Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes

One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you.

If you look at suicides, most of them are connected to depression. And the mental health system just fails them. It's so sad. We know what to do. We just don't do it.

I really think suicide has a branding problem because it has a tagline. It has a catch phrase, and I bet a lot of us know it. It sucks. It's really condescending. I bet we've heard it. Suicide - the coward's way out.

I had developed manic depression [bipolar disorder] ... and the main symptoms the constant voice in the head telling you to kill yourself.

Just think, right now as you read this, some guy somewhere is gettin' ready to hang himself.

Books about suicide make lousy gifts.

Please, people, do not f- with depression. It's merciless. All it wants is to get you in a room alone and kill you. Take care of yourself.

I think suicide is sort of like cancer was 50 years ago. People don't want to talk about it, they don't want to know about it. People are frightened of it, and they don't understand, when actually these issues are medically treatable.

If you have a friend or a family member who's bipolar, or has panic attack disorder, or is depressed, read up on it a little bit so you can get to know where they're coming from.

I don't know why there aren't more Depression buffs.

I gave myself the nickname 'Bipolar Rock N' Roller' way back in the 1990s, when - as much as we don't talk about mental health now - back then it was almost nonexistent. And if it was broached, it was done in a very pejorative way.

Mental illness lives all around us every day. I've seen it in other family members, I've seen it in friends, and I've dealt with it myself with my own postpartum depression.

It was my last act of love (first words to her mother in the hospital after her first major suicide attempt)

The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides

Along with some things I've seen in my own life, it showed me that depression needs to be treated in the same way that other medical conditions are. We don't necessarily think about it in the same light, but it should be taken seriously and people should get help. And we should talk about it and not be ashamed about it.

A middle-aged woman who looked like someone's cleaning lady, a shrieking adolescent lunatic and a talkshow host with an orange face... It didn't add up. Suicide wasn't invented for people like this. It was invented for people like Virginia Woolf and Nick Drake. And Me. Suicide was supposed to be cool.

If you're suicidal, and you don't actually kill yourself, you become known as 'wry.

Number one, we have to talk about mental illnesses. Number two, you can actually address things from a purer and honest direct line to what's been going on in your life and how you've been feeling and why you think the way you think. I do think there is a genetic predisposition for mental illness, for depression, for suicide, but I also think that lifestyle can change things. If you're an addict, if you drink and you're putting a depressant into your body, it's going to cause serious problems.

Everyone can relate to depression. It touches so many. Suicide is the leading cause of death among teenagers. Statistics show that women suffer from depression more than men, but that is probably because men don't report it as much.

I think we need to get rid of is improving our minds and our mental health. You know, when when you suffer from depression, you go this is something that I have and I can work on it, you know? I often think of depression, though, as more of a - as more of a symptom than a cause.

Suicide is the only way out.

I'm not disparaging suicides when I call them weak, I'm pointing out that anybody who would consider doing a thing like that needs help. I don't think a normal, mentally healthy person commits suicide.

Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.

I think we need to talk about mental illness a lot more. People complain about tax dollars and say we don't have the money. But if we can't put some of our investments, or some of our money back into humans, isn't that where it all begins?

If people can talk about having breast cancer, why can't people who have mental illness talk about mental illness? Until we're able to do that, we're not going to be treated with the same kind of respect for our diseases as other people.