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    An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
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    An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
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    An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
    Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

    An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR

    In her bestselling classic, An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison changed the way we think about moods and madness.

    Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness; she has also experienced it firsthand. For even while she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients, as her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide.

    Here Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication. An Unquiet Mind is a memoir of enormous candor, vividness, and wisdom-a deeply powerful book that has both transformed and saved lives.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 12, 2010
    ISBN9780307736345
    Unavailable
    An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

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    Reviews for An Unquiet Mind

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison is an intimate look into the havoc that bipolar disorder can wreak. The book captures her journey with bipolar disorder, from its emergence in her late teens to the effects it has had on her accomplished career as a clinical psychologist and university professor.The book contains rich descriptions, and is searingly honest with no attempt to gloss over the messy and downright ugly bits of mental illness. The author is extremely insightful, and does an excellent job of capturing in words what mental illness feels like. She described the “particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness… You are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and totally enmeshed in the blackest caves of the mind.”Many of the challenges Jamison has faced will sound very familiar to anyone living with a mood disorder. She is very open about her struggle to accept her diagnosis and the attached stigma. Even once she did recognize that she was struggling with her mental health, fear and shame initially stopped her from seeking treatment. It took a long time for her to accept that she needed to remain on medication, and there were multiple occasions when she stopped her meds and then experienced a relapse of mania. There were several factors that played into her reluctance to take medication, including a wish not to be brought down from the highs of mania. She thought of medications as something that “might be indicated for psychiatric patients, for those of weaker stock, but not for us”. She was placed on high doses of lithium, which caused considerable side effects including nausea and impaired coordination, and at times she ended up with toxic blood levels.Her work as a psychologist impacted how she experienced and managed her illness and its treatment. When she first met with a psychiatrist, “the questions were familiar, I had asked them of others a hundred times, but I found it unnerving to have to answer them, unnerving not to know where it was all going, and unnerving not to realize how confusing it was to be a patient.”When she was highly depressed, her psychiatrist tried to persuade her to go to hospital, but she refused. The idea terrified her and she didn’t want to have to “put up with all of the indignities and invasions of privacy that go into being on a psychiatric ward”. She also worried that if it became known she’d been hospitalized “my clinical work and privileges at best would be suspended; at worst, they would be revoked on a permanent basis.” This resonated strongly with me, as I have similar fears about the loss of my nursing license if I were to be hospitalized again.As Jamison was recovering from a long period of suicidal depression, she began a romantic relationship with a man. He asked her to come to stay with him in London, and she states that although she was “still recovering… and my thoughts were so halting and my feelings so gray I could scarcely bear it I somehow knew that things would be made better by being with him. They were. Immeasurably.” Love helped her replace the awfulness of illness with beauty and vitality, which I found this interesting, as in the past love has made a big difference in my own recovery,She writes about the issue of language choices when it comes to mental illness. She prefers the term manic-depressive illness to bipolar disorder, as she finds it more accurate. She also questioned whether in the end destigmatization can possibly come from simple language changes, or whether it will instead come from things like public education and improvements in diagnosis and treatment. She touches on stigma within the health professions, giving the example of one doctor who told her she shouldn’t have children due to her illness. She warns that stigma may prevent clinicians with mental illness from seeking treatment because of concerns about their professional license or privileges. She has been careful to create a safety net of colleagues who are aware of her illness and who will step in to keep her from practice should her mental health start to deteriorate. This reminds me of the safety net I had in place several years ago when I was getting outpatient ECT. I knew from past experience that ECT adversely affected my memory and I was often unaware of the full extent of this impairment, so I had spoken to each of the physicians I worked with and asked them to let me know if I was slipping in my management of our shared patients so that I would know if I needed to take time off.I found the conclusion of the book very powerful. The author stated that as a result of her illness, “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; appreciated more the springs, for all the winters; worn death ‘as close as dungarees’, appreciated it–and life–more; seen the finest and the most terrible in people, and slowly learned the values of caring, loyalty, and seeing things through.” It’s a good reminder to all of us that as dark as mental illness can be, it does not entirely shut out the light. I would definitely recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      A great memoir of her life with bipolar disorder by Dr. Jamison. Insightful and powerful, this book, and the author, are inspiring.
    • 3/5
      A fairly quick overview of one person's unquiet mind. Doesn't get into depth about mental illness - this is more of a history lesson of Kay's life. Leaves a LOT of questions unanswered and I guess that is the author's prerogative but it didn't help the book. It *is* interesting and Kay is a fine narrator but left me wanting a whole lot more about some areas in her life... (and, conversely, was way too much info about her love life and boyfriends. It's nice that she's found some good men but the spiels about how great so-n-so was and how brilliant and witty etc... just wasn't that interesting. Would have loved to hear more about the unquiet illness than how good some guy was at cooking or cleaning or talking...
