Stella Young Quotes

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

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

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.

I want to show that the dividing lines between sanity and mental illness have been drawn in the wrong place.

A diagnosis is burden enough without being burdened by secrecy and shame.

We develop social systems for the handicapped, but when you're handicapped in your mind, society doesn't handle those situations well. I think we don't recognize or acknowledge the power of messages and how deeply affected we all are by the messages we receive from the media.

Getting to have an opportunity to tell a story that is about mental illness and how it affects one's self and one's community was really something that really meant a lot to me.

I was the most important person of the world, and people like the Pope would be just like enemies, who would try to put me down in some way or another, or the president. People are always selling the idea that people who have mental illness are suffering.

I don't find it humiliating when they call me a psychopath or witch.

Being a depressive should not imply danger any more than being a man or even a human should. Mental illness isn't a them/us issue; we are all on the scale somewhere. So we must be very careful to resist ignorance and combat the stigma that leads to dangerous silence.

You are no less or more of a man or a woman or a human for having depression than you would be for having cancer or cardiovascular disease or a car accident.

I hope that people who don't believe depression is a real thing will stop calling people crazy, because that's dismissive and not a medical diagnosis.

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

Mental illness, unfortunately, is an invisible disease: it's not seen or heard. For whatever reason, because of that, society has decided that if we can't see it, maybe it doesn't exist, so they want to just sweep it under the carpet or say, 'Snap out of it,' or that you're looking for attention.

Any other illness, any other disease that we're faced with, there's sympathy and understanding. We get help for those. With mental illness, our go-to is to categorize them as, 'Oh, they're crazy,' to belittle the problem.

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.

Many people with mental illness suffer in silence, afraid to seek help for fear of victimisation.

When you have mental illness you don't have a plaster or a cast or a crutch, that let everyone know that you have the illness, so people expect the same of you as from anyone else and when you are different they give you a hard time and they think you're being difficult or they think you're being a pain in the ass and they're horrible to you. You spend your life in Ireland trying to hide that you have a mental illness.

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.

When public figures remain silent about depression, there is a cost to the rest of society. Silence contributes to the misperception that successful people do not get depressed, and it keeps the public from seeing that treatment allows many individuals to return to competitive professional lives.

People accuse me of glamorizing mental illness. Looking back sometimes, that's true. But I don't feel guilty.

Mental illness is the last frontier. The gay thing is part of everyday life now on a show like 'Modern Family,' but mental illness is still full of stigma. Maybe it is time for that to change.

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.

Most people, if you live in a big city, you see some form of schizophrenia every day, and it's always in the form of someone homeless. 'Look at that guy - he's crazy. He looks dangerous.' Well, he's on the streets because of mental illness. He probably had a job and a home.

I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as an adult, but I don't remember a time when I didn't have them. Back in the 1960s, when I was growing up, my symptoms didn't have a name, and you didn't go to the doctor to find out.