Psych Ward Quotes

“You haven’t lived till you’ve played Scrabble in a psych ward.”
― Artie Lange

“Our hospital was famous and had housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers, or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“I once told her I wasn't good at anything. She said survival is a talent.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“If the mind fits, shrink it.”
― Brian Spellman, Cartoonist's Book Camp

“I found it fascinating that there could be so many realities. There was the truth, which was the world we lived. There was also the worlds we would create for ourselves in our minds. In truth, there are countless universes and realities hiding within all of mankind.”
― Melissa C. Water, Lady Injury

“I have to share a room. I am expected to sleep mere meters from a woman whose mental ailment is unknown to me. For all I know she might be a cannibal.”
― Emily Austin, Oh Honey

“By the time she awoke she couldn’t even remember if she had a dream or a nightmare. There had only been a deathlike peace.”
― Jason Medina, No Hope For The Hopeless At Kings Park

“When you go into the psych ward, you can’t have anything with you except colored pencils. You can’t have any electronics. If you have a drawstring on your pants, a belt, shoelaces, a hood, or extra-long fabric, your very clothes are ripped off your back. They search you with a metal detector like you’re a criminal, doing everything short of putting their hand up your butt. Before you go through those cold, automatic, barred doors, you know your life is not your own. This is especially true during the first week, while you stare at florescent lighting and wait impatiently for your meds to kick in. I wish I had remembered the psych ward prison cell a week ago. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t be wearing this hospital gown that they gave me until I can get more compliant clothes.”
― Jacquelyn Nicole Davis, Trace The Grace: A Memoir

“There is a thin line between being a creative and being crazy. Many creatives ended up in the psych ward or heavily medicated... They only needed one person to believe in their visions.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“They stared with asperity
Yet kindness in hearts
The eyes told stories
That carried pain,
so strong it turned wrinkles strong,
the knuckles weak with agony,
and the forehead perspire.
Their minds were tired
I told them
I'm tired too, you know?
I've tried...
We've tried too...they say
So we cry in silence
Our hearts bond in the dark
Yet a light bonds us
From a source unknown
From I do not know where
But I bow in wonder
We hold hands
And smile,
for the first time since years,
This time I cry in jubilation
They join, and we watch the stars in our dreams
Constellations they form
We fall asleep in wonder.

- Inked Confessions: The Untold Psych Ward Letters”
― Fathima Valliyangal

“Mania rushes with mystification
An intense desire to succumb,
to the calling compulsions.
Impulsivity, is a nefarious crime,
I've fallen prey to its predatory
Alas, I am but a human

Inked Confessions: The Untold Psych Ward Letters”
― Fathima Valliyangal

“You ask me what's purpose
I say, child, what is purpose but threads of
fabrications, lies and manipulations, they've
made up to tell you that you're never enough.
I say, child, all I need is,
a place where four walls do not exist
Where my lungs breath and do not gasp for air,
I don't need a label to be attached to,
my ambitions.

-Inked Confessions: The Untold Psych Ward Letters”
― Fathima Valliyangal

“If you do something to a patient that you would not do to your friends or children, consider whether you are unwittingly replicating a trauma from the patient’s past.”
― Bessel van der Kolk M.D., The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in The Healing of Trauma

“At its worst, the purpose of a psych ward is to normalize you back into a community that is anything but. Its purpose is not to heal you, but to make you stay sick so that you can function alongside the lies of a country steeped in them, so you can function alongside the lies you are forced to tell about yourself. We are all doubling in order to live, and the psych ward tells you to squash that inner knowing. It's simply not useful if you hope to thrive. At its best, psychiatric care gives you tools to let your inner knowing walk alongside the insanity of the world and create survival tools to trust what you know and survive the gaslighting and discrimination that seeks to burn down your house.”
― P. Carl, Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition