One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you..

Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rath….

I think wanting to write is a fundamental sign of disease and discomfort. I don't think people who are comfortable want to write..

The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive ….

Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name; it is a tragedy.

It was as if my father had given me, by way of temperament, an impossibly wild, dark, and unbroken horse. It was a horse without a name, and a horse ….

I think that one of the many advantages of death accruing over a long period of time is that you do have time to meet a lot of other people who are g….

Suicide is a particularly awful way to die: the mental suffering leading up to it is usually prolonged, intense and unpalliated. There is no morphine….

Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But thes….

Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury; the time spent engaged in it is not time that could be better spent in more formal ….

It is true that I had wanted to die , but that is peculiarly different from regretting having been born. Overwhelmingly, I was enormously glad to hav….

No pill can help me deal with the problem of not wanting to take pills; likewise, no amount of psychotherapy alone can prevent my manias and depressi….

I don't think grief of grief in a medical way at all. I think that I and many of my colleagues, are very concerned when grief becomes pathological, t….

I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide..

Everyone has good cause for suicide, or at least it seems that way to those who search for it. (74).

The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension..

In depression, your capacity to feel just flattens and disappears and what you feel is pain and a kind of pain that you can't describe to anybody. So….

One is what one is, and the dishonesty of hiding behind a degree, or a title, or any manner and collection of words, is still exactly that: dishonest..

I am reminded of the importance of small kindnesses..

Nature is the first tutor. No one remains untouched or unschooled by the earth, seasons, and heavens..

Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better..