Kay Redfield Jamison: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Mood and Madness

Dear Patient, welcome back, I hope you'll have a nice Easter and your chocolate eggs won't fall off of your cuckoo's nest. However, before sprinkling lithium on girls and getting down to clean the house of all the dementia of winter, let me talk about an "unashamedly honest" memoir of manic depression, namely, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Mood and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison.

Manic depression, which is also called bipolar disorder, is a mental illness in which the patient experiences cyclical periods of mania and depression. The characteristics of mania are heightened and accelerated thinking and speaking, sudden and extreme enthusiasm for countless new ideas, lavish spending of money, energetic and passionate behaviour to the point of exhausting others, lack of sleep, rage, irritability, losing control over one's temper. However, by the time the patient should get down to work on his/her thousands of new ideas, depression takes over, and with it all of its numbing symptoms: fatigue, lack of motivation, loss of sexual desire, disturbance in concentration, tiredness, obsession with death, suicidal thoughts, inability to see the future and hope, and in most severe cases, delusions and hallucinations.

It is this sickness from which the writer of the memoir suffers. Jamison tells about her first symptoms and encounters with this disorder, her unwillingless to recognize that something is wrong, her refusal to take the medicine, all of the ups and downs of her illness in an honest and profound way. The main problem, as she wrote, is that "no pill can help me deal with the problem of not wanting to take pills;" that is, those suffering from manic depressive disorder refuse to take the medicine that would save their lives. Why is that? First, because of the side effects: nausea, vomiting, lack of coordination, torpid senses and feelings, depressed spirit, inability to read long texts, mental fatigue, etc. Secondly, it holds back all the psychotic zeal of the maniac periods, which seems as if the patient were deprived of his/her fountain of creativity and innovation. But there's a third reason, which might be the most difficult to break for psychological reasons: the fear that if lithium doesn't work either, the patient loses his/her last hope. However, Jamison had to learn the hard way that taking lithium is a must; an unsuccessful suicide attempt made her realize that she can't survive without taking her medicine.

The peculiar thing about the author is that she herself is a victim and a doctor of manic depression at the same time. She has always been interested in medicine, but, strangely, she didn't recognized her own symptoms when studying about psychiatry. Later, she decides to found a department for treating mentally ill people at UCLA (from where she graduated). She also successfully participates in writing medical essays and articles and attending conferences dealing with mental illnesses. Of course, she was afraid that she wouldn't be granted a medical license because of her illness, but her competence and power to overcome her psychosis didn't let her down. What is more, soon after the publication of her memoir, she was added to the list of best American doctors.

The two things that helped Jamison in her gravest periods of depression and mania are art and love. When researching about manic depression, she found out that several of the most famous composers and writers of were suffering from the same illness; for example, Lord Byron, from whom the quotation at the beginning of the book is cited. As far as love is considered, even though the author wrote that "no amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods," she does admit that it was love that brought her back to life after the most severe and hopeless periods of depression; it was love that let her see the light in the chasm of blackness and what kept her going when she thought she has lost all her will to live.

Jamison's memoir is undoubtedly a worthwhile read. It opens the reader's mind and lets him/her into her own, allowing a glimpse of golden associations to come to life. It helps the reader understand that just because someone is insane, it doesn't mean that they are incurable and unsuitable for life. It doesn't mean that they are not human and don't have a right to live like normal people. On the other hand, they might see things that sane people couldn't even imagine, and into which they might gain and insight if they approach the mentally ill with patience and empathy.