David Harbour Quotes

A first visit to a madhouse is always a shock.

Well, many insane people and seriously mentally ill people seem very reasonable.

I have a very intimate knowledge of the world of the mentally ill and of life inside of, especially, public hospitals and the way people are treated in there and the way that they try to survive in there.

Could I pass a week in the insane ward at Blackwell's Island? I said I could and I would. And I did.

There is no such thing as mental illness, hence also no such thing as psychotherapy.

You know, ever since man had any notion that some of his other people, his colleagues, could be different, could be strange, could be severely depressed or what we now recognize as schizophrenia, he was certain that this kind of illness had to come from evil spirits getting into the body.

I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat.

When I was a visitor to a lunatic asylum I always noticed how well the worst lunatics looked.

Public safety is too important to be left to psychiatry.

Our mental health system is broken, and we should fix it.

Depression has existed as long as mankind itself, and certainly well before psychiatry, antidepressant medication, or the nation of America itself came into being.

It's like any other part of your body - your mental health gets sick, and it needs treatment.

Mentally ill people come from all belief systems.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

Many people think it's in bad taste to advertise for an insane asylum... but come on down. We're going crazy.

For mental illnesses, we need better access to treatment and diagnosis.

Because my father was a psychiatric nurse, I know my way around the system.

Psycho 11 and III say, in effect, there's no way to survive with a psychological problem. If you've got it, the law can keep you locked up because there's no chance for cure.

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.

Nothing defines the quality of life in a community more clearly than people who regard themselves, or whom the consensus chooses to regard, as mentally unwell.

Psychiatrists don't solve anything from one day to the next.

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.

What is the most innocent place in any country? Is it not the insane asylum? These people drift through life truly innocent, unable to see into themselves at all.

We must stop criminalizing mental illness. It's a national tragedy and scandal that the L.A. County Jail is the biggest psychiatric facility in the United States.

The fact is, psychiatric help is not widely available to CIA agents - and as in the military, there is a stigma attached to admitting post-traumatic stress.