    • 4/5
      I can relate to many of the things she speaks of and experienced in her life. I would just want others to know this is more of an autobiography or memoir than a book of how to deal with one's own struggles. If you come into this book with the right expectations, this is an enjoyable book. If you come into it looking for more of a self help style book, you will be disappointed.
    • 5/5
      Great insight into her profound struggle with a truly horrible illness.
    • 5/5
      Utterly fascinating, but also emotive. Found this very well written.
    • 2/5
      I wish this had come with a trigger warning because the author uses madness and mania interchangeably.
    • 4/5
      This is book written by a trained professional, who not only studied psychology and works as a professional, but also lives with manic-depression. Having this dual experience adds so much substance and emotion to a subject that not many of us understand. It's a short read, so I highly recommend reading this as it is very informative on clinical yet human level.
    • 5/5
      This book is moving, real and informative. Really Loved it!
    • 5/5
      Intense and personal--the story of manic depression and how one person lived through it. Very sad, to see how people live with this illness. I kind of don't understand why she was not interested in taking her lithium like she was supposed to, especially with all that background she had dealing with mental illness. Amazing what our brain chemicals can do to us.
    • 4/5
      A coworker gave me An Unquiet Mind after reading it for a work book club. It's a memoir published in 1995 chronicling Kay Redfield Jamison's struggle with bipolar/manic depression that began in the 70s. The unique part about this book is that Kay is a well-renowned psychiatrist yet she constantly battled staying on her medication, while at the same time doing everything she could to keep her patients taking theirs. Her writing is raw and poetic.The beginning of the book was very chronological but once her illness sets in it jumps around a lot. She mentioned her family having a big part, both negative and positive, in her dealing with her illness but they are rarely mentioned. I'd like to know what happened to her dad and sister. I would definitely read her other books, but they are on other heavy topics so I might put some space between them.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      For Kay Jamison, madness was a lightning bolt. But it doesn't usually strike like that. There was a great vacuum in this book at the psychotherapeutic level.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by: Kay Redfield Jamison I had a good friend that was diagnosed with Manic Depressive Disorder and he's the biggest reason this book called out to me when I saw it. I always wondered what was going on in there and what the manias and depressions felt like. I always thought that understanding would help me interact with him in those states and not agitate him or exacerbate problems. I don't really know, though, he went off the grid after a particularly bad struggle with the whole evolution, of which I was in his circle, and then returned suddenly to social media, having moved away and found a better way to deal with it all then we could have hoped for.
      I thought of him as I listened to the audiobook and Dr. Jamison explain her experience with this same disorder. I worked through all the behaviors that had been mania and depression and the way he never understood the way the medicine was improving his ability to deal with it.
      As audiobooks go, this is a rather short one. It's just under three hours and eloquently describes the ups and downs that go with this disorder and the way that it progresses during her lifetime. This isn't remembering just one evolution but several as well as the fears that accompany letting others know that she has it, that she might pass it on to children, having dealt with a parent with this disorder. She includes the feeling of the mania and the aftermath, which is more than the depression that follows it. There are inevitable consequences in life for those things that are done in both manic and depressed states. She doesn't shy away from sharing those. But there is also healing and more to healing than medication and more to taking medication than simply being prescribed it.
      Above all, I appreciate that she shared it all and helped the rest of us understand what it is like to be the one that lives with the disorder. It's a beautiful book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I read this book to better understand the complexities of mania and depression and to learn more about it from the perspective of not only someone with the disease, but from someone who is also a professional and academic in the field. Perhaps what I find most compelling about this book is the openness through which she discusses the topics of bipolar, mental illness, and suicide. These topics are still considered socially taboo, and she does a great job of bringing to light why they’re so important to talk about (with friends and family, as well as in academia).However, I unfortunately think her case is truly extraordinary. I was surprised by how supportive virtually everyone she encountered was of her and of her illness. Then again, she was surrounded by incredibly well-informed individuals (and some of the best researchers and practitioners in the field). Not everyone with bipolar has a such a strong support system or has the luxury of being surrounded by people who know and understand the disease, which is also part of the problem. Further, it doesn’t even begin to describe to the socioeconomic problems faced by lower or middle-class individuals who have the disease. It can be hard for people with this disease to hold a job (or even get a job), which can seriously limit their access to healthcare. People less fortunate than her often end up institutionalized in one form or another, and lack access to healthcare and other resources they need to function. I think this book does a great job of explaining the highs and lows of bipolar and how it truly affects all aspects of life. It answers many of the ongoing questions friends and family of people with bipolar have: how and why bipolar is a disease and should be treated as such, how even the most intelligent people can become suicidal, and why people with bipolar so often stop and then resume taking medication (and the often-horrible side effects of such medication). Overall, it’s a very insightful book that gives interesting, thought-provoking insights into bipolar illness.
    • 5/5
      Could not put this book down!
    • 3/5
      Interesting. Surprisingly quiet, ironically, as there's no dialogue - it's just a this happened and this is how I felt about and then I made this choice and then that happened" for 200 pp. No bibliography or notes, virtually no outside perspective.

