You're only responsible for yourself, Jess. And that's the only person you can control. Other people will either get it or they won't but you can't define yourself by their opinions.

Sometimes, the hallucinations are visual and olfactory as well and make the world full of actual threats into a writhing hell of inescapable terrorization. Though many schizophrenics become curiously...

If I decide to end my life, psychologically I wouldn't have to go far, because mentally and emotionally I am more prepared for this than for the unplanned daily perturbations marking each morning and...

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

Depressed people cannot lead a revolution because depressed people can barely manage to get out of bed and put on their shoes and socks.

Maybe I'd always been broken and dark inside.

Youth is the hardest time in life. One seldom hears of an old person committing suicide.

And later my macabre joy sours and I'm weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing "I just want to be loved," cursing the earth and everything I have been taught:...

Without keeping up a merciless guard, day and night, the variety of forward opinions in this world could easily destroy one's sanity.

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

His date kept saying to him, "How horrible . . . Don't, darling. Please, don't. Not here." Imagine giving somebody a feel and telling them about a guy committing suicide at the same time! They killed...

A human being can bear a week of thirst, fourteen days of hunger, several years without a roof, but cannot endure loneliness.

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

Worry divides the mind. The biblical word for worry {merimnao} is a compound of two Greek words, merizo {"to divide"} and nous {"the mind"}. Anxiety splits our energy between today's priorities and...

The cancer I don't have is everywhere, now.

Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by

Americans believe that alcoholism is a disease and the alcoholic a sick person who needs help and treatment. The NCA

I was not happy as a child, although from time to time I was content. I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

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...

Because of your twisted thinking, you see yourself in a trap from which there seems to be no escape. You jump to the conclusion that your problems are insoluble. Because your suffering feels...

I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything.

He wasn't going to send her to any hospital. He knew that now. At a hospital they'd just start shooting her full of drugs and tell her to adjust. What they wouldn't see is that she is adjusting....

The pain is different. Pain doesn't know what distance is. The pain comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden revelations that cut your knees, take away your sight, and disturb the flow of your days.

Yet most of the time that I'm awake, I want to cut. Not small words either. Equivocate. Inarticulate. Duplicitous. At my hospital back in Illinois they would not approve of this craving.

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...

The goal and meaning of individual life {which is the only real life} no longer lie in individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and...

That we are bound to the earth does not mean that we cannot grow; on the contrary it is the sine qua non of growth. No noble, well-grown tree ever disowned its dark roots, for it grows not only upward...