1,815 Quotes About Mental-illness

When and why do we attribute a person's behavior to brain disease, and when and why do we not do so? Briefly, the answer is that we often attribute bad behavior to disease (to excuse the agent);never attribute good behavior to disease (lest we deprive the agent of credit); and typically attribute good behavior to free will and insist bad behavior called mental illness is a "no fault" act of nature.

This is the very reason that some lives end seemingly early and by their own hands because Mother Nature doesn't understand that a personage can out-age a body. It is the reason that someone unwell can look so very vibrant on the outside, giving no indication that death lurks around the corner. Souls saturated in sickness, negativity, and ill-thoughts cannot weather the years well.

There is a point where courage becomes a symptom of mental illness.

It was an oddly satisfying idea to feel bereft as I left my mother this time. We only feel bereft when we’re deprived of something meaningful.

With a damp palm, I turned the knob and cracked open the door. She was asleep in her freshly made bed. I can’t explain how relieved I felt for this simple mercy. She was here and safe on clean sheets.

My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. She’d set her coffee down, making a noise that made me look her way. I’d begun to notice her less and less often, like her colors were fading and blending in with walls. She was shrinking. Or maybe her sphere of influence in the family was shrinking. My dad glanced at her, too, and then wrote something on a napkin. He slid it across the counter to me—Don’t worry. Come home in one piece. Have fun and act like a sixteen-year-old for a change.

I have to assume that the images and information filtered through my consciousness are intrinsically relevant to these purposes that simultaneously compel and distort me. Everything exacerbates what it exasperates in an organic repetitive cycle.

You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded

I'm here, I said, but I knew, increasingly, I wasn't here, and I felt that able-to-weep-and-be-seen version of myself that I'd been with Ruth hardening again, like warm caramel left to cool.