Illness Quotes

“People with a great tendency to anxiety get protection at the expense of missed opportunities. People with deficient anxiety can take risks that bring benefits at the cost of damage and loss”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Anxiety and fear are emotions. Emotions exist only because they have given selective advantages. This makes it tempting to try to define different emotions in terms of their functions. Fear protects against present danger, anxiety against possible dangers. However, defining emotions in terms of their functions risks tacit creationism: the tendency to view bodies as if they are machines.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Understanding the starvation protection response helps eating disorders patients understand why restrictive dieting doesn't work.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Everyone knows that the environments we created to satisfy our wishes for sweets, salt, fat and leisure have resulted in epidemics of chronic disease. Obesity and eating disorders are prime examples, but alcoholism and drug addiction are also made possible by ready access to substances and means of administration that have only recently become available. Lack of selection until recent times against these often fatal disorders is an essential part of any evolutionary explanation.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“The demonic etiology ofcertain illnesses is affirmed by the Scriptures: explicitly in the prologue to the Book ofJob (Job 2:6-7), and implicitly in tbe words of the Apostle Peter, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; ... he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devll, for God was with him" (Acts 10:38). In addition, there are numerous biblical accounts of miracles where the demonic origin of illness clearly appears. The Fathers also affirm such an etiology. This recognition of a demonic etiology does not prevent the Fathers from admitting as well a biological, organic or functional etiology as parallel or secondary. Far from excluding physical causality, the "metaphysical" or spiritual origin of illness includes the physical aspect, recognizing it to be a necessary vehicle for manifesting the demonic.”
― Jean-Claude Larchet, The Theology of Illness

“. . . PTSD, and other illness terms as well, have become a way of claiming a right to legitimate pain and misfortune. It is as if, without the illness label, their anguish wouldn't be valid, and they wouldn't be granted a passport to what Susan Sontag once called citizenship in 'the kingdom of the sick.' [However, it is] only some realms in that kingdom [that] offer a refuge from the stigma of mental illnesses: the diseases that come to us from the outside, apparently through no fault of our own, like PTSD and the enigmatic Gulf War syndrome (GWS).”
― Roy Richard Grinker, Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness

“Dividing human differences into distinct illnesses is like dividing up the color spectrum into distinct colors. While most of us can easily tell the difference between yellow and orange, we probably can't agree on exactly where yellow ends and orange begins because there is no single point at which one becomes the other. Similarly, the border between health and sickness is the judgment call we make about whether a person's symptoms are impairing their lives and warrant treatment.”
― Roy Richard Grinker, Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness

“Cassie, if I do treatment, I’m most likely going to be too sick to want to do any of those things. It may only prolong my life for a short time. And leaving my parents with an enormous amount of debt because of medical bills is not what I want. How can I do that to them?”

“They love you, Xuan. There’s no price tag on your life.”

“What would you do if you were me?”

“I would fight!” I shouted.

“I’ve been trying to accept my fate, and I think you need to as well.”
― Kayla Cunningham, Fated to Love You

“Treatment was not what Xuan wanted, and his answer only made me feel small and guilty. His words should have comforted me. That he would try, for me. But they didn’t. Xuan did love me enough to get treatment. But maybe I should have loved him enough to respect and accept his decision.”
― Kayla Cunningham, Fated to Love You

