Author | Kay Redfield Jamison |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Memoir |
Published | September 18, 1995 |
Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (1995) Vintage Books (1997) |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | 227 |
ISBN | 978-0679763307 |
OCLC | 957172091 |
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness is a memoir written by American clinical psychologist and bipolar disorder researcher Kay Redfield Jamison and published in 1995. [1] The book details Jamison's experience with bipolar disorder and how it affected her in various areas of her life from childhood up until the writing of the book. Narrated in the first person, the book shows the effect of manic-depressive illness in family and romantic relationships, professional life, and self-awareness, and highlights both the detrimental effects of the illness and the few positive ones. The book was originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in New York and reprinted by Vintage Books in paperback in 1997. [2]
Jamison describes her childhood as part of a military family with a conservative upbringing and the need to make new friends after every relocation. She recalls a happy childhood and a supportive family. Her father was creative and charismatic; her mother was kind and resourceful. During adolescence Jamison was intellectually drawn to the practice of science and medicine, later shifting to psychology. When her family moved to California, her family life deteriorated, as her father's depressive episodes increased, while her mother pursued professional goals. During her senior year of high school, Jamison underwent her first episode of hypomania, followed by a prior of depression, nonetheless passing as neurotypical. Some time later Jamison started her undergraduate studies at UCLA, having committed to clinical psychology as her career path. After finishing her undergraduate studies, Jamison earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA and became a professor in the Department of Psychiatry.
Jamison describes her episodes of mania and how the heightened energy made her more socially adept at work and efficient in her work responsibilities. On the other hand, she became irritable and restless in her marriage, leading to a separating from her husband. She also became reckless in spending, leading to her brother's role in untangling her financial situation. Jamison describes her inability to focus on reading a single paragraph or listening to a song from beginning to end. Eventually, she sought treatment for the first time; a colleague suggested that she try lithium to moderate her manic episodes. Jamison then began to work with a psychiatrist, and psychotherapy became a part of her routine for the rest of her life.
Against medical advice, Jamison went off lithium several times, sometimes to avoid its side effects, but often due to denial about her diagnosis as bipolar. During a severe depressive episode, Jamison made a suicide attempt by overdosing lithium. Her suicide attempt failed, due to a fortunate phone call from her brother, who noticed her slurring words and called for help. Jamison describes many who cared for her and resolved to monitor her behavior closely during her manic episodes. Months after her suicide attempt, Jamison founded the Affective Disorders Clinic and applied for tenure at UCLA, which she won.
Jamison narrates major events in her romantic life. After the end of her first marriage, she falls in love and starts dating a man named David, a British psychiatrist with the Army Medical Corps. After spending a few days together where she lived in L.A., they spend several weeks in London which made her "remember how important love is to life". David was to her always loving, kind, and reassuring, and Jamison admits to enjoying life like she hadn't for years. After she returns to LA, David is posted to an army hospital in Hong Kong, where he plans for her to meet him. Before this can happen, however, a diplomatic courier comes to her house with the news that David had died of a massive heart attack while in duty. Jamison retells her months of grief about David's death, from feeling numb and detached during the funeral in London at first, to breaking down in the British Airways counter when they asked her the reason of her visit, to being able to remember David with fondness without regretting the future they'd lost.
Once back home, Jamison has an adjustment to her lithium levels, which greatly diminished the side effects without removing its effectiveness against the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Some time after, she meets Richard Wyatt, the man that would become her second husband and with whom she shares a more "opposites attract" relationship, which led to a rapidly evolving relationship that led her to leave her tenure position at UCLA to live in Washington with him.
Jamison talks about the renaming of her disease from manic-depressive illness to bipolar disorder, and rebels against the change, arguing that the new name is not descriptive enough of the disease and suggests a separation between depression and manic-depressive illness which is not always clear or accurate.
