Manic-depressive illness Analysis in An Unquiet Mind

Most commonly known today as bipolar disorder, Kay Redfield Jamison uses the term “manic-depressive illness” because she feels that it most accurately describes her experience with this illness. Manic-depressive illness is part of a larger group of mood disorders that can cause their sufferers to experience fluctuating states of mania (marked by excitement, hyperactivity, restlessness and racing thoughts, euphoria, and delusions of grandeur), as well as states of depression (marked by fatigue, lethargy, a flat emotional affect, and suicidal ideation or action).

Manic-depressive illness Quotes in An Unquiet Mind

The An Unquiet Mind quotes below are all either spoken by Manic-depressive illness or refer to Manic-depressive illness. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Intensely emotional as a child, mercurial as a young girl, […] and then unrelentingly caught up in the cycles of manic-depressive illness by the time I began my professional life, I became, both by necessity and intellectual inclination, a student of moods. It has been the only way I know to understand, indeed to accept, the illness I have; it also has been the only way I know to try and make a difference in the lives of others who also suffer from mood disorders.

Related Characters: Kay Redfield Jamison (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 4-5

Explanation and Analysis:

The war that I waged against myself is not an uncommon one. The major clinical problem in treating manic-depressive illness is not that there are not effective medications—there are—but that patients so often refuse to take them. Worse yet, because of a lack of information, poor medical advice, stigma, or fear of personal and professional reprisals, they do not seek treatment at all.

Related Characters: Kay Redfield Jamison (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 6

Explanation and Analysis:

Then, too, are the bitter reminders—medicine to take, resent, forget… […] Credit cards revoked, bounced checks to cover, explanations due at work, apologies to make, intermittent memories (what did I do?), friendships gone or drained, a ruined marriage. And always, when will it happen again? Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me’s is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully much that is neither.

Related Characters: Kay Redfield Jamison (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 68

Explanation and Analysis:

Long since that extended voyage of my mind and soul, Saturn and its icy rings took on an elegiac beauty and I don’t see Saturn's image now without feeling an acute sadness at is being so far away from me, so unobtainable in so many ways. The intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness of my mind’s flight made it very difficult for me to believe, once I was better, that the illness was one I should willingly give up. […] It was difficult to give up the high flights of mind and mood, even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life.

Related Characters: Kay Redfield Jamison (speaker)

Related Symbols: The Planets and the Heavens

Page Number and Citation: 91

Explanation and Analysis:

I genuinely believed […] I ought to be able to handle whatever difficulties came my way without having to rely upon crutches such as medication.

I was not the only one who felt this way. When I became ill, my sister was adamant that I should not take lithium... […] She made it clear that she thought I should “weather it through” my depressions and manias, and that my soul would wither if I chose to dampen the intensity and pain of my experiences by using medication. […] One evening, now many years ago, she tore into me for […] “lithiumizing away my feelings.”

Related Characters: Kay Redfield Jamison (speaker), Kay’s Sister (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 99

Explanation and Analysis:

Manic-depression is a disease that both kills and gives life. Fire, by its nature, both creates and destroys. […] Mania is a strange and driving force, a destroyer, a fire in the blood. Fortunately, having fire in one’s blood is not without its benefits in the world of academic medicine…

Related Characters: Kay Redfield Jamison (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 123

Explanation and Analysis:

There a time when I honestly believed that there was only a certain amount of pain one had to go through in life. Because manic-depressive illness had brought such misery and uncertainty in its wake, I presumed life should therefore be kinder to me in other, more balancing ways. But then I also had believed that I could fly through starfields and slide along the rings of Saturn.

Related Characters: Kay Redfield Jamison (speaker)

Related Symbols: The Planets and the Heavens

Page Number and Citation: 139

Explanation and Analysis:

It was not without a sense of dread that I waited for [my chairman’s] response to my telling him that I was being treated for manic-depressive illness, and that I needed to discuss the issue of my hospital privileges with him. I watched his face for some indication of how he felt. Suddenly, he reached across the table, put his hand on mine, and smiled. “Kay, dear,” he said, “l know you have manic- depressive illness.” He paused, and then laughed. “If we got rid of all of the manic-depressives on the medical school faculty, not only would we have a much smaller faculty, it would also be a far more boring one.”

Related Characters: Kay Redfield Jamison (speaker), Kay’s Chairman

Page Number and Citation: 209

Explanation and Analysis:

So why would I want anything to do with this illness? Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; loved more, and been more loved; laughed more often for having cried more often; […] seen the finest and the most terrible in people, and slowly learned the values of caring, loyalty, and seeing things through. I have seen the breadth and depth and width of my mind and heart and seen how frail they both are, and how ultimately unknowable they both are.

