Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind

Kay Redfield Jamison is a caucasian female who is a professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. She is currently 70 years old and published her novel An Unquiet Mind about her bipolar disorder in 1995. Her father was an Air Force officer, who eventually struggled with alcoholism, depression, and anger issues after the family moved to California. Her sister also has struggled with mental illness, likely bipolar disorder as well. Her mother and brother both do not suffer from any kind of mental illness. As a child, her and her family often travelled to a variety of military bases due to her father’s service. She lived in Washington for a

Walking down the street, everyone seems to go about their business, not taking the time to look at others around them and see the potential suffering that could be occurring. While reading Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison, it became clear how frightful it is to travel through life with Bipolar disorder. Kay began as a child growing up within a household of mental illness without knowledge until she was much older. Yet at the age of fifteen she did know that her sister had an “enormous artistic imagination and soul” (Jamison 15). This included having raging anger at different times co-occurring with her father's increased negative behavior of depression, rage and drinking after he retired and they moved. In California, Kay had to recreate

Given her accreditation and awards for her work in her community, as well as her literature, it is easy to see why she continues to make an impact in her field. Throughout her college career, and thereafter, she has made monumental influences in the lives of others through her research. Moreover, her knowledge of those who have disorders helps people understand that she truly does know what they are going through. Jamison was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was 28 years old. Not only does this allow her to empathize with others by allowing her to walk in the same shoes as them, she is still able to perform her duties as a psychologist. Not only does she understand others with bipolar disorder, she understands how she affects others with her disorder. Some may think that by “outing” herself as having a mood disorder, she may have hindered her career. In fact, it

Forney’s suffering arises not just from the symptoms of her bipolar disorder, but from the self-isolation that results from her fear of losing her creativity. After her diagnosis, Forney characterizes herself as a “rock star” cheerfully eating an energy bar and casually tossing Klonopin into her mouth (28). With the same carelessness, she begins reading Kay Jamison’s memoir, a story by a psychologist who suffers from the same disorder as she. Here, Forney’s face shows a dismissive skepticism, betraying her adamant refusal to let her disorder “dictate everything in [her] life” (27-28). Her reasons for this refusal become readily apparent when we

By definition, manic depression is otherwise known as bipolar disorder in modern times. It is “a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, behavior, thinking and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks.”(Introduction: Bipolar Disorder) This overall definition clearly supports the argument that Rose Mary carries bipolar disorder. Often times in the memoir, Rose Mary changes her mind and mood about doing something very quickly without any foreshadow. This brief explanation of bipolar disorder shows that Rose Mary possesses most of the traits of having bipolar disorder. From a greater perspective, bipolar disorder has two very distinctive phases ---- the manic phase and depressive phase. During a manic phase, patients are often “jumping quickly from one idea to the next” (Melinda and Jeanne), feeling energetic and having “unrealistic beliefs about one’s abilities or powers” (Melinda and Jeanne); during a depressive phase, patients are often “feeling hopeless, sad, empty”(Melinda and Jeanne) or irritable and unable to

How would you react if you found your wife in the shower with another man? Any sane person would furious, but would you lose control and beat the other man senseless? Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of bipolar disorder in The Silver Linings Playbook how untreated the disorder can take control of a person’s life giving them manic episodes and major depressive episodes. This film aims to accurately display the struggles any person with bipolar disorder will deal with in their daily life while trying to manage the extensive mood swings they experience. The intended purpose of this paper is to analyze not only in what ways the director and cast accurately display the everyday life of an individual with bipolar disorder, but also the quality of the film. Throughout the movie themes of divorce, medications, the need for social support when dealing with mental disorders and a person’s unwillingness to accept help, will all be brought up in order to help an individual manage their disorder.

