Quotes About Mental health

A child born today in the United Kingdom stands a ten times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university.... This can be taken as an indication that we are driving our children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating them. Perhaps it is our way of educating them that is driving them mad.

Schizophrenic behaviour is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.

A psychiatrist who professes to be a healer of souls, but who keeps people asleep, treats them for waking up, and drugs them asleep again (increasingly effectively as this field of technology sharpens its weapons), helps to drive them crazy.

A mental healer may be a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist may or may not be a mental healer.

She'd poured so much of herself into keeping it buried, sometimes it felt like any energy she might have had for joy or love or light went there instead. You only had so much to give. So…

And I think that you do not understand that sometimes the only choice is between acceptance and madness.

Sometimes the only choice is between acceptance and madness.

Asylums had originated in France in the seventeenth century, under the influence of Louis XIV, who, during the 1660s, locked up anyone likely to oppose him in a giant police operation described by Foucault as 'the Great Confinement', when over 6,000 people were incarcerated in the Hôpital Général.

You were suffering depersonalization, which is when you feel divorced from your own personal self. You don't feel your own bodily sensations or emotions. The world seems hazy, and your connection with yourself breaks down." "I have that a lot. What causes it?" "A traumatic childhood, usually in the early stages of differentiation of self, combined with high anxiety levels.

the goal is to bring unconscious material forward into the conscious mind so that patients no longer act on their powerful but unconscious needs.

she had her own boundaries, she'd no longer need the alternate personalities.

Is it better to feel or to maintain your sanity?

Obsessions are unwanted, intrusive thoughts that trigger anxiety

Compulsions are behaviours a person engages in to get rid of the obsessions and reduce anxiety

perfectionism didn't foster a healthy work ethic; instead, it promoted workaholic behaviour. And workaholism is another compulsion—you work because you feel anxious when you're not working.

excellent tracker; it was also his PTSD. People who have PTSD are hyper-alert. Their immune system never rests—it's seen so much danger that it's scanning the environment constantly. That's part of what makes PTSD so hard to live with.

One of the big risks in treating depersonalization—the condition where one loses all sense of identity—is what happens when that person regains a sense of self.

Rather, it's a matter of getting your unconscious to stop controlling your conscious mind. Effective therapy is about lowering your defences so that you can deal with the issues that arise in your life.

The stronger a person's boundaries are, the healthier that person is;

The only thing you will ever accomplish by worrying is to elevate your stress levels

So I know. It's an illness, just like it says in the phrase. It's not a moral failing. It's funny how people have empathy for a physical illness. They see it as bad luck, and they never question whether you can help it. But mental illness we still treat with shame.

But when I was inside, I was always OK. So I just started staying inside. Like I told you before, it gets to be an addiction.

See now why I hate to go outside so much?" "Yeah. I guess I do. But you gotta do it anyway, right? I mean, it's life. You gotta do life. Right?" "Not really," Billy said. "You don't have to. Lots of people don't do life any more. They just stop at some point. And once you stop, it's really hard to get started again. But then, once you get started again, it's kind of hard to stop.

Only I can control the messages in my head. I may not have installed them, but, with great effort and a lot of practice, I can at least choose what to play at what time. These are the best two life lessons I ever learned on a tough trail in the great outdoors: One, not to look up and see how far I still have to climb. Instead to look back and see how far I've climbed already. When I see what I just did, I know I can do what comes next. Given time. And, two, to give myself time.