Thomas Szasz Quotes

Not a lot of people know it, but I don't have any qualms about saying it - there's a lot of mental illness that runs in my family.

I'm lucky to have depression less severely than a lot of people. I know some find it useful to talk about it and people are definitely doing that more. It's becoming less stigmatised.

There are people who are profoundly mentally ill. But we now have a very weird perspective on mental illness and what it means. I do think that people are overmedicated.

Despite being commonplace, too many people with mental health problems still face stigma, prejudice and discrimination.

My dad died, and he wasn't in my life because he had schizophrenia, so it's been something that my entire family has been fighting against since I can remember.

Not talking about mental illness is killing people. We need that to stop.

It's so important that we figure out a way of moving beyond the stigma that still exists around treatment for mental health.

I fought a disease. I fought a disease called depression that a lot of people fight every single day. And unlike other diseases, there is a stigma surrounding it.

We honestly shouldn't be paying attention to nothing Kanye West says until he actually goes out there and gets the help we all think he needs. That's what keeps these stigmas about mental health and everything going - we act like it's a joke.

I grew up in a small town, and mental illness wasn't something anyone talked about.

I believe the biggest stigma right now, with mental health, is that a lot of men are not talking about it.

Depression is incredibly pervasive and thus important to talk about.

I think that mental illness is something that is so real.

There is no excuse for using someone's mental health as a stick with which to beat them.

The sad truth is that millions of people with mental illness suffer stigma and prejudice, especially at work.

I lost most of my friends. Their parents had told them to stay away from me, because they said I was crazy, I was an extremist.

I want to bust the stigma attached to alcoholism in our country. Women particularly are discouraged from seeking help because it's a matter of shame for the family. We don't share our pain or frailties; we cover our weaknesses, and it becomes a cancer.

I find human behavior to be fascinating, which is probably why I'm an actor, and I think that there are a lot of dangerous misconceptions about mental illness in our society, and I would like to be a part of remedying that - particularly the stigma that surrounds so many mental illnesses.

Even with all that - excellent treatment, wonderful family and friends, supportive work environment - I did not make my illness public until relatively late in life, and that's because the stigma against mental illness is so powerful that I didn't feel safe with people knowing. If you hear nothing else today, please hear this: There are not 'schizophrenics'. There are people with schizophrenia, and these people may be your spouse, they may be your child, they may be your neighbor, they may be your friend, they may be your coworker.

You, and in fact quite a lot of your generation, have in some way been exiled from that particular sanctuary. It's become almost impossible for someone to "go mad" in the classical sense. At one time people conveniently "went mad" and were never heard from again. Like a character in a romantic novel. But now you are too hip to yourself on a psychological level. You all are too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard.

Having waited my entire life to get an award for something, anything...I now get awards all the time for being mentally ill. It’s better than being bad at being insane, right? How tragic would it be to be runner-up for Bipolar Woman of the Year?

Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?

Are people who have been crazy held to unfair standards?Of course, but it's not in your best interest to complain. If you're paranoid and people are looking at you funny it's best to let it pass. Psychotic people have an uncanny knack for making their own worst dreams come true. Depressing things happen to depressed people way beyond what you would expect from random distribution.

Stigma against mental illness is a scourge with many faces, and the medical community wears a number of those faces.

When I talk to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and other patient support groups, I take questions at the end. At one talk I was asked, "What's the difference between yourself and someone without mental illness?". At another talk I was asked, "How do you make the voices be not so mean?". I wish I knew.