1,815 Quotes About Mental-illness

I had insight and yet I did not; one part of me knew and understood, the rest seethe like a captured animal that yearns to get back to its own environment, it's own familiar places.

I did not and do not know for certain that I have that disease [schizophrenia]. This much I knew and know: I was making myself hideously uncomfortable by not narrowing my attention to details of life which were immediately important, and by refusing to believe what my neighbors believed.

Irwin Garden once warned me not to think the madhouses are full of 'happy nuts,' There's a tightening around the head that hurts, there's a terror of the mind that hurts even more, they're so unhappy and especially because they can't explain it to anybody.

...I am afraid, but I am conscious enough to know that there is no hope even of death in perdition, only more of the same awful suffering. It stands apart from loss, injury, or perhaps even grief, all of which are terrible, and yet are still beautiful to the dead woman, who sees them as remarkably human, and alive.

Is it a delusion, I ask myself, my belief that I am worth of respect and a "normal" happy life?

This is a very bad book you’re writing,” I said to myself behind my leaks. “I know,” I said. “You’re afraid you’ll kill yourself the way your mother did,” I said. “I know,” I said. There in the cocktail lounge, peering out through my leaks at a world of my own invention, I mouthed this word: schizophrenia. The sound and appearance of the word had fascinated me for many years. It sounded and looked to me like a human being sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes.

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 did my graduate research paper on the biochemistry of schizophrenia . Intellectually , I believe that most serious mental illness has a biological component and that the visible results are partly a personality reaction to a body that can’t be trusted .

I was a schizophrenic, not a damn invalid.