Name: An Unquiet Mind
Rating: 4.057692307692307 (52 reviews)
ISBN: 9780679763307

Kay R. Jamison

The personal memoir of a manic depressive and an authority on the subject describes the onset of the illness during her teenage years and her determined journey through the realm of available treatments. Reprint. 125,000 first printing.

An Unquiet Mind

Kay Redfield Jamison

WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR In her bestselling classic, An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison changed the way we think about moods and madness. Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness; she has also experienced it firsthand. For even while she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients, as her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide. Here Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication. An Unquiet Mind is a memoir of enormous candor, vividness, and wisdom—a deeply powerful book that has both transformed and saved lives.

A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Jennifer

Written as one would expect a researcher to write about themselves. Much like an academic paper, Jamison makes her point succinctly, adds fancy vocab to make her point, then finishes it up with some astute poetry. Perhaps her Lithium is working too well, because the writing was so cohesive and academically sound that my eyes glazed over at some points. I guess I was looking for more emotion and drama in her descriptions. She tells the reader what happened but I lacked the feeling like I was there with her, experiencing what was happening and how her moods were so variable and volatile. <br /><br />This was a great personal overview of bipolar disorder but I wish she had gotten more personal à la My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward and Haldol and Hyacinths. 

"People go mad in idiosyncratic ways. "

"The ominous, dark, and deathful quality that I felt as a young child watching the high clear skies fill with smoke and flames is always there, somehow laced into the beauty and vitality of life. That darkness is an integral part of who I am, and it takes no effort of imagination on my part to remember the months of relentless blackness and exhaustion."

Belle

I learned a lot. It also creeped me out a bit because this can be a really scary illness. But it helped me understand also that it's treatable, and what it looks like when it's managed well.

Emma Younger

Meniah

Nukhet Erensoy

Nellwyn Lampert

Moxie Minion

Crystal L

Tiago Mariz

The author recounts her own personal struggle with manic-depression and how it has shaped her life.

An Unquiet Mind

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