Quotes About Mental health

Do we risk making the world a blander, more homogenized place if we get rid of the genes for manic-depressive illness

I can't think, I can't calm this murderous cauldron, my grand ideas of an hour ago seem absurd and pathetic, my life is in ruins and - worse still - ruinous; my body is uninhabitable. It is raging and weeping and full of destruction and wild energy gone amok. In the mirror I see a creature I don't know but must live with and share my mind with. I understand why Jekyll killed himself before Hyde had taken over completely.

For several weeks, I drank vodka in my orange juice before setting off for school in the mornings, and I thought obsessively about killing myself.

But then as night inevitably goes after the day, my mood would crash, and my mind again would grind to a halt.

My mind was flying high that day, courtesy of whatever witches' brew of neurotransmitters God had programmed into my genes, and I filled page after page with what I am sure, thinking back on it, were very strange responses.

I did not wake up one day to find myself mad. Life should be so simple.

Mood disorders , in addition to exhibiting seasonal patterns, frequently show pronounced diurnal rhythms as well.

and increased energy)

He was twenty years old when he left New England. By the age of thirty he had exchanged Protestantism for Catholicism, anonymity for literary acclaim, and sanity for madness.

In one study carried out in Australia, for instance, 40 percent of those who acknowledged thinking about suicide at one point in their lives, when asked the same questions four years later denied ever having had such thoughts.

Suicide, it can be seen, is the second major killer of women in this age group and the fourth major killer of men. By any standards, suicide is a critical public health problem.

They can try acupuncture, they can try ECT, they can try a frontal lobotomy, none of it will work. I am a hopeless case. I have lost my angel. I have lost my mind. The days are too long, too heavy; my bones are crushing under the weight of these days.

Disconcertingly, one of the highest-risk periods for suicide is when patients are actually recovering from depression.

The horror of profound depression, and the hopelessness that usually accompanies it, are hard to imagine for those who have not experienced them. Because the despair is private, it is resistant to clear and compelling description.

I'm not a shrink. Never been to one. Shot a couple. Don't think that counts.

Schizo. It didn't matter how many times Dr. Gill compared it to a disease or physical disability, it wasn't the same thing. It just wasn't. I had schizophrenia. If I saw two guys on the sidewalk, one in a wheelchair and one talking talking to himself, which would I rush to open a door for, and which would I cross the road to avoid?

I seemed to be establishing a pattern here. Muster my strength and charge forward. Collapse in a puddle of grief and guilt. Charge forward. Collapse again. I said as much to Daniel and the others chimed in, making mock bets on who would spend the most time in therapy after this, and whether we could get group discounts.

What a Life: Give some of us pills to stop a fit, give the rest shock to start one.

There's no doubt in my mind that McMurphy's won, but I'm not sure what.

Then the trembling starts to get worse. This must be how they begin, he thinks. Freak-outs. Breakdowns. Crack-ups. Eventually shut-ins and finally cross-offs. But first the cover-up . . .

One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

I think apparatus burned out all over the ward trying to adjust to her come busting in like she did-took electronic readings on her and calculated they weren't built to handle something like this on the ward, and just burned out, like machines committing suicide.

Billy here has been talkin' about slicin' his wrists again, so is there seven of you guys who'd like to join him and make it therapeutic?

They're out there. First line of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.