Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind

An Unquiet Mind

Kay Redfield Jamison, an American clinical psychologist and author, published one of her books An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness in 1995. The book, as the title describes, is an emotionally moving memoir documenting Jamison’s life. Jamison has had bipolar disorder, or manic-depressive illness, since young adulthood and An Unquiet Mind unapologetically takes readers through the roller coaster which is her life. Albeit bipolar disorder is hard to understand from an outside perspective, this memoir gives an honest yet informative understanding of Jamison’s personal experience with manic-depressive illness. From her early childhood to the peaks of her illness, An Unquiet Mind shows the perspective of an otherwise perplexing

She was at first crazed, focused and extremely active. She repeatedly stayed up all night, putting action to the abundance of thoughts running through her mind, and she felt amazing. Jamison would tell her friends all about her marvelous ideas, and even though her friends made it obvious she was exhausting them, she did not stop. Mania can be described as an uncontrollable surge of excitement, euphoria and energy, which is exactly what Jamison was experiencing. Eventually, her mania passed and the depressive phase took over. She describes it as though the bottom fell out of her life and mind. Unlike how clear her thinking seemed when she was manic, she lost the concept of her surroundings and everything became foggy and confusing. This being her first psychotic episode, but certainly not her last, it made for an extremely rough final year of high school. Jamison was baffled on how she was able to push through this year, “Looking back I am amazed I survived, that I survived on my own, and that high school contained such complicated life and palpable death.” Not only did she survive, but she also began undergraduate studies at the University of California the following

She meets a professor who experiences the same highs and lows she does, and they both come to realize they have manic-depressive disorder. Although she knows she should seek help from a psychiatrist, she does not and continues on to study psychiatry. In 1974, Jamison becomes a faculty member at UCLA and her illness is worse than it has ever been. She begins to experience horrifying delusions, and a colleague eventually convinces her to see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist diagnoses her with bipolar disorder and prescribes her a mood stabilizing medicine called lithium. Lithium acts on the central nervous system. Although how the drug works is not exactly known, it is believed to help strengthen nerve cell connections in the brain. As she continues taking lithium, her moods begin to stabilize but after a year Jamison began to struggle. Convinced she no longer needs to take lithium because her initial manic-depressive episode passed, Jamison discontinues taking it becomes extremely suicidal. She overdoses with her excess lithium and waits to die in her bed, but her brother calls and is alerted by her slurred speech so he alerts her psychiatrist. Due to the overdose, Jamison became comatose for a few days but eventually recovered. Just like bipolar disorder, Jamison’s life has had extreme highs and extreme lows, but she eventually was able to stabilize her moods and is