Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes
I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide.
One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you.
You become aware of an illness by understanding yourself and understanding the meaning that that illness has in your own life, symbolically and, more importantly, quite literally.
Manic depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live.
Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.
There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness and terror involved in this kind of madness... It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.
Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.
I think people don't understand how intimately tied suicide is to mental illness, particularly to depressive illness and bipolar illness.
The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides
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.
Love has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest.
I think wanting to write is a fundamental sign of disease and discomfort. I don't think people who are comfortable want to write.
...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
The quickness and flexibility of a well mind, a belief or hope that things will eventually sort themselves out-these are the resources lost to a person when the brain is ill.
Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury; the time spent engaged in it is not time that could be better spent in more formal educational pursuits. Play is a necessity.
Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.
If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?
Mood disorders are terribly painful illnesses, and they are isolating illnesses. And they make people feel terrible about themselves when, in fact, they can be treated.
Never once, during any of my bouts of depression, had I been inclined or able to pick up a telephone and ask a friend for help. It wasn't in me.
Suicide Note: The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. -Langston Hughes
Anyone who suggests that coming back from suicidal despair is a straightforward journey has never taken it.
I am a huge advocate of prescription drugs given wisely and for the right reasons and the right diagnosis and also psychotherapy.
I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on
One is what one is, and the dishonesty of hiding behind a degree, or a title, or any manner and collection of words, is still exactly that: dishonest.
The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.
I look back over my shoulder and feel the presence of an intense young girl and then a volatile and disturbed young woman, both with high dreams and restless, romantic aspirations
It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again.
Chaos and intensity are no substitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life.
Conditions of thought, memory, and desire, persuaded by impulse and irrationality, are influenced as well by personal aesthetics and private meanings.
Exuberance is a gift of grace that allows us to move on, to seek, to love again.
Nature is the first tutor. No one remains untouched or unschooled by the earth, seasons, and heavens.
The assumption that rigidly rejecting words and phrases that have existed for centuries will have much impact on public attitudes is rather dubious.
From a public health point of view, still the overwhelming problem is that people are not treated enough for depression; depression remains under treated.
There is always a part of my mind that is preparing for the worst, and another part of my mind that believes if I prepare enough for it, the worst won’t happen.
But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.
One of the advantages of science is that one's work, ultimately, is either replicated or it is not.
I think psychotherapy saves lives and is hugely meaningful and I think that one of the unfortunate aspects of prescription drugs working well is that people tend to think that's enough.
People are more impulsive and they get slightly less impulsive as they get older and the impulsiveness interacting with the depression is particularly devastating and lethal, potentially lethal.
There are relatively few things that kill people that are young other than car accidents and suicide.
In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief and they really need to be treated for depression.
Most people don't have the advantage of being able to evaluate their doctor in advance.
People talk about grief as if it's kind of an unremittingly awful thing, and it is. It is painful, but it's a very, very interesting sort of thing to go through and it really helps you out.
Mania can be as terrifying as it gets. It is certainly as insane as one gets and so it's frightening when it gets out of control, but there are periods of mania when it can be extremely attractive.
Suicide carries in its aftermath a level of confusion and devastation that is, for the most part, beyond description.