“Thus, for our ancestors, social networks were a matter of life and death, group living was the norm and social isolation was rare, carrying fatal risks. In turn, psychological mechanisms promoting the maintenance of social relationships have been heavily favored by natural selection.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Such is the magnitude of our evolved psychological dependence on social interaction that, even when surrounded by individuals who have committed the most heinous crimes, solitary confinement for more than 15 days is considered psychological torture by the United Nations.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Emotions function as a behavioral motivation system; accordingly, our mood is heavily impacted by progress towards current goals rather than one's overall life situation.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Looking for the brain abnormalities causing mental disorders without understanding normal function is like looking for the heart abnormalities causing heart failure without knowing what the heart is for.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“The sexual competition hypothesis suggests that women are vulnerable to eating disorders because modern media augment the natural motivation for having a desirable body in order to get better mates. This explains why so many women use extreme caloric restriction in intense efforts to be attractive, but it does not by itself explain anorexia nervosa and bulimia.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“An individual may feel guilty about the event(s) that triggered their depression. Feelings of guilt make one reflect upon how their actions led to that outcome and thus help minimise the likelihood of the same thing happening again. The greater the role oplayed by one's own actions in the situations that led to the event that triggered the depression, the greater the sense of guilt.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“An individual may feel guilty about the event(s) that triggered their depression. Feelings of guilt make one reflect upon how their actions led to that outcome and thus help minimize the likelihood of the same thing happening again. The greater the role played by one's own actions in the situations that led to the event that triggered the depression, the greater the sense of guilt.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“The belief that one is unattractive can be as intractable as the belief that one has an undiagnosed disease. It's often present in people who are, to other people's perceptions, very attractive indeed. However, once the belief in one's unattractiveness gets established it can be used to account for all manner of experiences, such as being rejected by a date. The normal trait related to this disorder is wanting to be attractive. In the usual range, this is almost certainly useful.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“People with a great tendency to anxiety get protection at the expense of missed opportunities. People with defficient anxiety can take risks that bring benefits at the cost of damage and loss.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Nightmares concerning animals under the bed are very common and easy to interpret in an evolutionary context where there were many wild animals but no houses. When children begin social life in groups, fears of being rejected or abandoned emerge in a process that elaborates into the extraordinary richness and complexity of social life.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Mental disorders need evolutionary explanations, but viewing disorders as adaptations is a mistake. The correct objects of explanation are traits that leave all members of a species vulnerable to a disorder.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Kin selection shapes tendences to make sacrifices that benefit family members who share genes identical by descent. The costs of such sacrifices are highest and most satisfying for children and siblings, but problems experienced by extended family members can nonetheless cause great distress.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“An extraordinary proportion of life problems and resulting mental disorders arise from mating conflicts. Unrequited love, the pain of being rejected, the fear of being left, being stalked, being harassed, jealousy and being trapped in an abusive relationship are common precipitants of mental disorders.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“...social media now seem poised to harm our mental health as much as fast food harms our physical health. We can't resist its pull despite the anxiety, depression and feelings of social inadequacy that are aroused by unprecedented social comparisons.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Mental illness up, police staffing down.”
― Steven Magee

“. . . illnesses that derive from the stresses of war come in many different forms. Every war has its own syndromes.”
― Roy Richard Grinker, Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness

“Her mother was unrecognizable to her; it would have been easy to say that the illness had changed her, but it wasn't so simple, was it? Illness and dying had revealed her mother's truer thoughts, the ones her mother had been protecting from her.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“The fool believes that to redefine something in a more palatable manner means that it’s less likely to make you sick.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“This was the illness my father was carrying around with him.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner: Graphic Novel

“For example, when I’m in the cosmetics section of a store, I look at the age cream and know that I’ll never need it. I’ll be lucky if my skin even starts to wrinkle before I die.
I can be in the grocery section and I’ll look at the expiration dates on food and wonder which one of us will last longer. Me or the mustard?
Sometimes I receive invitations in the mail for a wedding that’s still a year out, and I’ll circle the date on the calendar and wonder if my life will last longer than the couple’s engagement.”

Excerpt From: Colleen Hoover. “Maybe Now (Maybe #2).”
― Colleen Hoover, Maybe Now

“Xuan pulled out his phone and searched Google. He had to ask for the correct spelling of the drug. He wanted more real information about how much of a financial burden he would be to his parents. Money was a big concern. Possibly a deal breaker.

“Several sites—it’s around five hundred dollars a day! That’s fifteen thousand a month! How could I let my parents pay that much for me?”

Fifteen thousand dollars. I gasped, appalled. I staggered to the chair and collapsed into it. He’ll never agree to that.

Xuan opened his mouth and closed it again, in shock. The atmosphere in the room plunged from friendly and informative to frigid with mathematical figures and calculations.
I sat with my elbows on my knees, my face buried in my hands. Saints, I knew cancer treatment was expensive, but I never imagined it was that expensive. That was too much. Ironically, I didn’t know if I could live with myself, knowing my parents were working day and night to keep me alive. That would be a huge financial responsibility. I just couldn’t imagine allowing it, month after month. Sadly, I wondered how many people died every year because of the cost of medication in the United States. In a way, it seemed like pharmaceutical companies were getting away with murder.”
― Kayla Cunningham, Fated to Love You