Related Characters: Kay Redfield Jamison (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 218

Explanation and Analysis:

Manic-depressive illness Term Timeline in An Unquiet Mind

The timeline below shows where the term Manic-depressive illness appears in An Unquiet Mind. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...own condition. Her life, she writes now, has been a long journey to transform the manic-depressive illness that has been a part of her since her youth into something she can... (full context)

...to seek treatment that would help them. Jamison counts herself among the lucky survivors of manic-depressive illness. She states that she has pledged to dedicate her life and career to helping... (full context)

...hide behind her degrees and titles. She wants to go public about her struggles with manic-depressive illness, and, in the words of the poet Robert Lowell, “say what happened.” (full context)

During her senior year Kay experienced her first attack of manic-depressive illness. For weeks she “raced about like a crazed weasel” with a sense of invincibility... (full context)

...patients to help determined their mindset and provide insight into their associations. Kay, in a manic state, filled “page after page” with strange responses. The professor read some of the students’... (full context)

...she never did college—looking back now, she can see that she was in remission from manic-depressive illness, largely free from the manias and depressions that had defined the previous several years... (full context)

...spend money one doesn’t have, Jamison writes, is one of the most devastating aspects of manic-depressive illness, and one which often debilitates sufferers even further by compounding their sense of isolation... (full context)

Kay’s colleague told her he believed she had manic-depressive illness and needed to be medicated. Kay was resistant to being confronted with the truth—but... (full context)

...just how serious her condition was. When Kay’s psychiatrist told her that she definitely had manic-depressive illness and needed to start on lithium right away (and would likely have to stay... (full context)

...the gratitude she feels now, looking back, for her psychiatrist’s insistence on treating her for manic-depressive illness. Over the years to come she’d visit his office once a week, and his... (full context)

...psychological and medical aspects of lithium treatment. She quoted a “patient” of hers suffering from manic-depressive illness—too afraid to share with the crowd gathered before her that she was, in fact,... (full context)

...life—there existed for her a fine line, she writes, between her passionate personality and her manic alter ego. The depressions she experienced were “more in line with society’s notions of what... (full context)

Securing tenure, Jamison writes, is a competitive “blood sport”—as a nonphysician, a woman, and a manic-depressive, she was nervous about pursuing and attaining a tenured position, yet by the early eighties,... (full context)

...up an outpatient clinic at UCLA specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of depression and manic-depressive illness. Though Jamison herself was not a physician, she helped bring the Affective Disorders Clinic... (full context)

...and David were, Jamison still hadn’t told her new lover that she was struggling with manic-depressive illness. (full context)

...yet also an intensity. This new lover, like David, was understanding of Kay’s struggles with manic-depressive illness. When she complained to him about feeling frightened to explore a lower dose of... (full context)

Kay resumed work on a textbook about manic-depressive illness and found herself able to concentrate longer and make deeper insights and associations as... (full context)

...was steadfast and generous, and Richard—like David—was curious, sensitive, and reassuring in regard to Kay’s manic-depressive illness. (full context)

...“bipolar disorder” to describe what she and the rest of the psychiatric community have called manic-depressive illness. Many patients feel that manic-depressive illness is a poor term for what they experience—Jamison... (full context)

Jamison describes sitting in a meeting about finding the genetic basis of manic-depressive illness with a group of researchers, psychiatrists, geneticists, and biologists—including Jim Watson, a scientist who,... (full context)

...field of molecular biology as she and her colleagues have sought a scientific understanding of manic-depressive illness and its causes. (full context)

...recalls watching her colleagues share, via projector, the genetic pedigrees of the families affected by manic-depressive illness being studied by the team of researchers present. Completely blackened circles represented sufferers of... (full context)

...psychiatrist named Mogens Schou—the man responsible for the introduction of lithium as a treatment for manic-depressive illness—at an annual meeting of the APA in New Orleans. Taking a boat ride together... (full context)

...napkins together, and the visualization allowed Kay to realize that all of the instances of manic-depressive illness in her family were located on her father’s side. Kay credits that afternoon with... (full context)

Jamison goes on to describe the complex feelings that understanding manic-depressive illness as a genetic disorder has made her feel over the years. She discusses visiting... (full context)

...sometimes has concerns about what locating the genes that are responsible for the heredity of manic-depressive illness would mean. Better and earlier diagnoses, she says, would no doubt benefit patients—but there... (full context)

Jamison writes that, although she’s never had an easy time telling someone about her manic-depressive illness for the first time, there are one or two experiences that stand out to... (full context)

...certain point, Kay felt odd about not having shared the fact that she suffered from manic-depressive illness with him. At a restaurant in Malibu one afternoon, Kay finally confided in Mouseheart—the... (full context)

...struggles with mental illness more openly. She still worries on occasion that her openness about manic-depressive illness will impact how her colleagues see her or read her work—but at the same... (full context)

...chairman of the Department of Psychiatry. Over lunch, she told him about her struggles with manic-depressive illness, and explained that at UCLA her colleagues had known of her mental illness and... (full context)

...Hopkins, as an answer to her confession, told her that he already knew she had manic-depressive illness—and that if he were to “get rid of all the manic-depressives on the […]... (full context)

Kay Redfield Jamison sums up what thirty years of living with manic-depressive illness has taught her about the “restraints and possibilities” that accompany the disorder. She acknowledges... (full context)

...considers the question of whether she would—if given the chance—choose to live her life without manic-depressive illness. She has ultimately decided that if lithium were not available, the answer would be... (full context)

Manic-depressive illness Term Analysis

Manic-depressive illness Quotes in An Unquiet Mind

Manic-depressive illness Term Timeline in An Unquiet Mind