Matt Haig Quotes

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

I think that every young person is a little mentally ill, you know? If we're not totally shutting down, we're all a little bit mentally ill in our twenties and maybe into our early thirties.

If you say you've had a nervous breakdown or things aren't right mentally, people run away from you. They think you're from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest,' you know.

People take the mickey out of mental health, but it is very delicate.

Abnormal is so common, it's practically normal.

When I was suffering with depression, people weren't talking about depression. It had a stigma.

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.

Being mentally ill is not a joke. It is a most painful thing.

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

There are lots of people with mental health disabilities, and that's just the way their life is; it's not like you see it in the movies.

If the spectrum linking everyday depression to Major Depression sometimes hinders understanding of it, it also offers an opportunity for empathy. Because almost everyone, at some point, experiences feelings of sadness, of hopelessness, of emptiness, not to mention lethargy and irritability.

I feel like a lot of comedians do have that deep, dark thing. I have my stuff, but I don't go to that dark place.

One out of four people in this country is mentally unbalanced. Think of your three closes friends; if they seem OK, then you're the one.

A lot of times, people think that it doesn't make sense for people to be depressed when they have everything, a loving husband, a successful career, fame and fortune. I wanted to make this point that profound despair can strike anybody.

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.

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.

I have spent most of my life working with mental illness. I have been president of the world's largest association of mental-illness workers, and I am all for more funding for mental-health care and research - but not in the vain hope that it will curb violence.

The problem with the stigma around mental health is really about the stories that we tell ourselves as a society. What is normal? That's just a story that we tell ourselves.

Everyone says to you, 'if you play Ophelia, you'll end up crazy,' but we're all somewhere on the spectrum of mental health, and I think that if you approach it that way it's not such an intimidating issue.

Depression has been called the world's number one public health problem. In fact, depression is so widespread it is considered the common cold of psychiatric disturbances. But there is a grim difference between depression and a cold. Depression can kill you.

I'd had episodes before, but I swept them under the carpet. This time, I couldn't do that because everyone knew. I got on with the hard work of getting better and haven't had a blip in almost 10 years.

I believe that every human being has mental challenges.

Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently.

Mental illness can happen to anybody. You can be a dustman, a politician, a Tesco worker... anyone. It could be your dad, your brother or your aunt.

Because 'Call The Midwife' is a gentle drama, not a documentary, it's not appropriate to portray Sister Monica Joan's condition in all its brutal reality.