An Unquiet Mind

Photo: Amazon.com

Book 9: An Unquiet Mind by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison is a memoir about her journey from diagnosis to treatment of manic-depressive illness or bipolar disorder. When the book was published Jamison was a professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and she writes about how she came to the decision to go public with her disease and about how some people reacted with kindness and understanding and others not so much. Of course, there are concerns about her ability to treat patients while she herself suffers from mental illness, which is a lot like the premise of the television show Black Box, except that on Black Box, Dr. Black is not public about her illness except for those closest to her. 

Reading the book and watching the show has made me think a lot about mental illness and the stigma that it carries. People can be less understanding and sympathetic of mental illness because it's often invisible. Many of the wounds are hidden, and often something tragic happens before the illness is even detected. Something that Jamison does well is being honest about both sides of her illness. On the one hand, it can help drive her creativity and passions when she's experiencing a mania, but it can also cause violent moods and depressions so dark that she's attempted suicide. 

What I like most about this book is it's transparency, and the way that Jamison shows all sides of living with this difficult, but treatable illness. She ends the memoir on positive note, reflecting on the support and love that helped her get through. She confesses on the last few pages that though the book started out being about mood disorders, it's also about love: "Love as a sustainer, as renewer, and as protector. After each seeming death within my mind or heat, love has returned to re-create hope and to restore life." Jamison was quite lucky that she had so much support, but others are not as fortunate. This book reminds me that everyone deserves kindness and understanding and that I should say and do all things with love because everyone is battling something whether or not the scars are visible.