Dealing with Mental Illness in Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind

Is acceptance of mental illness the key to living a more fulfilled life?

I first became interested in bipolar or, manic-depression a few years ago when somebody close to me was diagnosed with it. I wanted to understand it better but found that the jargon and detached observations of psychiatric theory and practice that you can find on the internet didn’t really help me to understand what people actually go through. Kay Redfield Jamison’s ‘An Unquiet Mind’ manages to cut through all that to create a fiery, passionate, authentic account of the psychotic experience and introduce you to that facts of the illness without you even realizing it. Kay Jamison’s story is proof that mentally ill people, with help from medication, can live a wonderful life.

Manic-depression does not come on over night, it is an illness that evolves with you as you grow up and you get used to having it. “My illness and my struggles against medication have been years in the making…for as long as I can remember I have been frighteningly beholden to moods”(p.31) Kay Jamison talks about how she was used to having ups and downs in her life and how she acknowledged them as being part of her personality and not an illness. Even as her moods became more intolerable she didn’t consider taking medication. “I became exceedingly agitated, restless and irritable, and the only way I could dilute the agitation was to run or to pace back and forth like a polar bear at the zoo. I had no idea what was going on, it never occurred to me that I was ill, my brain just didn’t put it in those terms.”(p.48) Kay wasn’t exactly uninformed, she had been studying psychology in a personal and professional way for at least ten years. She just hadn’t accepted that she had an illness and...

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...d made the most of it. “I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply, had more experiences, more intensely, loved more, and been more loved, laughed more often for having cried more often…”(p.217)

It has been said that how successful you are depends on the people around you. Your peer group, family and background all play a huge part in determining how well you do in life. Quite often people are born into families that do not appreciate them or push them to do their best. Not having support for what you do, what you think and how you act can make things much harder. Kay Jamison was very lucky to be surrounded by people who influenced as well as pushed her to be the best person she could be and encouraged her to do the things she loved. The experiences Kay has had have made her a wonderful person and an inspiration to us all.