As a child, she was optimistic, driven, but also plagued by a mercurial temperament. In An Unquiet Mind, Jamison paints a vivid picture of a life shaped and distorted by moods and madness. It is with this fearless attitude that she lays bare her struggles against an illness that has brought some of the world’s brightest minds on or past the brink of suicide. “One is what one is, and the dishonesty of hiding behind a degree, or a title, or any manner and collection of words is still exactly that, dishonest.” She was also tired of hiding and having to feel as if she had something to hide. Despite the confession’s possible effects on her personal life and career, Jamison decided that to make a difference in the lives of other manic depressives, she needed to speak up. Bear in mind that this was written during a period wherein an admission such as this could have major personal and professional repercussions for a medical practitioner. Now, one of the factors that make the book so compelling is how Jamison-one of the world’s foremost experts on the disorder-pulls from her own experiences as a manic depressive to provide a holistic view of the illness.
Written in the early 90s by Kay Redfield Jamison, a Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, An Unquiet Mind is an eye-opening memoir that effectively changes the way one views bipolar disorder. And yet, while we are seeing change in the public’s attitude towards the illness, there are just a handful of autobiographical accounts that tackle both the personal and medical effects of the illness as brilliantly as Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. The onset of social media has also contributed greatly in disseminating information and dispelling biases against the disorder. Over the course of the last couple of decades, the medical world has made significant progress in finding effective diagnostic and treatment procedures for Bipolar Disorder, formerly known as Manic Depression. Genre: Non-Fiction, Autobiography, Psychology Title: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
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