“During this period of my life I was also plagued with bouts of severe depression. When this feeling came over me, I would hide under my bed for hours. I would also lock myself in a closet and sit in total darkness from morning until afternoon. I had a craving for the darkness and I felt an urge to f…”— David Berkowitz, ariseandshine.org
“When I was growing up, I was so disruptive in school and had so many emotional problems, behavioral problems, that the school officials told my parents, you know, you're going to have to—to keep David in school, you're going to have to take him to a child psychologist. They made some kind of arrange…”— David Berkowitz, transcripts.cnn.com
“Anthony Bourdain was the first to call out the bacchanalian oblivion of his past as an escape from darker, sadder truths hidden within the folds of his complex psychology. He was an aware and thoughtful soul who rejected those very archetypes he felt his success had helped to encourage.”— Lori Silverbush, medium.com
“Sometimes it helps to just get the things out in a safe, loving environment. But you can't solve everything. So do your best to not make anyone feel terrible about just feeling their feelings.”— Jean Grae, twitter.com
“Not everyone is okay with talking about uncomfortable things, or LISTENING to uncomfortable things. We’ve been made to feel certain ways about them. Like it’s not normal. But it is. Please just be open to listening. Please try your best to get things out of your head.”— Jean Grae, twitter.com
“I’ve been in some very dark places. Different times and different things, over the course of my life. Thought about ending things. Attempted to end things. Thankfully, I openly talked about it. I’m okay with talking about extremely uncomfortable things. Not everyone is.”— Jean Grae, twitter.com
“Depression will whisper in your ear. I can’t say 'don’t listen' because I know sometimes it’s a shout and you can’t help it. But there are other, better voices. I try to hear them instead.”— Olivia A. Cole, twitter.com
“Numerous experiments showed that people feel depressed when they fail to live up to their own ideals, but when they fall short of a standard set by others, they feel anxious.”— Lisa Feldman Barrett, amazon.com
“I want to unhook my shadow from the wall and dress it in street clothes.”— Caitlyn Siehl, instagram.com
“I have seen the heart of the world. I cannot un-see it. I look at it daily, and think about it all the time.”— John Gorman, medium.com
“There was another epidemic that was not talked about much, a silent scourge—the explosion of mental illness: major depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, manic-depression, personality disorders, grief response, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, etc.—on a scale none of us had ever wit…”— Chinua Achebe, amazon.com
“Speak out and someone will listen. Ask for help and someone will offer it. Don’t keep it inside. Don’t let yourself fade. Reach out. Yes, it’s really hard, but people are there. Be open to them.”— Aaron Gillies, twitter.com
“Whenever we lose an artist as a result of their mental illness it is hard, particularly when the artists has helped me and so many others briefly unravel ourselves from the yarn of our own mental illnesses.”— Hanif Abdurraqib, twitter.com
“Depression doesn’t just steal the depressed person’s capacity for joy. It throws its mantle over everything he has ever done and everything he could ever do. The depressed person dies not to save himself from the world but to save the world from himself. In this case the word depression makes clear…”— Sarah Manguso, amazon.com
“So instead of seeing your depression and anxiety as a form of madness, I would tell my younger self — you need to see the sanity in this sadness. You need to see that it makes sense.”— Johann Hari, amazon.com
“I kept noticing a self-help cliché that people say to each other all the time, and share on Facebook incessantly. We say to each other: “Nobody can help you except you.” It made me realize: we haven’t just started doing things alone more, in every decade since the 1930s. We have started to believe t…”— Johann Hari, amazon.com
“The Internet was born into a world where many people had already lost their sense of connection to each other. The collapse had already been taking place for decades by then. The web arrived offering them a kind of parody of what they were losing—Facebook friends in place of neighbors, video games i…”— Johann Hari, amazon.com
“The top of the ocean can be total chaos, but underneath, in the depths, there can be silence.”— Melissa Broder, nytimes.com