121 Quotes About Stigma

No one would ever say that someone with a broken arm or a broken leg is less than a whole person, but people say that or imply that all the time about people with mental illness.

...the issue becomes not whether a person has experience with a stigma of his own, because he has, but rather how many varieties he has had his own experience with.

I had people saying 'it's all in your head'. Do you honestly think I want to feel this way?

In reviewing his own moral career, the stigmatized individual may single out and retrospectively elaborate experiences which serve for him to account for his coming to the beliefs and practices that he now has regarding his own kind and normals.

We should give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. We shouldn't shoot ourselves down before putting ourselves up there.

If addicts are to overcome the stigma of addiction, professionals and nonprofessionals must educate the public.

When we think of addicts, we seldom associate the word discrimination.

I'm often asked why I got out when so many didn't. I've mentioned the high school teacher who stopped me in the hall for my assistance in a school performance. Before that man, whose name is Stan Asher, no one had ever looked at me or spoken to me as though I had value. For me, that's the key. Otherwise, I probably would have gone on believing that I was intrinsically bad, with nothing to offer. I believe that many in that house were never offered a positive image of themselves.

I backed off. Ever since obesity had become a social issue on top of a personal one, big people must have encountered the conviction that what they ate was everyone else's business. In truth that chocolate bar did feel intensely like my business, but only because he was my brother. Whenever he ate rich or sweet things around me I got agitated, no less so than if he'd carved himself with a razor blade in plain view.