Milos Forman Quotes

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.

Psychiatry causes so much death.

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

People get really irritated by mental illness.

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.

I had never been near insane persons before in my life, and had not the faintest idea of what their actions were like.

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

The vast majority of people who have mental illness problems never hurt anybody.

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.

My father was a psychiatrist, the medical director of a mental hospital in Scotland, and when I was a student, I took vacation jobs there as a nursing assistant. So I did get to see mental illness, but I don't remember conversations about mental conditions. My father was a cheerful man with a robust attitude to such things.

I proceed, gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present state of insane persons within the Commonwealth, in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens—chained naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.

The state must concern itself with all institutions for those with damaged minds.

Psychiatry: An Instrument of Death

Treating mental health illness is compassionate and saves money.

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

I was in a mental hospital. That's all I wanna say. I don't wanna say anything more.

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

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.

Once you're labeled as mentally ill, and that's in your medical notes, then anything you say can be discounted as an artefact of your mental illness.

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.

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