25 Mental health quotes from books that will open your eyes

Mental health affects almost everyone, with new reports stating that 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem of some kind in their lifetime, yet it’s something that leaves each of us feeling incredibly alone.

Talking about our problems can help remove some of the stigma around having a mental health issue and one of the best ways we do that it through our books and literature, for in books we are reminded that we are not alone.

Here are 25 quotes that will make you think differently and open your eyes to mental health.

1. “Maybe we all have darkness inside of us and some of us are better at dealing with it than others.”
― Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes

2. “The fact is, I was sick, but not in an easily explained flu kind of way. It’s my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other recognizable disease just to make it simple for me and also for them.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

3. “People with mental illnesses aren’t wrapped up in themselves because they are intrinsically any more selfish than other people. Of course not. They are just feeling things that can’t be ignored. Things that point the arrows inward.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

4. “One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. In my opinion, living with manic depression takes a tremendous amount of balls. Not unlike a tour of Afghanistan (though the bombs and bullets, in this case, come from the inside). At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of.
They should issue medals along with the steady stream of medication.”
― Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking

5. “Recovering from depression is like grass growing. In other words, it takes time. You may not be able to see grass growing, but the important thing is that it is.”
― Olivia Sagan, The Recovery Letters: Addressed to People Experiencing Depression

6. “It takes bravery to cry out, to release what is in your heart.”
― Christy Lefteri, The Beekeeper of Aleppo

7. “The very existence of social media is predicated on humankind’s primitive drive of attention seeking. And when they successfully monetize your attention, they end up with billions of dollars and you end up with a screwed up mental state. And if we don’t do anything about it now, the next generation will be a generation of mentally unstable glass creatures.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Good Scientist: When Science and Service Combine

8. “What if, instead of viewing people who’ve been abused as weak, we began to celebrate the strength it takes to persevere while overcoming the harm that was placed on them by someone who was supposed to love and care for them? What if, instead of accepting the myth that there’s something wrong with people who were abused, we place full responsibility and accountability for the abuse on the people who perpetrate it?”
― Christine E. Murray, Triumph Over Abuse: Healing, Recovery, and Purpose After an Abusive Relationship

9. “Because who is ever really fixed when it comes to mental or emotional health? Life takes radical twists and turns, and hopes and dreams shift.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Return

10. “Everyone has that moment I think, the moment when something so momentous happens that it rips your very being into small pieces. And then you have to stop. For a long time, you gather your pieces. And it takes such a very long time, not to fit them back together, but to assemble them in a new way, not necessarily a better way. More, a way you can live with until you know for certain that this piece should go there, and that one there.”
― Kathleen Glasgow, Girl in Pieces

11. “I got hurt and I buried the pain of it because, at that moment in time, it was all I could do. I just tried to survive. I’m trying to heal but it’s taking ages and it’s hard and feels impossible but I’m trying, and that’s all I can do.”
― Holly Bourne, Pretending

12. “When you are depressed you feel alone, and that no one is going through quite what you are going through. You are so scared of appearing in any way mad you internalise everything, and you are so scared that people will alienate you further you clam up and don’t speak about it, which is a shame, as speaking about it helps.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

13. “This isn’t about getting you fixed. This is about you living the best life you can with the parameters that you have.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen

14. “There will be better days, maybe even tomorrow.”
― Olivia Sagan, The Recovery Letters: Addressed to People Experiencing Depression

15. “So, for those experiencing suicidal thoughts, there is absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about, be ashamed of, or feel guilty about. Please reach out. Getting help does not make you a coward, low-life, attention-seeking, inferior, weak, unworthy, or any other derogatory terms people may spew at you. Being courageous enough to seek help takes superhuman strength. You deserve to feel better.”
― K.J. Redelinghuys, Unfiltered: Grappling with Mental Illness

16. “We can mistakenly think that mental health is about treating mental illness, but this is only half-baked.
Mental health is also about building good mental and emotional health, it’s about practicing mental health self-care and enhancing well-being.”
― Thomas E. Rojo Aubrey, Resilient learner: Thriving in College and Beyond

17. “Just having a place to sit and be thankful each day improves mental health.”
― Jessica Marie Baumgartner, The Magic of Nature: Meditations & Spells to Find Your Inner Voice

18. “From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.
Darkness, you know, is relative.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

19. “Healing isn’t about overcoming the pain; it’s living despite it.”
― Hannah Blum, The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love

20. “Because if you’re ever going to get better, finally decide to stop and focus on healing, you just have to put it out there. You cannot lie about it. You can no longer hide it. You have to find someone in your life that you trust will face it with you, help and support you, and see you through it.”
― Callie Bowld, What Goes Down: The End of an Eating Disorder

21. “At the same time, the deeper I get with my OCD and treatment, the more I realize that it is also a part of me. It is the part of me I try so hard to repress, the part of me I don’t believe is worthy of love, the part of me I judge in other people. It has to be fought, but to some extent, it also has to be placated. I also have to say, I’m not as smart as I thought I was, I’m not as in control, I better not judge these people because whoo-ee look at me. It can’t simply be exorcised. It illuminates the brittleness and arrogance of my own precious assumptions about myself: that I am smart, that I am in control because I am smart, that I can do everything just so, that I can do it better. But it also attacks the parts of myself I want to keep: the gritty traveler, the artist who bucks conventions, the bold experimenter. Fine, it says, my thoughts are random, my thoughts are constructed, my thoughts are only thoughts, but then so are yours: all of it is a fantasy, dark and light.”
― Sarah Menkedick, Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America

22. “Your life is worth so much more than whatever body part you are so furiously fighting.”
― Callie Bowld, What Goes Down: The End of an Eating Disorder

23. “We are all echoes of each other. We are all humans and feel both despair and happiness. Our similarities, as a species, are staggering. And our mental fragility is directly tied up with our humanity. We have nothing to be ashamed of in being human, any more than a tree should be ashamed of having branches. Let’s accept our own nature. Let’s be kind to ourselves and to each other. Let’s never add to the pain by blaming ourselves. We are all so weird that, really, none of us are. There are seven billion versions of strange on this freak wonder of a planet. We are all part of that. All freaks. All wonderful.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

24. “There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

25. “No one would ever tell a cancer patient to ‘just get over it.’ Why people think they can tell those with a mental illness as much is baffling.”
― Sara Ella, Coral