Sean Noble
#2457049
Psych 350
Stephen Ilardi
12/15/14
(TITLE)
(INTRO) Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind, spent most of her teenage years progressing deep down a dangerous path, a path she had unknowingly been traveling her entire life. Kay Jamison started her life, like many of us do, as an “intensely emotional child” (Jamison, 4-5). The intensity then began to increase in proportion to the increase in age. Jamison says how her temperament became more “mercurial as a young girl” (Jamison, 4-5). Jamison then started to approach the end of her high school years. Her zest and appetite for life then started to become almost obsessive. The individuals that she frequented began to feel physically and mentally drained in her presence. She was being emotionally and physically drained as well as she began to experience massive reductions in sleep followed by massive bursts of depression (Jamison, 35). She was finishing her final year in high school when she was suddenly assaulted by a wave of mania…show more content… She did gain some reprieve for extended periods of time however. These phases were much more hypomanic in their characteristics and they did not pose a problem to her ability to function (Jamison, 42). The periods of time where she was “drenched in awful sounds and images of decay and dying: dead bodies on the beach, charred remains of animals,” and “toe-tagged corpses in morgues” were much more typical of her early years in college (Jamison, 45). The depression then initially started to make a build up back towards mania. This began when incidences of feeling “restless, angry, and irritable” not only grew in intensity but also were only able to be filtered out of her system by participating in activities that would force her to expel the most energy (Jamison, 45). The build towards mania did not progress but the reoccurrence of depression was absent as