who saw him. Each one felt the need to make sad faces and say, "Awwww, look at how scared he is. He must be a rescue." I quickly got to the point where I wanted to say, "Actually, no, he's a purebred, but I beat him." Thin

You know, American alcoholics are pretty fucking hard to insult.

It was a newsflash to me that dating as a pre-thirty divorcette was as bad as having herpes.

Used books are the sluts of the literary world. Passed around from person to person, spreading their pages for anyone, getting cheaper and cheaper until eventually they end up in prison.

I used to think it utterly normal that I suffered from "suicidal ideation" on an almost daily basis. In other words, for as long as I can remember, the thought of ending my life came to me frequently and obsessively.

Enthusiats are used to being mocked, maligned and misunderstood. We don't really mind.

Mental health is one of the last great taboos.

He thought that fat boys were probably only allowed to love pretty girls inside. If he told anyone how he felt (not that he had anyone to tell), that person would probably laugh until he had a heart-attack.

men were not so much gifted with penises as cursed with them.

You know what, kid? It's guys like you who give reading a bad name.

People assume any twentieth-century white male writer must be an alcoholic.

The problem is that everybody treats teenagers like they're stupid.

The worst thing about working as a caregiver is not what you might think. It's not the lifting and cleaning, the medicines and wipes, and the distant but somehow always perceptible smell of disinfectant. It's not even the fact that most people assume you're only doing it because you really aren't smart enough to do anything else. It's the fact that when you spend all day in proximity to someone, there is no escape from their moods. Or your own.

There is nothing more disconcerting to passers-by than to see a man in a wheelchair pleading with a woman who is meant to be looking after him. It's apparently not really the done thing to be angry with your disabled charge. Especially