Madeline Brewer Quotes

We see people talking to themselves all the time. We always have. Particularly if they're homeless people or at all questionable, there's a sense of, 'That guy's crazy!' I see that now with a much more empathetic eye.

We need to treat people with mental illness like people.

I would never post something making fun of depression or mental health, or picking at people.

Until you've had depression I don't think you're qualified to talk about it.

We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. At times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization. Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions.

It's easier to say people are crazy than to try to figure out why.

If you have physical ailments, you will get everyone's compassion, but when you have a mental ailment, you will get laughter, unfortunately. This is because it is very difficult to make out when somebody is sick and when somebody is being stupid.

That's like making fun of a maniac because his brain isn't completely right, because he isn't in the norm.

When our bodies are sick and people extend their sympathy, bring us soup, offer up solutions. When our minds are sick, people tend to shy away from you, be afraid, or call you outright crazy. I'm fascinated by the way society and individuals view mental illness, and most of my shorts comment on that.

Never judge a person if you don't know him.

I try not to judge because I've been judged a heck of a lot, and it don't feel nice.

I have mental illness in my family. I have a lot of compassion for those people.

Those who are not very good at understanding mental health issues are not going to know what other people are going through in depression. You have to kind of put yourself in somebody else's shoes.

All I can say to people who don't think depression is a real thing, or say 'just suck it up and get over it' - they just really have no idea. You have to give people the benefit of the doubt that they're doing the best they can to get through it.

I read '13 Reasons Why' in middle school, and the message of the book stuck with me: to treat people better because you never know what they're going through.

It is one of the most ignorant things you can do to a person, to say they're nuts or they're crazy. It diminishes the layers of who they are as a person.

We can give space to someone's depression. We can love them; we can honor - we can just eat some noodles, we can watch some movies, whatever it is. We can just sit and not talk. That's real stuff. It's a real - I don't know if you call it a disorder, a disease, but it's happening, and we don't need to coach people through with ideologies.

In the past, I've tried to show the human side of people involved in stigmatised or misunderstood lifestyles. I've tried to resist easy judgments and not pander to prejudices.

Lets try to come to a place of compassion about mental illness, in all its forms, and help each other find healing.

We know that mental illness is not something that happens to other people. It touches us all. Why then is mental illness met with so much misunderstanding and fear?

I'm trying to get the terrorist out of the bugaboo category and into the category of a fellow human being.

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.

The Trail of Tears should teach all of us the importance of respect for others who are different from ourselves and compassion for those who have difficulties.

I think what's important is to give space to the range of human experience.

It's really never fair to judge people because none of us know what's going on inside anyone else's head.