      I found it amazing that Jamison had so much support, so much love, and still fought not to take her meds. A reader is made to realize that it's not surprising that so many people effectively resist treatment, because they really do feel best when manic, as they don't have the support she did to help them feel better at other times. And she makes it abundantly clear that it's meds psychotherapy that is necessary and best for most sufferers.

      I found it disturbing that she feels that her low moods are comparable to being old. Granted, I am less passionate as I age, and less athletic, but I wouldn't have to be. Even the very infirm might very well feel ecstasies - and young, healthy people get clinically, chronically depressed, too. I want to know how she views the comparison that she made here, now that she herself is older.

      Overall, well-written, and valuable, especially as an advocacy to convince people to get good help and to follow through with prescribed treatment plans. But not the first book I'd recommend to people looking for help."
    • 3/5
      "An Unquiet Mind" is an important, honest, and interesting book, but I'm not sure it's an entirely successful book. The author presents a kind of psychological autobiography here, tracing the development of her manic-depressive disorder and her continual struggle to keep it under control, even as she builds an impressive career as a psychiatrist, academic, and researcher. She doesn't have it easy, and she loses her way a number of times. Jamison's startlingly forthright descriptions of her deep depressions, her reckless behavior, and occasionally, her cruelty to others, hold nothing back. Neither do her descriptions of her manic states, in which she describes visions in which she literally felt herself sail through the solar system. Jamison's descriptions of what it feels like to experience manic high or a depressive low are astonishingly vivid, and particularly valuable to anyone who wants to understand what manic depression actually feels like. The flip side of these sections, appropriately enough, is Jamison's passionate advocacy for both talk therapy and medication. You could almost call "An Unquiet Mind" a sort of love letter to lithium, even as Jamison tells us that manic depressives -- herself included -- are often tempted to stop taking their medication. Jamison is somebody who's experienced mental health care from just about every perspective imaginable, and the depth of her expertise is certainly in evidence here. Unfortunately, the rest of the book isn't quite as effective. Jamison demonstrates real insight when she describes the sheltered, straight-laced military environment she grew up in, but other parts of the book -- particularly those that describe the time she spent studying and teaching in Britain, dive headlong into cliché. There are a few too many picturesque fogs and nights in cozy pubs in these sections for my taste. And, as other reviewers have mentioned, Jamison takes pains to stress how her friends have family have provided invaluable help to her in her darkest moments, but sometimes I found myself that she'd do more showing, and less telling. "An Unquiet Mind" is, in some ways, very well written, but sometimes it feels a bit overworked. While Jamison's focus on moods and emotions is laudable, the prose doesn't really breathe. Perhaps it doesn't help that while Jamison is obviously astonishingly talented and driven, these same qualities made it a bit difficult for me to relate to her. Of course, this isn't to say that I don't admire her, or even that I didn't find things to like about "An Unquiet Mind." But I'm not sure this one really worked for me. But this one's received real raves from other users, so maybe that's just me.
    • 1/5
      I'm bipolar and this book was infuriating. This woman is just full of herself and acts like being bipolar is like having a cold or something. When her doctor dared to suggest that, given the severity of her case, she not have biological children, she blew up on him. I chose not to have children because I do not want to pass this on and I don't have half the issues this chick has. It's not like giving your kids an ugly nose or making them acne-prone. This disorder is very real and can be horrifying, and this woman seems to have no idea, even when she's floating in the middle of it. I shudder to think of other people reading this and a) thinking that's how we all are, or (b) adopting her selfish, irate attitude.
    • 4/5
      I like the fact that this was a first hand account of someone who is highly intelligent yet battles manic depressive disorder. please know that if it were a movie I would rated R. but I think anyone could find it very helpful if they had a family member who was dealing with this illness.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Dr. Jamison is a clinical psychologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University. She also has struggled with bipolar disorder (otherwise known as manic-depression) for her entire life. Her topic of research and clinical expertise is bipolar disorder as well. Due to this rare combination of deep suffering and erudition, Dr. Jamison’s autobiography is of intense interest. She is able to view herself and her disease in an extraordinarily objective light. Thus, she can present her story in a helpful and enlightening manner for those affected by this form of mental illness.Dr. Jamison traces her mental illness back to childhood, and she was always very intense. Throughout young adulthood, she cycled between times of intense mental energy and times of intense melancholia (depression). Despite knowing an obviously intense need of medication, it took her a long time to come to terms emotionally with the fact that she needed such a support. Like many who suffer from bipolar disorder, she aspired to an unrealistic goal of self-reliance and eschewed medicine.Eventually, she capitulated to her need of drugs and took the mood stabilizer lithium. Sadly, lithium adversely affected her ability to read and to focus properly – an essential skill for a researcher and a clinician. Her disease also affected her love life as she chronicles in this book. She ended up most deeply loving men who understood and contributed to her medical condition.This work circumspectly tells the tale of her growing up and succeeding in her career despite – and even because of – her disease. In the final chapter, She says that she would choose to have bipolar disorder instead of avoiding it if she had the choice. Her work is informative both as a memoir (as it relates to those suffering and affected by the disease) and as an educational piece (as she has started clinical centers focused on the disease). It is perhaps the most essential reading in the English language for anyone newly diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Sufferers can learn from her pitfalls, be wary of her difficulties, and be inspired by her strength.
    • 2/5
      I took the grace of reading this book without reading any reviews on it to prevent bias. I fucking hated it anyways.

