|
|
|
|
AN UNQUIET MIND by KAY JAMISON reviewed by Emma Ross
Kay Jamison is a famous expert on bipolar disorder, co- author of a textbook, Manic-Depressive Illness, that your p-doc probably has on his or her shelf. She has been well known among professionals for many years, but until recently, very few people knew that she also has manic depressive illness. In contemporary parlance, Jamison has bipolar1 disorder, severe, with psychotic features. An Unquiet Mind is the memoir that marked Jamison’s coming out of the closet. In her unique, beautiful-yet-candid prose, in vivid and precise detail, with the occasional touch of mordant wit, she tells you about her life with the disorder. She describes,, what it was like to be manic, depressed, mixed, and occasionally psychotic; what it was like to attempt suicide, and very nearly succeed; what it was like to spend like there’s no tomorrow, to rage incoherently. She describes – remarkably, for a clinician- what it is like to know very well that you need a mood stabilizer, but constantly refuse to take one, even after the refusal threatens to ruin your life a few times. If you are bipolar and your spouse or friend or parent Just Doesn’t Get It, just fails time after time to understand your condition, you might consider buying him or her a copy. It can go a long way in showing him or her that you really suffer, that bipolar symptoms are not something that you make up in order to get attention, that it does not go away of you only ‘snap out of it’ and that your violent rages are not to be taken personally. If you are an artist, or otherwise in a field requiring creativity, Jamison is one of the first popular authors to treat the bipolar-creativity connection seriously – unlike those books who seem to dismiss the concerns of the lithium-ized artist as if they were unreasonable whines (in another book, Touched With Fire, she addresses the matter of bipolar disorder and creativity in detail). Jamison’s is the story of a person with severe mood swings succeeding as a professional, helping others, and making a life for herself. In certain moods – when you are discouraged about your own chances of making it in the world – it is easy to envy Jamison bitterly, to dismiss the message of hope that she tries to bring by claiming that she got ‘the breaks’ that most of us don’t get. Personally, I cannot help but envy her the wonderfully loving and supportive mother she has. When short on cash, it’s easy to point at the fact that Jamison’s rich brother helped her with her huge, mania-related debts. Wouldn’t that be nice… But one must remember the various respects in which Jamison “had it harder “ than many of the readers of Bipolar World. She started her life as a bipolar in a time where very, very little was known about the disorder, when essentially only one medication- lithium – was available for it - prescribed in unnecessarily high, zombifying doses, and it wasn’t time-released either. Being “manic depressive” still meant, in many cases, spending your life in a back ward of a mental institution. Stigma, as bad as it is now, was much, much worse (and so was sexism in the workplace). There was no Americans with Disabilities Act, no pamphlets from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, no Bipolar World, no books on the subject for the layperson to read. Can you imagine how scary it must have been? If you were born in the 70s, like me, you probably cannot – thanks to the work of people like Jamison. Remember that, and have hope.
|