She tells her account of witnessing the first evidence of a genetic component to bipolar disease, and sitting with Jim Watson talking about mood disorders and family trees. After this genetic connection is made, Jamison talks about her struggle with her desire to have children. Later she recounts the recommendation of a physician she saw once to not have any because of her disease. Jamison calls not having her own children "the single most intolerable regret of [her] life", but describes her relationship with her niece and nephew and how she enjoys it.
In her new life in Washington, Jamison starts working in the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. She is apprehensive to disclose her illness to her new coworkers but does so to not jeopardize the care of her patients and make her superiors aware of the legal risk. Despite her fears, she describes being very accepted and supported in her work environment in Hopkins, as well as maintaining an optimistic view of the future of her illness.
The book received a positive reception, with Jamison being praised for her bravery. [3]
In 2009, Melody Moezzi, an Iranian-American attorney who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, reviewed An Unquiet Mind for National Public Radio. [4] She described the memoir as "the most brilliant and brutally honest book I've ever read about bipolar disorder". [4] Moezzi stated that "an unquiet mind need not be a deficient one". [4]
A 2011 review in The Guardian held that An Unquiet Mind has been unrivaled in its honesty about life with bipolar disorder. [5]
The book was originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in New York and reprinted by Vintage Books in paperback in 1997. [2]
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that each last from days to weeks. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with psychosis, it is called mania; if it is less severe and does not significantly affect functioning, it is called hypomania. During mania, an individual behaves or feels abnormally energetic, happy, or irritable, and they often make impulsive decisions with little regard for the consequences. There is usually a reduced need for sleep during manic phases. During periods of depression, the individual may experience crying, have a negative outlook on life, and demonstrate poor eye contact with others. The risk of suicide is high. Over a period of 20 years, 6% of those with bipolar disorder died by suicide. 30–40% engaged in self-harm. Other mental health issues, such as anxiety disorders and substance use disorders, are commonly associated with bipolar disorder. The global prevalence of bipolar disorder is estimated to be between 1-5% of the world's population.
Bipolar I disorder is a type of bipolar spectrum disorder characterized by the occurrence of at least one manic episode, with or without mixed or psychotic features. Most people also, at other times, have one or more depressive episodes. Typically, these manic episodes can last at least 7 days for most of each day to the extent that the individual may need medical attention, while the depressive episodes last at least 2 weeks.
Kay Redfield Jamison is an American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. She holds the post of the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is an Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.
Mania, also known as manic syndrome, is a psychiatric behavioral syndrome defined as a state of abnormally elevated arousal, affect, and energy level. During a manic episode, an individual will experience rapidly changing emotions and moods, highly influenced by surrounding stimuli. Although mania is often conceived of as a "mirror image" to depression, the heightened mood can be dysphoric as well as euphoric. As the mania intensifies, irritability can be more pronounced and result in anxiety or anger.
A mood disorder, also known as an affective disorder, is any of a group of conditions of mental and behavioral disorder where the main underlying characteristic is a disturbance in the person's mood. The classification is in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
Links between creativity and mental health have been extensively discussed and studied by psychologists and other researchers for centuries. Parallels can be drawn to connect creativity to major mental disorders including bipolar disorder, autism, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, OCD and ADHD. For example, studies have demonstrated correlations between creative occupations and people living with mental illness. There are cases that support the idea that mental illness can aid in creativity, but it is also generally agreed that mental illness does not have to be present for creativity to exist.
A mixed affective state, formerly known as a mixed-manic or mixed episode, has been defined as a state wherein features and symptoms unique to both depression and (hypo)mania, including episodes of anguish, despair, self doubt, rage, excessive impulsivity and suicidal ideation, sensory overload, racing thoughts, heightened irritability, decreased "need" for sleep and other symptoms of depressive and manic states occur either simultaneously or in very short succession.
Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament is a book by the American psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison examining the relationship between bipolar disorder and artistic creativity. It contains extensive case studies of historic writers, artists, and composers assessed as probably having had cyclothymia, major depressive disorder, or manic-depressive/bipolar disorder.