      I felt the presence of men all over the book. Kay rarely mentioned women and the only ones who showed up were her mother and older sister. It was overly suffocating and I felt condescended to when Kay mentioned her achievements and the oppression she felt when her mental illness prevented her from accomplishing what her WASP/Ivy status allowed her to do.

      Her writing was good but it was not enough to distract me from her abysmal egocentricity about her sex life, her list of lovers, and all those men who were her friends. I don't understand why she doesn't talk about any female friends...maybe she doesn't have any? I understand that's reasonable since to each their own but I'm still baffled.

      There was so much centralization on SEX and MEN. what the actual fuck
      Like if I wanted to read about romance, I would've searched out a love story! (and I love romance, by the way; it adds a lot of fun to an otherwise tragic book that takes itself too seriously with its sad, gory, and fantastical elements)

      Sorry, I read this book expecting a book on mood disorder and that's what it was marketed as but I now want my money back. I didn't EVEN BUY THE DAMN BOOK. never mind I actually want my time back. This book wasted my time and it wasn't even about how unlikable Kay was. I'm sick and tired of this book, it's only 228 pages and it's saturated with achievements, her rise to prestigious job positions, and the amount of support she received from men. Okay, yeah, you garnered a lot of attention from men and you also have a lot of handsome friends.

      Your two best friends in high school were handsome, sardonic and super popular GUYS in high school. Thanks for describing that, did it contribute to your story, influence your illness or even impact your life?!!! Because you briefly drop them and then talk about other guys you meet in college, husbands (yes, husbandS), and turbulent love affairs.

      Keep in mind I have a 8-page paper due in a few hours and all of it to be written by referring to this book. And yet, wa-la!...here I am writing about how much cock and bull I read wastefully. And surprisingly, I wrote so much and infinitely quickly on my subjective review of this book than my actual assignment essay!

      A lot of the aforementioned male friends and people who supported you need not be included because Kay did not show their long-term support. She would talk about them for a few pages and then it would all revert back to her. They are then dropped and I never hear about them again (except for maybe the psychiatrist and her family). Nearly every men she comes into contact with was always first and foremost described physically and usually as devastatingly handsome and/or charming.

