Kay Jamison's An Unquiet Mind

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For years Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the author of the memoir, An Unquiet Mind, suffered from bipolar disorder in secret. She suffered her first episode at seventeen, and refused treatment until her severe mood swings developed into full psychosis, a full decade later. The memoir is Kay Jamison’s first person account of her battle with her illness: the pleasure her manic highs gave her, the miserable depressions, and her life in between. Kay Redfield Jamison used her enthusiasm and energy, and her striking intellectual abilities, in An Unquiet Mind, to bring manic-depressive illness to the world's attention. Kay Jamison had lived with her disorder for as long as…show more content…
The formal diagnosis was not a primitive part of her life, because she knew way before the diagnosis that she was suffering with the disorder, given her profession. As a doctor and researcher living with bipolar disorder, her personal insight and experience allows her to better understand how the disorder affects her patients. She is able to relate to them on a personal level and even by writing about her experiences, Jamison allows others to relate to her and understand that the disorder does not make someone incapable. She acknowledged the negative effects of living with bipolar, but she writes that, “she would not live without it, if given a choice.” Kay Jamison experienced intense and brutal mood swings, from incredible highs to the brutal depression. She writes, “… the wave of mania… like hundreds of subsequent periods of high…show more content…
One colleague, confesses “deep disappointment” in her after hearing of her attempted suicide. In addition, she was told by a physician that she shouldn't have children because of her disorder. Kay Jamison writes about her struggles and reasons behind exposing that she has this disorder, because as a clinician she risked removal of privileges due to her illness and as a professional she risked critique of her research and

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