Terry Pratchett Quotes

I think the stigma surrounding mental illness and also the stigma surrounding self-esteem issues or insecurities or just even feeling different is something that doesn't really get enough attention. Everybody struggles with feeling alone or that they are going through something they don't quite understand.

You are no less or more of a man or a woman or a human for having depression than you would be for having cancer or cardiovascular disease or a car accident.

We separate problems with the brain into neurological and psychiatric, and it's because it's stigmatised still. Mental illness is still stigmatised. Imagine if we treated people with cancer like that. Just because your personality changes and your behaviour changes, all of a sudden you are put in a different category.

Any other illness, any other disease that we're faced with, there's sympathy and understanding. We get help for those. With mental illness, our go-to is to categorize them as, 'Oh, they're crazy,' to belittle the problem.

I'd love for mental illness to be seen in the way that other horrible illnesses are. When people get cancer, very few parents will say, 'Oh I feel so bad for giving you so much unhealthy food over the years.'

Schizophrenia beats dining alone.

After that I couldn't show my face outside. I lost my identity and balance. I was still living with my parents, and they were my only friends. For so many people, this thing with the nurse was confirmation that I must be mad or mentally ill.

Some people say I'm unique, that there aren't other people with schizophrenia like me. Well, there are people like me out there, but the stigma is so great that they don't come forward.

None of us wants to be reminded that dementia is random, relentless, and frighteningly common.

It is misery, you know, unspeakable misery for the man who lives alone and who detests sordid, casual affairs; not old enough to do without women, but not young enough to be able to go and look for one without shame!

Epilepsy is a disease in the shadows. Patients are often reluctant to admit their condition - even to close family, friends or co-workers - because there's still a great deal of stigma and mystery surrounding the disease that plagued such historical figures as Julius Caesar, Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll.

The terror dementia sufferers must feel is unimaginable, but the techniques they use to hide their difficulties - the ducking and diving and keeping the world laughing - are perfectly understandable.

It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases - one was Alzheimer's, and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer's.

I think that there are cancers of the body, but I think they are what I would call cancer of the emotional system, too. These are the kind of diseases or illnesses or sicknesses of the emotional system that are as incurable as cancer.

I'm going to be 58, and I'm a woman. In this business, that seems to be a bigger crime than being mentally ill.

Schizoaffective disorder is a big mental mash-up of a disease. It combines just about every disorder, from depression, delusions, and paranoia to mania, schizophrenia and hallucinations. My mother bounced between all of these regularly while raising me alone in our Hollywood home.

I put on the fat suit and went outside and walked around. I was really nervous about being found out, but nobody would even make eye contact with me. It really upset me.

Besides, my usefulness here is destroyed because all of my friends think me a man of unsound mind.

No matter who you are, what you've accomplished, what your financial situation is - when you're dealing with a parent with Alzheimer's, you yourself feel helpless. The parent can't work, can't live alone, and is totally dependent, like a toddler. As the disease unfolds, you don't know what to expect.

Chronic pain can be very lonely. It can have a shame-based quality.

Gays and lesbians are sick people. It's definitely a disease. They haven't invented a cure for it yet, but I hope they will.

I don't have Alzheimer's. I have part-timer's.

We have all learned that addiction and mental illnesses are illnesses, and I think a lot of people overlook that it is a chemical imbalance; it's like cancer, a sickness, and people need to see it as that.

These diseases, both alcoholism and addiction, much like bipolar or depression and different illnesses, are still not seen as real diseases. People shy away from seeking help because it's viewed as being somewhat morally off the path, that they've lost their way.

The most evil and insidious thing about mental illness is that it isolates us and makes us feel so different that we think no one can possibly relate.