DeRay Mckesson Quotes

Nobody wins when the police are sent to look after people suffering from mental health problems; vulnerable people don't get the care they need and deserve, and the police can't get on with the job they are trained to do.

Mental health is one of the biggest concerns, because now police are having to handle a lot of really difficult mental health problems on the street.

I'm a people pleaser, and I want to help everyone who DM's me, so I make sure to promote organizations that fans can reach out to if they're struggling.

It is important to note that most of the patients in Ohio's mental health facilities have never committed crimes. They are institutionalised because they have lost touch with reality and are having problems functioning unaided in the community.

I tried to help a shirtless man who was being arrested in Starbucks. He obviously wasn't right in the head, but the police thought I was trying to make things worse.

When mental sickness increases until it reaches the danger point, do not exhaust yourself by efforts to trace back to original causes. Better accept them as inevitable and save your strength to fight against the effects.

I think one of the big problems we have got - and police tell me this - is most police don't know how to deal with mental health problems. And so we need better mental health response.

There was a guy with mental illness in the middle of the street just yelling and hollering. I have a number that I can call - it's not 911 - to tell them, "You need to help this man get out of the street." But you have to be that person, you have to pick up the phone, you have to do it; you can't just walk by and act like they're not people. They're somebody's kid, somebody's dad, somebody's brother.

We need to start identifying the triggers that aggravate mental health issues in our society - bullying, social media negativity and anxiety, gender based violence, substance abuse, stigma around issues such as maternal issues, etc., and we need to speak up about these more and get to the source of the problems.

America’s youth are in the midst of a spiking mental health crisis, and public health experts are racing to identify the root causes before it gets even worse.

Since I come from a family of mental instability, and I have suffered depression myself, I knew that living in shame is senseless and painful, and that by talking about it, I have come to peace with it. The stigma behind people's suffering needs to end. We as a community need to embrace these disorders, try to understand them (if only just to talk about them) so that we can cease being defined by them.

Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, "Emergency, emergency," and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing is has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has no been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families, too, to keep us quiet.

The Joker is a psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy. Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.

If you know someone who's depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.

As the situation developed, the futility of attempting suicide in the middle of a hospital became apparent.

Once my loved one accepted the diagnosis, healing began for the entire family, but it took too long. It took years. Can't we, as a nation, begin to speed up that process? We need a national campaign to destigmatize mental illness, especially one targeted toward African Americans. The message must go on billboards and in radio and TV public service announcements. It must be preached from pulpits and discussed in community forums. It's not shameful to have a mental illness. Get treatment. Recovery is possible.

A man who is willing to commit suicide has the initiative.

Treating an identity as an illness invites real illness to make a braver stand.

If I had a nervous breakdown every time something awful happened in the world, I'd be crazier than a shithouse rat.

For people considering suicide, it is bullshit. Endure the moment.

I think we need to talk about mental illness a lot more. People complain about tax dollars and say we don't have the money. But if we can't put some of our investments, or some of our money back into humans, isn't that where it all begins?

Our prisons and our jails are now our mental health institutions.

One thing I want to clarify - that every service member, veteran, wants us to remember - is that the vast majority of people returning from service come back completely healthy. But when we do come across someone who is struggling. We have to develop a culture of open arms and acceptance so that they feel comfortable saying, "I'm a veteran. And by the way, I need little help." This is something we need to do in this country around mental health as a whole - destigmatizing mental health.

I like to tell young people - you know one in four children die by their own hands - no matter how bad things seem, just wait a day, wait a week. Life will turn around.

I wanted to die. I had a panic attack.