In her book, An Unquiet Mind, Kay Jamison instills an understanding of bipolar disorder from two opposing perspectives. Initially, Jameson tells a tale of herself as a long-term victim of bipolar. It is from her description that a reader is highlighted about the various avenues through which the condition attacks. Besides exploring the disorder as the victim, the book as well depicts Jamison as the healed. That is, she gives an account of her life as an individual who survived the grips of bipolar disorder and became a healer (psychotherapist and a lecturer) instead. Reflecting on Jamison’s work An Unquiet Mind automatically triggers the desire of the reader to unearth more about the author, her context, and diagnosis of the bipolar disorder.

story in a memoir titled Madness: A Bipolar Life, in an attempt to shed some light and insight on the

In this book, we are presented with the mental illness named ‘Manic Depression’ in which Mark was faced with as a freshman in college. Manic Depression is most commonly known as ‘Bipolar Illness’ and is usually confused with schizophrenia and unipolar depression. It causes huge shifts in mood, energy, thinking, and behavior. The manic depressive may have multiple mania behaviors at a time and depression the next second. For example, in the book, Mark showed one of the biggest signs of the bipolar disorder, uncontrolled sleepiness. This usually marks the beginning of a manic depressive episode which causes the person to become a total stranger to others. Manic depression can cause huge sex drives in the person that might even exhaust his/her partner. It can cause moods, such as fatigue, delusions,

In the movie Silver Linings Playbook, we follow Pat Solitano Jr., a man recently released from a mental institution (Cohen et al., 2012). He is a Caucasian male, likely in his early to mid-thirties and of Italian descent. He was a high school history teacher, living with his wife, Nikki, an English teacher. Upon finding his wife in the shower with another man, he nearly beats the man to death leading him to be sent to a psychiatric facility for eight months with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. In this essay I will support the diagnosis of a Bipolar I disorder. A diagnosis of Bipolar I disorder, has specific criteria in the DSM-V that have to be met. I will be listing the criteria and through examples of Pat’s actions, thoughts and behaviours, he meets the criteria.

The novel “An Unquiet Mind” starts off describing the life of a young girl, Kay. Early off in Kay’s life she is experiencing traumatizing life events. One of those events is a very close encounter with a plane that flew over the elementary playground very low and “It flew into the trees, exploding directly in front of us” (12). Early on it seems much easier to see how she developed the mental illness, manic-depressive (bipolar) illness. Also, her father showed signs of a bipolar illness and maybe it could be heredity. Another traumatizing event was when Kay and her family moved to California and the complete shock from the change in background. This switch also leads to Kay drinking before she attends classes for high school. Just at the age of 16, Kay is beginning to see just how much her mood swings are affecting her friends and how the bipolar illness is changing her life.

This project will look at the character, Dr. Kay Jamison, from the autobiography, “An Unquiet

The author, Kay Jamison talks about her life with bipolar I disorder in her book, An Unquiet Mind. Jamison was a Caucasian woman who at the age of forty seven wrote this memoir. Currently she is seventy years old and dealing with her disorder. She spent her life moving around a lot because her father was an air force pilot. She grew up with an older brother who was very caring and an older sister that she bumped heads with. Kay’s father was a really delightful person. His emotions were contagious. Her mother was always helpful and caring for her family no matter how busy she was. Kay’s parents were supporting in all her interests; such as pets, poetry, science, and medicine. When she was fifteen, things took a turn and her family moved to California for her father’s new job as a scientist. Her father began to show worsening signs of depression. Around the age of sixteen, Kay realized that she was having mood swings that were very drastic. In her senior year of high school, she had her first manic depressive attack. She started her undergraduate study at UCLA dealing with her constant depression and manic episodes. As she was studying as an undergraduate, Kay began to take an interest in psychology. She pursued her PhD in psychology at UCLA again studying mood disorders. As a graduate student, she also began working in the psychiatric ward and dealing with marital problems in her first marriage. She was slowly spiraling out of control until she had a terrifying

As expressed in the documentary, bipolar disorder is a very misunderstood mental illness, and I was surely one of those who truly didn’t understand it. One fact that I learned was how the change from manic states to depressive ones are not easy gentle

Before I truly understood Bipolar disorder, it was still a fairly common word in my vocabulary. Anytime I thought someone was being moody or fluctuating between emotions, I joked by claiming that person to be bipolar. Several incidents of this involved one of my roommates who seemed to be happy one day, and quite the polar opposite the next. However, it was not until my clinical experience on the psychiatric unit that I realized what true bipolar disorder was, and that she did not fit the criteria. Even though I always thought my roommate was bipolar, I quickly found after being exposed to a diagnosed bipolar patient that my roommate was instead just moody. I decided to write this paper on bipolar disorder, not because I have struggle with it or know a friend or family member with this disease, but because I had several misconceptions about what it entailed.