Cyclical variations in moods and energy levels have been recorded at least as far back as several thousand years. The words "melancholia" and "mania" have their etymologies in Ancient Greek. The word melancholia is derived from melas/μελας, meaning "black", and chole/χολη, meaning "bile" or "gall", indicative of the term's origins in pre-Hippocratic humoral theories. A man known as Aretaeus of Cappadocia has the first records of analyzing the symptoms of depression and mania in the 1st century of Greece. There is documentation that explains how bath salts were used to calm those with manic symptoms and also help those who are dealing with depression. Even today, lithium is used as a treatment to bipolar disorder which is significant because lithium could have been an ingredient in the Greek bath salt. Centuries passed and very little was studied or discovered. It wasn't until the mid-19th century that a French psychiatrist by the name of Jean-Pierre Falret wrote an article describing "circular insanity" and this is believed to be the first recorded diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Years later, in the early 1900s, Emil Kraepelin, a German psychiatrist, analyzed the influence of biology on mental disorders, including bipolar disorder. His studies are still used as the basis of classification of mental disorders today.
Bipolar II disorder (BP-II) is a mood disorder on the bipolar spectrum, characterized by at least one episode of hypomania and at least one episode of major depression. Diagnosis for BP-II requires that the individual must never have experienced a full manic episode. Otherwise, one manic episode meets the criteria for bipolar I disorder (BP-I).
A Summer in the Cage is a 2007 documentary film about a man's experiences with bipolar disorder. The film follows the filmmaker's friend Sam and features an interview with mental health scholar Kay Redfield Jamison. It was directed by Benjamin Selkow. The documentary debuted on the Sundance Channel in 2007.
Frederick King Goodwin was an American psychiatrist and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center, where he was also director of the Center on Neuroscience, Medical Progress, and Society. He was a specialist in bipolar disorder and recurrent depression.
Scattershot: My Bipolar Family is a 2008 memoir, written by American writer, carpenter, and former Montague Bookmill proprietor David Lovelace, published by Dutton Adult. Lovelace's memoir chronicles the challenges of growing up in a family in which four out of five members suffer from bipolar disorder, including Lovelace himself. Only his sister, who is a professional therapist, was spared the ravages of bipolar disorder, while both his parents, his brother, and himself, have suffered to differing degrees over the years.
Cyclothymia, also known as cyclothymic disorder, psychothemia / psychothymia, bipolar III, affective personality disorder and cyclothymic personality disorder, is a mental and behavioural disorder that involves numerous periods of symptoms of depression and periods of symptoms of elevated mood. These symptoms, however, are not sufficient to indicate a major depressive episode or a manic episode. Symptoms must last for more than one year in children and two years in adults.
The associated features of bipolar disorder are clinical phenomena that often accompany bipolar disorder (BD) but are not part of the diagnostic criteria for the disorder. There are several childhood precursors in children who later receive a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. They may show subtle early traits such as mood abnormalities, full major depressive episodes, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. BD is also accompanied by changes in cognition processes and abilities. This includes reduced attentional and executive capabilities and impaired memory. How the individual processes the world also depends on the phase of the disorder, with differential characteristics between the manic, hypomanic and depressive states. Some studies have found a significant association between bipolar disorder and creativity.
Ronald Robert Fieve was an American psychiatrist known for his work on the use of lithium in treatment of mood disorders. He has authored four popular science books, "Moodswing", "Bipolar II", "Prozac" and "Bipolar Breakthrough".
Lori Altshuler was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and held the Julia S. Gouw Endowed Chair for Mood Disorders. Altshuler was the Director of the UCLA Mood Disorders Research Program and the UCLA Women's Life Center, each being part of the Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to bipolar disorder:
Resilience: Two Sisters and a Story of Mental Illness is a memoir written by Jessie Close with Pete Earley, including some contributions from her sister, actress Glenn Close. This book deals with Jessie Close's mental health issues. The book discusses mental illness, abandonment, sexuality, substance abuse, and emotional turmoil.