If you think about it, the public perception of funky brain chemistry has been as varied and weird as the symptoms, historically speaking. If I had been born a Native American in another time, I might have been lauded as a medicine man. My voices would have been seen as the voices of ancestors imparting wisdom. I would have been treated with great mystical regard. If I had lived in biblical times, I might have been seen as a prophet, because, let’s face it, there are really only two possibilities: either prophets were actually hearing God speaking to them, or they were mentally ill. I’m sure if an actual prophet surfaced today, he or she would receive plenty of Haldol injections, until the sky opened up and the doctors were slapped silly by the Hand of God. In the Dark Ages my parents would have sent for an exorcist, because I was clearly possessed by evil spirits, or maybe even the Devil himself. And if I lived in Dickensian England, I would have been thrown into Bedlam, which is more than just a description of madness. It was an actual place–a “madhouse” where the insane were imprisoned in unthinkable conditions. Living in the twenty-first century gives a person a much better prognosis for treatment, but sometimes I wish I’d lived in an age before technology. I would much rather everyone think I was a prophet than some poor sick kid. Neal Shusterman
Love, like madness, can only fill the models that society makes available.
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Neel Burton
PTSD in its rawest form is a death sentence which causes many veterans and others to execute themselves in hope to be free.
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Stanley Victor Paskavich
The maladies of the spirit alone, in abstracto, that is, error and sin, can be called diseases of the mind only per analogiam. They come not within the jurisdiction of the physician, but that of the teacher or clergyman, who again are called physicians of...
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Ernst Von Feuchtersleben
To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.
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Jeanette Winterson
Now, Emily didn't make a sound. There was something more defining about the soundless reality that condemned the paradigm of passion.
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Allie Burke
More Quotes By Neal Shusterman
Conner Lassiter. Scheduled to be unwound the 21st of November-until you went AWOL. You caused an accident that killed a bus driver, left dozens of others injured, and shut down an interstate highway for hours. Then, on top of it, you took a hostage AND...
So the gods must mean something else, ” said Jix.“God, not gods! ” insisted Johnnie.Nick threw up his hands. “God, gods, or whatever, ” said Nick. “Right now, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Jesus, or Kukulcan, or a dancing bear at the end of the...
Happiness is not a state of being. Happiness is a vector, it is movement.
Then, in spite of everything, he began to smile. So much of his existence in Everlost had been full of despair. Despair, and a fear of losing what he had. But Allie was not lost, she was just there across the river, waiting for him...
When I touched that boy, I felt something. Something awful. Something I can’t describe.”“ We all felt it, ” Nick said.“ You may have felt it, but I caused it.” Then both his eyes seemed to go far away. “Something changed out there. <span style="margin:15px;...
