Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind

The book “An Unquiet Mind” by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison outlines her journey in the psychological world while dealing with her illness, manic-depressive otherwise known as bipolar 1, as described in the DSM IV. She talks about her manic and depressive episodes that caused her to fly through her undergraduate and graduate studies at UCLA. She dealt with her illness, the death of a loved one, and her overwhelming stress levels she gains from becoming a tenure professor. I find the book to be riveting, in how it encases mental illness as a good and bad thing rather than an “illness”. The way that Dr. Jamison was able to find success and love in her turmoil filled life shows how there is hope for anyone that suffers from a mental illness. Even before I had read this book, I had always believed that people with a mental illness should work within the field. The themes that this book encomposes is the idea of love and “rotten luck”.

Love is something that is throughout the book.

Whether it is from her family, her first boyfriend, husband and her string of lovers, Dr. Jamison is surrounded by constant love, even in her darkest, depressive episodes. Her illness had caused her to love more, as she mentioned more than once in the book, causing her to fall deeply and fast for people. She fell for people who were kind and intellectual and seen her at her best and her worst. She had many friends that stayed with her throughout her life, in pre-diagnosis and even during her suicide attempt. Something that she mentioned was “No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one’s dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always , one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable” ( Jamison

175).

In class we had discussed how depression can cause you to slowly fall apart. Everything seems to have no meanings, no one loves and your world is crashing around you. Depression is hard to deal with alone, but when people are there for you, it can be significantly better. Depression causes people to be withdrawn and they tend to isolate themselves from others, even from people they are close with. Having someone, who understands how to reach out without being controlling is the remedy to make a depressed person feel wanted. A decrease in self worth within depressed people is also extremely common, so being by that person showing love and approval can help, but not cure the illness.

Dr. Jamison had fallen deeply for a man named David Laurie. The time that she was courted from the Englishman she was born anew. He was incredibly supportive and when she told Laurie of her illness he hugged her. “ David turned to me , put his arms around me, and said softly , “I say, Rotten luck” (Jamison 144). While she was blessed with some good fortune in her life, she was filled with bad luck. She was forced to move away from her military upbringing into the glamorous life of LA. Her sister rejected her when she reached out to her to talk about her illness and the medications she was taking. She married her first husband and then they split up because he could not deal with her excessive manic episodes. A man that she had truly loved had died from a heart attack,and she was not able to say her last goodbye. While manic depressive is an easily treated illness is not curable. It is filled with pros and cons, especially to a person who got used to the highs and lows that the illness produced. Dr. Jamison grew used to the highs because it was able to aid her in her studies and clinical research. She was able to get work done very quickly and efficiently, but she lost her sanity, sleep and her money as a result. Her depressive episodes were filled with guilt and sadness. She withdrew from the world and spent her time holed up in her apartment or in her office staring at the wall for hours.

Throughout the book, Dr. Jamison was afraid she would lose her job at her various postings if she was upfront about her illness. There is stigma within the field and as well in the regular world that people with mental illnesses can not be functioning adults. A fear is held within her every time she applied to a new job and was introduced to new people because of the judgments that they may have for her. When she started to work at Hopkins she was faced with the decision to disclose her information about her medication or lie on the form- which would cause dismissal. She contacted the head and told him, and he replied “‘Kay, dear,’ he said, ‘I know you have manic-depressive illness’. He paused and then laughed. ‘If we got rid of all of the manic-depressives on the medical school faculty, not only would we have a much smaller faculty, it would also be a far more boring one’”(Jamison 209). This shows that people with illnesses can work within the field as long as they are not a danger to themselves or to others.
As someone who suffers from depression, the book really resonated with me in a positive way. People may have all the love in the world but they still might suffer from the hardships of life. As well as the fact that some people just suffer from rotten luck and there is not much that can be done about it, except what you do yourself. Dr. Jamison was an extremely hardworking women. While at first it may have seemed like she only worked hard in her manic episodes, she was able to continue her work ethic on lithium. The book was able to illustrate how they can still be mentally but still work within the field. A person might even be able to further the research on the illness itself since the person personally suffer from the ailment.