Struggle With Manic Depression In The Unquiet Mind By Kay Redfield Jamison

Unquiet mind by Kay Redfield Jamison is a memoir written about Jamison's struggle with manic depression, commonly known as bipolar disorder. Jamison is a professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins School of Medicine giving her both the professional and personal views of bipolar disorder. The main theme of the memoir is persistence in the face of mental illness. The book serves to educate the reader about manic depression while also decreasing the stigma around mental illness at a time when this memoir could come with professional and personal risks. The book allows a glimpse into her life from being a child with no symptoms of bipolar disorder to being an adult who must take lithium and go to therapy to control her bipolar disorder. Her memoir …show more content…
Jamison witnessed a traumatic event that involved a pilot who averted his plane in order to avoid crashing into a playground full of children. Her dad was a pilot at the time, so the possibility of her father being the pilot was distressing to Jamison. Experiencing traumatic events is thought to be a risk factor for bipolar disorder. Her father and sister also had bipolar disorder which is thought to be genetic. This made her risk for bipolar disorder even higher. In addition, Jamison's family moved due to her father's new job. Jamison struggled with making friends at her new schools with people and she would drink vodka with orange juice to self-medicate. Jamison became even more stressed when her parents divorced and her father lost his job. Financial problems made Jamison unable to attend the University of Chicago. Instead, she went to the University of California at Los Angeles …show more content…
The lithium seemed to work and stabilized her mood in the beginning. The psychiatrist even became a close friend and ended up saving her from committing suicide multiple times. However, the lithium had side effects. One side effect was that she had a hard time reading, this was a concern for someone who was in academia. She also realized that the lithium was the same medication that made her sister lose her personality. Jamison did not like the idea of having these side effects and did not want to depend on these medications for the rest of her life. Furthermore, she believed that she was the exception to the rule that people with bipolar disorder need lithium to control their manic and depressive episodes. Later on, it is revealed that she had experienced the negative side effects due to the extremely high toxic doses given in the