      Her self-centeredness and grandiosity is beyond belief.
    • 4/5
      Psychiatrist Kay Jamison details the mind of a manic/depressive patient from the concurrent lenses of patient and practitioner. Informative, compassionate, insightful. How to translate this book to the classroom? Biology, pharmacology? I would love to have highschool students be able to pinpoint the pathology and possibly the pharmacological mechanism of lithium. This book simultaneously humanizes and medicalizes bipolar disorder, and in my opinion needed to be written in order to keep destigmatizing mental illness
    • 4/5
      Clinical, yet easy enough for the layman to understand. Goes through both the experiences of the trained and obviously very intelligent psychatrist(logist? Can't remember) who is dealing with bi-polar, otherwise known as manic-depressive disorder. Fascinating, but I think it might be especially helpful for individuals with the disorder, or people who have family members with the disorder, as in my case. A great read.
    • 3/5
      I had a very hard time with this book. It was a mix between a very dry birth of clinical mental health studies and a very vague, pretentious personal story.

      The first few chapters were very promising, I felt there was passion infused in the pages as she spoke about her father, her military upbringing, her mother..her general early life. But as the story continued forward, it became more disjointed, dried out and read as if she used a thesaurus on every word humanly possible. It was overkill.

      I admire Ms. Jamison for the strong, obviously intelligent psychologist that she is and for the great studies and growth she has brought to her field. On a personal level, I do not feel that her story was as honest and clear as it could've been. I didn't connect with her struggle, as it wasn't descriptive or deep.

      It reads more as a clinical study and I would recommend this book only to those studying the field; not to the typical memoir lover.
    • 4/5
      A cathartic and expressive memoir by someone who has dealt with bipolar disorder. The all-consuming, tireless highs struggle with the dark, depressive, sickly lows. An excellent means of understanding this mental turmoil, how one can achieve the most stunning of successes, while grappling with the base desire to stay alive.
    • 4/5
      My first acquaintance with the author of this book was in an article of The Washington Post Magazine quite a few years ago. I remember reading about a woman who was suffering from manic-depression. I was horrified to find out from that article that she was also a practicing clinical psychologist. Now, many years later, I finally have had the chance to read her memoir. I am so glad that the field of psychiatry has evolved as much as it has during the intervening years and look foward to yet more progress in the treatment of what is now called bipolar disporder. Sadly, I know of people who have successfuly ended their young lives after having suffered with this disorder. My feeling is that anything the general public can do to help these individuals is a step in the right direction. Most of all, though, it's to the credit of Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison that the public has become more aware of this genetic disorder and its implications in an individual's life.I took from this book the need for the public to accept each person affected with bipolar disorder with warmth and understanding and reject the stigmas that have been part of this mental illness in the past. I also expect that no one should assume to understand the demons of living with bipolar disorder, although the author does a magnificent job of putting her experiences into words. My hope is that I'll be able to use what I've learned from this book in a positive manner to help others and continue to read works by Dr. Jamison and others in an effort to expand my knowledge of this devastating illness.
    • 4/5
      It's both a relief and a worry to hear about how long in your life you can go successfully hiding and self-managing your mental illness. Really nicely written.
    • 4/5
      Pretty good stuff, but the personal details were a little excessive. It's one thing to hear "I self-medicated using sex" and it's another to hear it twenty times with rather more detail than necessary. The author didn't do the best of jobs separating out the uniqueness of her experience from what bipolar disorder is generally like at times.
    • 4/5
      I can't believe the author's tenacity (and stubbornness and denial). A brilliant psychologist stricken with on-going serious mental illness, she simply put her head down and persevered whilst suffering. Fairly well-written and with good descriptions of the symptoms and effects, the history of morphology and treatment, as well as decent biography. I worried that I would be reading a lucid trainwreck or a surgeon performing on themselves, but that did not in fact play out. Worth reading.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book and recommend this read for anyone suffering from bipolar or mental illness in general. Because I typically suffer from depression and low grade mania's her success seemed like a load of crap as did her romantic love life; I have to agree with Arctic-stranger on this one, I don't think her success and unbelievably supportive romances are typical for most who suffer with this illness.The book however, minus her personal life, was a very adequate description of what a manic-depressive goes through. I only wish families and friends who have relationships with people who suffer with this illness can read this book and relate to it the way a manic-depressive does. It's all right there, they just can't see it because they don't experience it . It really is all in your head and if it's not even the most educated phychiatrist can never really relate. That is how I know it was real for her.