Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield Jamisonis an American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. She holds a post of Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is an Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrews...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth22 June 1946
CountryUnited States of America
caring news clarity
I was bitterly resentful, but somehow greatly relieved. And I respected him enormously for his clarity of thought, his obvious caring, and his unwillingness to equivocate in delivering bad news.
grief people needs
In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief and they really need to be treated for depression.
suicide kissing rivers
Suicide Note: The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. -Langston Hughes
grief broken doe
...Time does not heal, It makes a half-stitched scar That can be broken and again you feel Grief as total as in its first hour. -Elizabeth Jennings
substance essentials behavior
Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.
pain feels-just kind
In depression, your capacity to feel just flattens and disappears and what you feel is pain and a kind of pain that you can't describe to anybody. So it's an isolating pain, a completely isolating pain.
given complexity comprehension
The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension.
kindness small-kindnesses importance
I am reminded of the importance of small kindnesses.
pain water settling
I had been simply treating water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in seeking out life.
self-esteem sleep thinking
Who would not want an illness that has among its symptoms elevated and expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, abundance of energy, less need for sleep, intensified sexuality, and- most germane to our argument here-"sharpened and unusually creative thinking" and "increased productivity"?
depression loss blood
But then back on lithium and rotating on the planet at the same pace as everyone else, you find your credit is decimated, your mortification complete: mania is not a luxury one can easily afford. It is devastating to have the illness and aggravating to have to pay for medications, blood tests, and psychotherapy. They, at least, are partially deductible. But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so.
looks
Look to the living, love them, and hold on.
suicide bipolar optimist
I am by temperament an optimist, and I thought from the beginning that there was much to be written about suicide that was strangely heartening.
suicide america bipolar
Every seventeen minutes in America, someone commits suicide. Mostly, I have been impressed by how little value our society puts on saving the lives of those who are in such despair as to want to end them. It is a societal illusion that suicide is rare. It is not.