30 Mental Health Quotes to Raise Awareness and Fight Stigma

Although we are encouraged more than ever to talk about our metal health and seek help, mental disorders still remain a taboo subject for those struggling with them and a misunderstood one for those who haven’t experienced such conditions.

Stigma and lack of understanding are two barriers that keep people from seeking help. But your mental health is just as important as your physical health. If you see a specialist whenever you feel that something is wrong with your body, why wouldn’t you do the same for your mind?

If your brain doesn’t function properly, in time, everything else will fall apart — including your physical health.

To raise awareness, we have gathered a list of mental health quotes to give you comfort and encourage you to stop feeling shame about your condition (whatever that may be). If any of the following sayings will inspire or help you in any way, it would be amazing. And if you know someone struggling with mental health issues, we hope they will help you become more compassionate.

Here are 30 mental health quotes to raise awareness and fight stigma:

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.

FRED ROGERS (more Mr. Rogers quotes)

What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation.

GLENN CLOSE

If we start being honest about our pain, our anger, and our shortcomings instead of pretending they don’t exist, then maybe we’ll leave the world a better place than we found it.

RUSSELL WILSON

Nobody can save you but yourself, and you’re worth saving. It’s a war not easily won, but if anything is worth winning then this is it.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI (more Charles Bukowski quotes)

I cannot stand the words ‘Get over it’. All of us are under such pressure to put our problems in the past tense. Slow down. Don’t allow other to hurry your healing. It is a process, one that may take years, occasionally, even a lifetime — and that’s OK.

BEAU TAPLIN

She is beautiful piece of broken pottery, put back together by her own hands. And a critical world judges her cracks while missing the beauty of how she made herself whole again.

J.M. STORM

You don’t have to be positive all the time. It’s perfectly okay to feel sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, scared and anxious. Having feelings doesn’t make you a negative person. It makes you human.

LORI DESCHENE

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.

ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS

Healing takes time, and asking for help is a courageous step.

MARISKA HARGITAY

Give yourself a break. Stop beating yourself up!. Everyone makes mistakes, has setbacks and failures. You don’t come with a book on how to get it right all the time.

LES BROWN (more Les Brown quotes)

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you can realize is that you’re not alone. You’re not the first to go through it, you’re not gonna be the last to go through it, 

DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON (more Dwayne Johnson quotes)

I’ve seen people go from the darkest moments in their lives to living a happy, fulfilling life. You can do it too. I believe in you. You are not a burden. You will NEVER BE a burden.

SOPHIE TURNER

There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.

 JOHN GREEN

You are not your illness. You have an individual story to tell. You have a name, a history, a personality. Staying yourself is part of the battle. 

JULIAN SEIFTER

Life doesn’t make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all. 

 ERIK ERIKSON

Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action. 

WALTER ANDERSON

Mental health problems don’t define who you are. They are something you experience. You walk in the rain and you feel the rain, but, importantly, you are not the rain.

MATT HAIG

I knew well enough that one could fracture one’s legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too. 

VINCENT VAN GOGH (more Vincent van Gogh quotes)

Mental health is something that we all need to talk about, and we need to take the stigma away from it. So let’s raise the awareness. Let’s let everybody know it’s OK to have a mental illness and addiction problem. 

DEMI LOVATO

I say that publicly because I think it’s really important to take the stigma away from mental health… My brain and my heart are really important to me. I don’t know why I wouldn’t seek help to have those things be as healthy as my teeth. I go to the dentist. So why wouldn’t I go to a shrink? 

KERRY WASHINGTON

What I love about therapy is that they’ll tell you what your blind spots are. Although that’s uncomfortable and painful, it gives you something to work with. 

PINK

Being able to be your true self is one of the strongest components of good mental health.  

DR. LAUREN FOGEL MERSY

I keep moving ahead, as always, knowing deep down inside that I am a good person and that I am worthy of a good life.

JONATHAN HARNISCH

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. 

LEONARD COHEN (more Leonard Cohen quotes)

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves 

HENRY DAVID THOREAU (more Henry David Thoreau quotes)

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside, remembering all the times you’ve felt that way. 

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

If you have been brutally broken but still have the courage to be gentle to other living beings, then you’re a badass with a heart of an angel. 

KEANU REEVES (more Keanu Reeves quotes)

Part of my identity is saying no to things I don’t want to do… I check in with myself throughout the day and I say, ‘Do I really want to do this?’ and if the answer is no, then I don’t do it. And you shouldn’t either. 

LADY GAGA

There is so much pain in the world, and most of these people keep theirs secret, rolling through agonizing lives in invisible wheelchairs, dressed in invisible body casts. 

ANDREW SOLOMON

If you rely solely on medication to manage depression or anxiety, for example, you have done nothing to train the mind, so that when you come off the medication, you are just as vulnerable to a relapse as though you had never taken the medication. 

DANIEL GOLEMAN