I’ve been advocating for an end to mental health stigma for many years. In 2015, I wrote in The Guardian about mental health support for aid workers, including my own reluctance to tell my employer I was struggling. I knew how much could seem to be at stake when you asked for help.
Sometimes someone else finds the words for something you’ve been carrying around for years. A sentence can make you feel less alone, or give you a way into a conversation you’ve been putting off.
That’s what I hope you’ll find in these 13 mental health stigma quotes. I’ve included five voices published in 2026 alongside words that still speak to me years later. Some describe the cost of being judged. Others ask what we’re prepared to do about it. Each has a link to the original, so you can spend a little more time with the person behind the words.
Mental health stigma quotes published in 20261
These voices bring the conversation into places many of us know well: a difficult day at work, a family trying to understand, an appointment where we hope someone will listen.
1. Tiwa Ayeni on bringing your whole experience into the room
I don’t think our lived experience and our professional experience have to be two separate things.
Tiwa Ayeni · World Health Organization · 7 October 2026
Talk with me, not about me
Tiwa describes working in mental health policy while drawing on her own experience of care. Her point matters in meetings where someone’s diagnosis is treated as a reason to discount their knowledge. People can bring experience, judgement and professional skill to the same conversation. Making that possible also means making disclosure safe and voluntary.
View the Tiwa Ayeni quote card
2. Jevanjot Kaur on the cost of silence
Because of the taboo, people in our community often remain silent about mental health conditions such as bipolar.
Jevanjot Kaur · Mind · 28 July 2026
Why South Asians like me sometimes have to suffer in silence
Writing about bipolar and her own South Asian family and community, Kaur describes the worry about what other people will think. She also describes relatives learning more and becoming more supportive. That change is worth holding on to. Families and communities can learn, and one person’s account should never become a stereotype about everyone who shares their background.
3. Oli on discrimination at work
I’ve lost work opportunities once my diagnosis became known.
Oli · Rethink Mental Illness · 25 July 2026
Living with schizophrenia – Oli’s story
Oli’s account makes the consequences of stigma concrete: work, income and the chance to be assessed fairly. He also writes about the difficulty of managing symptoms and conventional working patterns. His experience raises a practical question for employers: are decisions based on the work and the support someone needs, or on assumptions attached to a diagnosis?
View the Oli quote card
4. Jerome on being taken seriously in healthcare
The main stigma I faced was from clinicians themselves.
Jerome · Rethink Mental Illness · 7 July 2026
“I needed to overcome stigma” – Jerome’s story
Jerome recalls discussing future projects with his clinical team and having those plans described as grandiose. He later pursued many of them. This is his account of his care, and it asks an uncomfortable question about whose ambitions get taken seriously. People deserve curiosity and respect whether or not they later have an achievement to point to.
5. Sania on making advocacy count
Advocacy would be hollow if it didn’t result in change
Sania · World Health Organization · 7 October 2026
Looking beyond the individual in Pakistan: when distress is also structural (excerpt)
Sania describes bringing lived experience into mental health policy in Pakistan. She connects care with the conditions in which people live, including housing, work and personal autonomy. Her measure of advocacy is useful: what changes after the speech, the campaign or the shared quotation? A service might listen differently. A policy might change. Someone might gain more say in their care.
Being heard and treated with dignity
Some words stay with you. These are older, but the experiences behind them are still painfully familiar.
6. Brendan McDonald on the fear of speaking up
When I experienced burnout a few years ago, I did not tell my employer.
Brendan McDonald · The Guardian · 31 July 2015
Humanitarian agencies need to stop failing their staff on mental health
I wrote those words in 2015. I was worried about what telling my employer could mean for my career. That is a lot to carry when you are already struggling. When we encourage someone to ask for help, we also need to ask what happens when they do. Will they be listened to? Will they still be trusted?
7. Hannah Blum on the work of explaining yourself
When you live with a mental illness you spend most of your time “trying to explain” over taking care of yourself.
Hannah Blum · Blooming Mind Press (Halfway2Hannah) · 18 March 2020
30 Creative Writing Prompts for People Living With Mental Illness
Blum wrote this in an invitation to use creative writing for yourself. The exhaustion she describes will be familiar to anyone who has repeatedly had to justify a need, a boundary or a difficult day. If someone tells you what would help, you can listen without turning the conversation into an examination they have to pass.
