The harsh reality of the times is that mental health is still treated as a stigma.
Someone suffering from mental health issues might even realize that seeking help through counseling and therapy is what they need but will try to stay away for the fear of being stigmatized.
This can even alter the treatment-seeking behavior of the individual.
What can be done to mitigate such avoidable consequences of stigmatization?
First of all, it is important to educate people that going through depression, anxiety, or any other mental issue is normal.
Getting depressed, sad, or anxious is a normal reaction to stressful situations. Take the example of COVID-19.
The virus has caused mental health issues worldwide due to the disruption it has caused in our daily lives and the constant fear of getting infected.
The WHO warned of the mental health consequences back when the pandemic was still in its early phase.
So what can we do when mental health issues are on the rise around the world?
One thing that is definitely within our power to do is to take better care of our mental health.
We can do this by practicing positive mental health activities: reading, asking for help, self-improvement, and listening to stories of people who have battled through mental health.
No one is immune to mental health issues. There are numerous celebrities, athletes, politicians, who are on the news from time to time opening up about their experience with mental health.
Lucky for us, we get to learn from their struggles, and the words of wisdom that they have said about their struggles can help us power through our own struggles in significant ways.
That’s why positive mental health quotes are a great way to go through a mental health phase.
Mental health quotes let us realize that our struggles are not unique, that mental health is nothing to be ashamed of, and that the struggle is real but surmountable.
So here is a list of relatable positive mental health quotes that can help you overcome the obstacles of mental health.
This is a guide covering positive mental health quotes.
We’ll be covering the following topics (click on a bullet point to jump to that section):
Short Mental Health Quotes
These short mental health quotes can be your mantra when you are struggling with mental issues.
1. What we think, we become. — Buddha
2. All limitations are self-imposed. — Oliver Wendell Holmes
3. Tough times never last but tough people do. — Robert H. Schuller
4. What consumes your mind controls your life. — Unknown
5. And still, I rise. — Maya Angelou
6. Turn your wounds into wisdom. — Oprah Winfrey
7. Persist and resist. — Epictetus
8. Change what you can, manage what you can’t. — Raymond McCauley
9. If you’re going through hell, keep going. — Winston Churchill
10. Self-care is how you take your power back. — Lalah Delia
Inspirational Mental Health Quotes
If you are feeling down, and getting back up on your feet seems like a struggle, don’t worry, it doesn’t last.
Here is a list of mental health quotes that will inspire you to take that first step towards recovery.
1. 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
2. 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
3. If people are doubting how far you can go, go so far that you can’t hear them anymore. — Michele Ruiz
4. When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. — Helen Keller
5. Do one thing every day that scares you. — Eleanor Roosevelt
6. If something is important enough, even if the odds are stacked against you, you should still do it. — Elon Musk
7. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.— Aristotle
8. Quitting never makes anything easier. — William H. McRaven
9. Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. — Mahatma Gandhi
10. We accept the love we think we deserve. — Stephen Chbosky from The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Mental Health Quotes For Kids
What do you say to a kid who is battling the darkness on their own? Here are a list of quotes that can help your kid regain positive mental health.
1. It is never too late to be what you might have been. — George Elliot
2. This life is what you make it. No matter what, you’re going to mess up sometimes, it’s a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you’re going to mess it up. — Marilyn Monroe
3. There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t. — John Green
4. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.— Martin Luther King, Jr.
5. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.— Buddha
6. Dreams don’t work unless you do. — John C. Maxwell
7. Wherever you go, go with all your heart. — Confucius
8. I never lose. Either I win or learn.— Nelson Mandela
9. Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. — Thich Nhat Hanh
10. Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. — George Bernard Shaw
Mental Health Quotes From Psychologists
Psychologists know our minds better than others.
Therefore, what they have said about mental health and human behavior requires our attention more than anything else.
Here is a list of positive mental health quotes by famous psychologists.
1. I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. — Abraham Maslow
2. The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. — Carl Rogers
3. Everything can be taken from a man, but the last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitudes in any given set of circumstances. — Viktor Frankl
4. The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived. — Soren Kierkegaard
5. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. — Carl G. Jung
6. I don’t mind losing as long as I see improvement or I feel I’ve done as well as I possibly could. — Carol Dweck
7. Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to. — Susan Cain
8. We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events. — Daniel Kahneman
9. Probably the biggest insight… is that happiness is not just a place, but also a process. Happiness is an ongoing process of fresh challenges, and it takes the right attitudes and activities to continue to be happy. — Ed Diener
10. Control of consciousness determines the quality of life. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Mental Health Quotes from Celebrities
Celebrities have been in the spotlight for mental health issues all the time.
Maybe, it’s because of the stressful lives that they lead, the insane amounts of work that they do, or the fact that being a celebrity is not easy and eventually, the stress accumulates too much pressure and leads to mental breakdowns fueled partly by drug and alcohol abuse.
Here is a list of celebrity mental health quotes that reveal that celebrities are just as humans as us and that they battle through some of the same problems that we do.
1. I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realize is that you’re not alone. You’re not the first to go through it; you’re not going to be the last to go through it. — Dwayne Johnson (The Rock)
2. We just need to be kinder to ourselves. If we treated ourselves the way we treat our best friend, can you imagine how much better off we would be? — Meghan Markle
3. I’ve been searching for ways to heal myself, and I’ve found that kindness is the best way. — Lady Gaga
4. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. — Barack Obama
5. Being vulnerable is actually a strength and not a weakness — Cara Delevingne
6. Be kind to yourself; be kind to others. Have courage and talk about it. There’s a lot of love out there for you. — Ellie Goulding
7. There are many ways of getting strong and sometimes talking is the best way. — Andre Agassi
8. People are often afraid to admit difficulties, but I don’t believe that there should be a struggle with anything that’s the truth. — Zayn Malik
9. Sometimes it’s hard when people want you to just be a time capsule of what you were… but it’s just my journey, I guess. I can’t control anything else. — Katy Perry
10. You just have to trust that people are out there waiting to love you and celebrate you for who you are. — Wentworth Miller
Final Remarks
Mental health issues are on the rise around the world, and with the COVID surging in many countries around the world, taking care of ourselves mentally has become as important as taking care of ourselves medically.
You can use this list of mental health quotes to get yourself back on track towards a positive mental state.
Sikandar is opinionated on a diverse set of topics that include, but are not limited to, Productivity, Health, Fitness, Motivation, and Career. He is in love with the written word and writes mainly to help others on their self-actualizing journeys. A journalist by education, getting to the bottom of things is his modus operandi. Often, he finds himself moonlighting as a life coach to his family, friends, and colleagues. He can be reached at his LinkedIn for collaboration.