Elyn Saks Quotes

Sometimes labeling is only useful, like with OCD. Once you're labeled you can be treated. On other occasions labeling leads to tyranny, like with childhood bipolar disorder in the U.S.

There is no such condition as 'schizophrenia', but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event.

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 think mental illness is a slippery slope to talk about these days because people are overly diagnosed, overly prescribed, overly everything.

We must bring the issue of mental illness out into the sunlight, out of the shadow, out of the closet, deal with it, treat people, have centers where people can get the necessary help.

People tend to look at mental health differently than physical health. If someone tears their ACL, we don't expect them to run 30 yards for a touchdown. They need to be treated and have the time to rest and heal, It's the same thing for mental health.

There is a mystique about psychiatry that people think that you have some kind of a magical lens, you know, Superman's X-ray vision into the soul. One of the reasons I left psychiatry is that I didn't believe that.

If my revelation of having bipolar II has encouraged one person to seek help, then it is worth it. There is no need to suffer silently and there is no shame in seeking help.

Bipolar disorder is so swept under the rug as a nation and, I think especially, by black people. It's not our culture to go get therapy. 'Give them medicine for what?' We put people in court, put them in court again, versus really paying attention to what it is they are going through.

I would not be here now if I did not have anti-depressants.

You're not a nutcase if you want to go see a psychiatrist.

There's a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I'm affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn't want to leave. He likes it very much.

The dirty little secret of both clinical psychology and biological psychiatry is that they have completely given up on the notion of cure.

I am a woman with chronic schizophrenia. I have spent hundreds of days in psychiatric hospitals. I could have ended up living most of my life on a back ward, but things turned out quite differently.

There is no fun in psychiatry. If you try to get fun out of it, you pay a considerable price for your unjustifiable optimism.

It's not a giant thrill to hear someone give you the label 'manic-depressive,' but to me I was so relieved. What I was suffering from had a name and could be treated.

We have funny ideas about how people in mental institutions act. We think of drooling and people going booga-booga and climbing the wall. These are exceptional cases.

I was going to university to study psychology and my big ambition in life was to open treatment rooms for psychotherapy.

I was sober for, like, a year and a half, and I was 25, and I actually did have a manic episode, and I was diagnosed as bipolar.

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

Diagnoses exist to help get people services they need - but there's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill.

People get really irritated by mental illness.

The difference between a healthy person and one who is mentally ill is the fact that the healthy one has all the mental illnesses, and the mentally ill person has only one.

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.