Even with all that - excellent treatment, wonderful family and friends, supportive work environment - I did not make my illness public until relatively late in life, and that's because the stigma against mental illness is so powerful that I didn't feel safe with people knowing. If you hear nothing else today, please hear this: There are not 'schizophrenics'. There are people with schizophrenia, and these people may be your spouse, they may be your child, they may be your neighbor, they may be your friend, they may be your coworker.

The schizophrenic mind is not so much split as shattered. I like to say schizophrenia is like a waking nightmare.

My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.

Portray [people with mental illness] sympathetically, and portray them in all the richness and depth of their experience as people, and not as diagnoses.

I am a woman with chronic schizophrenia. I have spent hundreds of days in psychiatric hospitals. I could have ended up living most of my life on a back ward, but things turned out quite differently.

Occupying my mind with complex problems has been my best and most powerful and most reliable defense against my mental illness.

There are not schizophrenics. There are people with schizophrenia and these people may be your spouse, they may be your child, they may be your neighbor, they may be your friend, they may be your coworker.