8. Ashley Ford-McAllister on who gets accepted
This stigma reinforces the barriers that prevent people, whatever their personal identity and experience, from being seen and accepted as ‘normal’.
Ashley Ford-McAllister · Wellcome Collection · 20 March 2020
Stigma, schizophrenia and being transgender
Ford-McAllister writes about being transgender and living with schizophrenia, and about the assumptions that overlap around those experiences. The quotation leaves a question for the reader: who gets to set the terms of acceptance? Nobody should have to make their life easier for a stranger to categorise before being treated with dignity.
9. Michelle Obama on equal regard
Whether an illness affects your heart, your leg or your brain, it’s still an illness, and there should be no distinction.
Michelle Obama · Obama White House archive · 4 March 2015
Remarks by the First Lady at Change Direction Mental Health Event
Speaking at the Change Direction event in 2015, Obama called for people experiencing mental illness to receive care and support without shame. The comparison makes a clear appeal for equal regard. Physical illness can attract stigma too; the useful principle here is that a diagnosis should never make someone less deserving of help.
View the Michelle Obama quote card
10. Liza Long on dropping the moral judgement
You know what might end the stigma of mental illness? Treating it for what it is: illness.
Liza Long · The Mighty · 17 November 2015
5 Real Ways to Help People With Mental Illness
Long’s essay challenges attitudes that turn mental illness and treatment into questions of character. There is room for different views about care and for people to describe their experiences in their own terms. Shame contributes nothing useful to that conversation. The source was first published in 2015 and updated in 2023; this is a historical quotation.
11. Jennifer Marshall on choosing to speak publicly
My time to stand up to stigma is now.
Jennifer Marshall · Jennifer Marshall · 12 April 2013
My Time to Stand Up to Stigma
Marshall wrote this as she decided to put her name to her experience of bipolar disorder. The choice belonged to her. Public storytelling can matter enormously, and privacy matters too. You can challenge a cruel remark, support a friend or ask for a fairer policy without publishing your medical history. Nobody owes an audience their diagnosis.
Moving from awareness to action
12. David Susman on what comes after awareness
Raising awareness is necessary but not sufficient for lasting change.
David Susman · David Susman · 20 October 2016
Why Raising Awareness About Mental Health Is Not Enough
Susman’s essay asks what awareness actually achieves when people still encounter barriers to support. It is a useful question for anyone organising an event or putting a quote on a wall. Decide what people should be able to do afterwards, who is responsible for making it happen, and how you will tell whether anything improved.
View the David Susman quote card
13. Natasha Tracy on the consequences of prejudice
It’s discrimination and prejudice that matters, not fluffy feelings…
Natasha Tracy · Bipolar Burble · 18 February 2016
Natasha Tracy Stigmatizes the Mentally Ill (excerpt)
Tracy uses deliberately abrasive language to argue for attention to discrimination. You can take the practical challenge seriously while caring about the emotional harm of stigma as well. A welcoming statement means little if someone still gets dismissed, excluded or denied a fair hearing. Look at what people do with the power they have.
How to use a quotation thoughtfully
If you are choosing a quote for a conversation, a presentation or an awareness event, start with the experience you want people to understand. A line about discrimination at work calls for a different discussion from a line about choosing to speak publicly.
- Read the original. A short quotation cannot carry the whole story. Keep the speaker’s name and the source attached, and check the context before reusing it.
- Give people a choice. Invite discussion without asking someone to disclose a diagnosis or stand in for a whole community. A person can care about this issue and still want privacy.
- Choose a practical response. That might mean challenging a dismissive remark, asking what support would help, or reviewing a decision that was based on an assumption.
- Follow through. Check whether the promised support arrived. Keep listening when the awareness event is over.
If you want to think more about those everyday conversations, read talking about mental health and the difference a conversation can make. For the quieter work of staying in touch, our article on when friends don’t check on you while you’re sick considers what support can feel like from the other side.
Sources and notes
- These five quotations appeared in stories published between July and October 2026. The dates refer to those publications; they do not claim that a thought was expressed for the first time that year. Back to text
Quotations were checked against the linked sources on 17 October 2026. Older quotations retain their original publication dates. Sania’s line is an excerpt with the closing attribution comma omitted; the ellipsis in Natasha Tracy’s quotation marks an omitted continuation. The words in both excerpts are unchanged. The opinions in the WHO features are those of the people interviewed. These quotations offer personal perspectives and commentary, rather than individual treatment advice.
