An Unquiet Mind - Kay Redfield Jamison

Category: Adults, Autobiography & Biographies
Language: English
Keywords: Health & Wellness Manic-depressive (bipolar) Illness Psychology & Mental Health

Written by Kay Redfield Jamison
Read by Kay Redfield Jamison
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Abridged

Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: January 12, 2010
Duration: 02:46:22

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.

This is an abridged recording so it is not chaptered but each track is labled so you can follow her journey.

Publishers Weekly….Starred review from September 4, 1995
Johns Hopkins psychiatry professor Jamison, whose Touched with Fire addressed the link between manic-depressive illness and creativity, offers a poignant and powerful memoir of her own struggles with and triumphs over the disease. … The illness is often genetic, and Jamison’s exuberant but depressive father was a portent. Her first wave of mania came in high school, but college was a struggle marked by violent moods and passions, and grad school pushed her over the edge. During her first decade on lithium, the drug’s side effects blurred her vision so that she could concentrate only on journal articles or poetry. Eventually she attempted suicide. ….. She has not had children of her own and raises eloquent–unanswerable–questions about manic-depressives bearing children.