By four o'clock, I've discounted suicide in favor of killing everyone else in the entire world instead.

I don't know if you've ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist.

If you have always suspected your sister of an inclination to madness, it will be my pleasure to confirm your worst fears.

I don't like people. They fuck me up.

In fact, many features of hypomania — such as outgoingness, increased energy, intensified sexuality, increased risk-taking, persuasiveness, self-confidence, and heightened productivity — have been...

True insanity, as frightening as it might be, gives a sort of obliviousness to the chaos in a life. People who commit suicide are struggling to order their existence, and when they see it's a losing...

I have started taking the pills and I pray that everyone is right, that I have been sabotaged by my own brain chemicals. And that the little blue pill is going to put things right again.

For me, school had been a Darwinian exercise. A daily attack of ridicule, abuse, and isolation.

Actually, he hadn't just complained; she'd come home from school one afternoon and found him stabbing his paperback edition with a steak knife, the tip of the blade penetrating the cover and sinking...

By the time we hit the streets they were silent and closed in on us, and they had assumed the Nonchalant Look, an expression that said, I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor....

Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.

Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression.

To my embarrassment, I was crying again. Real girl tears for the second time, these ones born out of frustration. That didn't happen to me very often, but I hated it when it did. It was faulty wiring...

Third, you learn to make different explanations, called reattributions, and use them to dispute your automatic thoughts.

My sense of urgency is very simple,' said the professor, 'I've remembered that much. It's because what I have to remember has to do with time running out. And that's what anxiety is, in a lot of...

This work led cognitive therapists such as Aaron Beck, David D. Burns, and Albert Ellis to build treatment around the idea that our thoughts shape our emotions, not the other way around. By changing...

As I've been alluding to, my one saving grace is distraction. It keeps me sane. It helps me cope, considering the length of time I've been performing this job. The trouble is, who could ever replace...

Leonard and Virginia married in August 1912. Virginia was 30. Soon after her marriage she suffered another breakdown and her mental health declined sporadically over the following year, culminating in...

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.

You're not dead, but you're not alive, either. You're a wintergirl, Lia - Lia, caught in between the worlds. You're a ghost with a beat

It might have helped us considerably to have been shown, perhaps through some simple exercises in elementary school, that we are not our thoughts, that we can watch them come and go and learn not to...

Rebuilding of the self in and after depression requires love, insight, work, and, most of all, time.

The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling.

Although anxiety is part of life, never let it control you.

Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by

If the comments are wrong, there is really nothing for you to be upset about. On the other hand, if the criticism is accurate, there is still no reason for you to feel overwhelmed. You're not expected...

Just … No, Amy. Not right now. I can't take one more bit of stress. I can't handle one more thing to worry about. I am cracking under the pressure. I will snap. For once I know he's telling the...

Do all kids have to worry about their parents' mental health? The way society is set up, parents are supposed to be the grown-up ones and look after the kids, but a lot of times it's the other way...

I still had my own notions. How McMurphy was a giant come out of the sky to save us from the combine that was networking the land with copper wire and crystal

I was always a good girl. I was a straight-A student, top of my class. I did as I was told. I was polite to my elders. I was good to my siblings. I went to church. It was very easy to hide how very...