This Quicksilver Illness: Moods, Stigma, and Creativity

This Quicksilver Illness: Moods, Stigma, and Creativity

A review of An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison

Kay Jamison is one of the faces of manic depression (or in more sterile terms, bipolar disorder). She is currently the face of one of the renowned researchers of manic depression and topics relating to the disease, ranging from suicide to creativity. She is a tenured professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, author of a best-selling memoir and one of the standard medical texts on the subject. She has also been the face of madness and despair, a mercurial young woman whose life became controlled by moods, a sufferer of "this quicksilver illness." Her memoir An Unquiet Mind is an honest and moving account of someone living with the disease. What is unique about Jamison is that regardless of her scientific understanding of her mental illness, she has the ability to convey depression and mania with lyrical poignancy.

In An Unquiet Mind Jamison provides the reader with her personal history, drawing from a range of stylish literary quotes and journal like accounts to weave the compelling story of her illness. Raised in a military family with a history of mental illness, though not one of discussing such problems, Jamison first dealt with intense moods during high school. These experiences escalated during her undergraduate years and by the time Jamison entered her mid-twenties manic depression had taken over her life. The memoir leads the reader through dizzying upward spirals, only to bring them crashing back down, mirroring Jamison's own cycles of moods. In the end some solace is reached through therapy, medication (lithium), and what Jamison views as an overarching theme in her story, love. Her ...

... middle of paper ...

...er statement.

Kay Jamison's memoir offers up many topics for discussion; this paper is just a jumping off point (4). An Unquiet Mind gives readers many things to think and understand about living with manic depression; similar to how Jamison describes one of her manias: "ideas are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones."

Internet Sources:

1)NIMH Mental Illness Statistics

http://www.nimh.gov/publicat/numbers.cfm

2)NIMH Mental Illness Research Goals for 2000-2001

http://www.nimh.gov/strategic/stplantoc.cfm

3)National Alliance for the Mentally Ill , NAMI presented Kay Jamison with an award for her advocacy work for manic depression.

http://www.nami.org/

4)Skeptics's Dictionary, An interesting review of An Unquiet Mind by Robert Todd Carroll.

http://www.skepdic.com/refuge/jamison.html