50 of the Best Quotes About Mental Health

Looking for some of the best mental health quotes quotes by Cheryl Strayed, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Joan Didion, Demi Lovato, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and more? We’ve got you covered. 

Quotes allow us to learn from the experiences of others. They can help us navigate our day–to–day challenges. They're also excellent tools for reinforcing and reaffirming what we already know. 

And, sometimes hearing the words of a famous or successful person may be enough to convince us to do something we might otherwise avoid doing. Plus, no one can deny the power of a really good quote.

Best mental health quotes

"What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation." –Glenn Close

"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 you are not the rain." –Matt Haig

"Mental health affects every aspect of your life. It’s not just this neat little issue you can put into a box." –Shannon Purser

"What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation." –Glenn Close

“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?" – Kerry Washington

“Mental health needs a great deal of attention. It’s the final taboo and it needs to be faced and dealt with." –Adam Ant

“There isn’t anybody out there who doesn’t have a mental health issue, whether it’s depression, anxiety, or how to cope with relationships. Having OCD is not an embarrassment anymore–for me. Just know that there is help and your life could be better if you go out and seek the help." -Howie Mandel

"The experience I have had is that once you start talking about [experiencing a mental illness], you realize that actually you’re part of quite a big club." –Prince Harry

Best therapy quotes

"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

"Therapy isn't radio. We don't need to constantly fill the air with sounds. Sometimes, when it's quiet, surprising things happen." –Mary Pipher, Letters to a Young Therapist

"Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life." –Shannon L. Alder

"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

"Just because no one else can heal or do your inner work for you doesn’t mean you can, should, or need to do it alone." – Lisa Olivera

The best quotes about depression

"I would have really depressive episodes and my mom or my doctor would ask how I was and instead of having to respond in text, I would just send them a photo. It was the easiest thing for me to do at the time because I was never able to explain how I was feeling." –Bella Hadid

"I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it's like to feel absolutely worthless, and they don't want anyone else to feel like that." –Robin Williams

"Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best work came out of it." –Joni Mitchell

"I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it's like to feel absolutely worthless, and they don't want anyone else to feel like that." –Robin Williams

"I can slip in and out of depression quite easily. I had really bad postpartum depression after I had my son. It frightened me, and I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I was very reluctant. Four of my friends felt the same way I did, and everyone was too embarrassed to talk about it." –Adele

"I’m not grateful for depression, but it honestly made me work harder and gave me the drive that I have to succeed and to make it work." –Lili Reinhart

"Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about 'If you loved me you would'." –Elizabeth Wurtzel

"If you know someone who's depressed please resolve to never ask them why. Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather. Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness and loneliness they're going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It's hard to be a friend to someone who's depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest and best things you will ever do." –Stephen Fry

“That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.” – Elizabeth Wurtzel

Quotes to remind you things will get better

"What is coming is better than what’s gone. Let this belief aim you in the direction you need to go." –Karen Salmansohn

"In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me." –Julia Cameron

"When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it." –Henry Ford 

"If you are broken, you do not have to stay broken." –Selena Gomez 

"Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room." –Cheryl Strayed

"If you’re going through hell, keep going." –Winston Churchill

"There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t." –John Green

Quotes about addiction 

"Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with your self-esteem." –Kurt Cobain

"Even if I remember the first time perfectly, I don't remember the beginning at all. I mean: the beginning of addiction. It's hard to say when it becomes a problem; it sneaks up on you like a sun shower." –Elizabeth Wurtzel

"Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to – alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person – you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain." –Eckhart Tolle

Quotes about asking for help

“Never let your ego get in the way of asking for help when in desperate need. We have all been helped at a point in our lives.” -Edmond Mbiaka

"Healing takes time, and asking for help is a courageous step." –Mariska Hargitay

"When you are depressed, you need the love of other people, and yet depression fosters actions that destroy that love. Depressed people often stick pins into their own life rafts. The conscious mind can intervene. One is not helpless." –Andrew Solomon

"What's the bravest thing you've ever said?" asked the boy. "Help", said the horse. –Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

“It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do." –Stephen Fry

Quotes about recovery

"There are far, far better things ahead than anything we leave behind." -C.S. Lewis

"Tough times never last, but tough people do." -Robert H. Schuller

"I’m not telling you it is going to be easy; I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it." –Art Williams

"Recovery is an acceptance that your life is in shambles, and you have to change." –Jamie Lee Curtis

"Every person who has experienced a severe depression has his own sad, awful tale to tell, his own mess to live through. Sadly, Kurt Cobain will never get that far. Every day, I thank God that I did." –Elizabeth Wurtzel

"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

"Recovery is something you have to work on every single day, and it’s something that doesn’t get a day off." –Demi Lovato

"The best way out is always through." – Robert Frost

"No matter what you're going through, there's a light at the end of the tunnel." –Demi Lovato

"You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." –Martin Luther King

Quotes about grief and loss

"Between grief and nothing I will take grief." –William Faulkner

"If the sun warms up the rain, and the rain puts out the sun. Why does the greatest love become the greatest pain?" –Stevie Nicks

"Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." –Joan Didion

"The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to." –Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"Small things such as this have saved me: how much I love my mother—even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. So is yours. You are not grieving your son’s death because his death was ugly and unfair. You’re grieving it because you loved him truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of his death." –Cheryl Strayed

"Grief is like a moving river, it's always changing. I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It's just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone." –Michelle Williams

"When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part." –John Irving

"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 others to hurry your healing. It is a process, one that may take years, occasionally, even a lifetime—and that’s OK." –Beau Taplin

"Lots of things can be fixed. Things can be fixed. But many times, relationships between people cannot be fixed, because they should not be fixed. You’re aboard a ship setting sail, and the other person has joined the inland circus, or is boarding a different ship, and you just can’t be with each other anymore. Because you shouldn’t be." –C. JoyBell C.

"Our grief is as individual as our lives." –Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal." –Cheryl Strayed

“How is it that we never completely comprehend our love for someone until they’re gone?" –Patti Smith

How to find a therapist to support your mental health

Check out the Monarch Directory by SimplePractice to find licensed therapists near you. 

Choose to browse therapists and counselors covered by your insurance.

Many therapists listed on Monarch also allow you to book free 15-minute initial consultation sessions.