Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes About Illness

Quotes about: Illness

• Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. ... You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're 'not at all like yourself but will be soon,' but you know you won't.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Depression, Jobs, Divorce

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.133, Pan Macmillan

• 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

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Play, Roles

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2011). “Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide”, p.84, Vintage

• 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. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Unique, Bipolar

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.11, Pan Macmillan

• It is tempting when looking at the life of anyone who has committed suicide to read into the decision to die a vastly complex web of reasons; and, of course, such complexity is warranted. No one illness or event causes suicide; and certainly no one knows all, or perhaps even most, of the motivations behind the killing of the self. But psychopathology is almost always there, and its deadliness is fierce. Love, success, and friendship are not always enough to counter the pain and destructiveness of severe mental illness

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Pain, Motivation

  FaceBook post by Kay Redfield Jamison from Feb 18, 2013

• I think wanting to write is a fundamental sign of disease and discomfort. I don't think people who are comfortable want to write.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Depression, Writing, Thinking

• I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Emotional, Years, Bipolar

• 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.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  People, Facts, Painful

• The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion; I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Beautiful, Believe, Chinese

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.10, Pan Macmillan

• I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. If lithium were not available to me, or didn't work for me, the answer would be a simple no... and it would be an answer laced with terror. But lithium does work for me, and therefore I can afford to pose the question. Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Simple, Thinking, Choices

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.133, Pan Macmillan

• the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if 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....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....even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Depression, Giving Up, Believe

• 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"?

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Self Esteem, Sleep, Thinking

  Kay Redfield Jamison (1996). “Touched With Fire”, p.103, Simon and Schuster

• Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Psychosis, Violence, Illness

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.106, Pan Macmillan

• I think you have waves of awareness and one of the things that I found with grief was actually - I was well prepared for it by the cyclicality of my manic depressive illness because I was used to things coming and going and so forth.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Grief, Thinking, Awareness

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• 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.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Understanding, Illness, Understanding Yourself

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• I think people don't understand how intimately tied suicide is to mental illness, particularly to depressive illness and bipolar illness.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Thinking, People

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• Anybody who's had to contend with mental illness - whether it's depression, bipolar illness or severe anxiety, whatever - actually has a fair amount of resilience in the sense that they've had to deal with suffering already, personal suffering.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Anxiety, Bipolar, Resilience

  "Kay Redfield Jamison - A deep love and loss". "All In The Mind" with Natasha Mitchell, www.abc.net.au. January 15, 2011.

• Far too many doctors-many of them excellent physicians-commit suicide each year; one recent study concluded that, until quite recently, the United States lost annually the equivalent of a medium-sized medical school class from suicide alone. Most physician suicides are due to depression or manic-depressive illness, both of which are eminently treatable. Physicians, unfortunately, not only suffer from a higher rate of mood disorders than the general population, they also have a greater access to very effective means of suicide.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Mean, School

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.127, Pan Macmillan

• 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.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Depression, Loss, Luxury

  Frederick K. Goodwin, Kay Redfield Jamison (2007). “Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression”, p.40, Oxford University Press

• Everything previously moving with the grain is now against - you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Moving, Reality, Mind

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2009). “An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness”, p.67, Vintage

• If people can talk about having breast cancer, why can't people who have mental illness talk about mental illness? Until we're able to do that, we're not going to be treated with the same kind of respect for our diseases as other people.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Cancer, People, Disease

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

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