Quotes About Depression

ONE OF THE REASONS that depression is so problematic—and deadly, leading to many of the forty thousand suicides in the United States each year—is that people are often loath to admit they are suffering, let alone explore it in detail.

one cognitive symptom of depression may be the loss of optimistic, self-enhancing biases that normally protect healthy people against assaults to their self-esteem. In many instances, depressives may simply be judging themselves and the world much more accurately than non-depressed people, and finding it not a pretty place.

I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.

Note the word "insight." In many cases, insight is precisely what depressed people lack: they fail to see the clearly good things about their lives. But the same forces that hold comfort at bay can lead, in the right circumstances, to valuable perspectives on the world.

When Lincoln was thirty-two, he wrote, "I am now the most miserable man living.

Withdrawal is an essential feature of depression, and once withdrawn a person can grow steadily more awkward in company.

Many chronic depressives find simple small talk to be a Herculean challenge.

people often said that Lincoln had two distinct moods. But those who knew him well saw, as Ficklin did, that he "was naturally despondent and sad." It's not that his moods turned in a cycle, as day gives way to night, but that he lived in the night and made a strong effort to bring the sun in. "Gloom and sadness were his predominant state," said Herndon.

The verb "un-man" is defined in a nineteenth-century dictionary as "to break or subdue the manly spirit in; to cause to despond; to dishearten; to make womanish." In other words, there was a sense that truly going off the deep end—being unable to work or function, as happens in the disease of depression—ran contrary to true masculinity.

A person who has one parent or sibling with major depression is one and a half to three times more likely than the general population to experience it.

William Styron says his depression was like a storm in his brain, punctuated by a thunder of self-critical, fearful, despairing thoughts—one clap following another in an endless night. Oppressed by these thoughts, people often become hopeless. Hopelessness, in an extreme form, leads people to think that only one thing can break the cycle, and that is suicide.

a first severe episode of depression: people who struggle to recover take some pride in their ability to have overcome such a dismal time. If a second severe episode hits, it can be much worse. "Depression is the most difficult when people get better and then get sick again," says the psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi.

I can see that you're down in the dumps, Unc. Shall we stop working and call Toni?" "And then what?" "I don't know. But if it so happens that I'm more of your type . . . Would you like me to give you a blow job? That really does the trick when you're feeling depressed.

Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling.

Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.

Unacknowledged privilege and the subtle or blatant use of power over others inevitably create division, anger, disempowerment, depression, shame, and disconnection.

Within depression, if my existence is on the verge of collapsing, its lack of meaning is not tragic--it appears obvious to me, glaring and inescapable.

The depressed person is a radical, sullen atheist.

The depressed narcissist mourns not an Object but the Thing. Let me posit the "Thing" as the real that does not lend itself to signification, the center of attraction and repulsion, seat of the sexuality from which the object of desire will become separated... the Thing is an imagined sun, bright and black at the same time.

When we are angry or depressed in our creativity, we have misplaced our power. We have allowed someone else to determine our worth, and then we are angry at being undervalued.

My parents were born in 1906 and 1907. I think the experience of the Depression greatly influenced the way they thought about the world.

I don't watch too much television because I want to write something, and you never want to be influenced by other things that are on - and if they're really funny it'll just depress me because it's something I'm not a part of.

Understanding the true causes of the Depression, as well as the real economic record of the United States in the 1930s, is an essential ingredient in anyone's economic and historical education.

Get away from the place that makes you feel comfortable with your depression. The reality is it's never as bad as the insanity you've created in your head.