Quotes by Kay Redfield Jamison

About Kay Redfield Jamison:

Kay Redfield Jamison is an American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. She holds a post of Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is an Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief, and they really need to be treated for depression.

Kay Redfield Jamison

Mania is as bad as it gets. If not treated, it will become worse, more frequent, and harder to treat.

Kay Redfield Jamison

People respond differently to people who are grieving. They reach out. But depression is so very isolating. It's hard to explain to anyone who has never been depressed how isolating it is. Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting.

Kay Redfield Jamison

With grief, you have reason to despair; it's a human thing.

Kay Redfield Jamison

I think one thing is that 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,...

Kay Redfield Jamison

Scientists have made extraordinary advances in understanding the brain and its disorders.

Kay Redfield Jamison

Several politicians and wives of politicians have been public about their experiences with depression or bipolar illness, including Lawton Chiles, Patrick Kennedy, Tipper Gore and Kitty Dukakis. Each made a tremendous difference by doing so.

Kay Redfield Jamison

Confidentiality is an ancient and well-warranted social value.

Kay Redfield Jamison

A possible link between 'madness' and genius is one of the oldest and most persistent of cultural notions.

Kay Redfield Jamison

Lithium prevents my seductive but disastrous highs, diminishes my depressions, clears out the wool and webbing from my disordered thinking, slows me down, gentles me out, keeps me from ruining my career and relationships, keeps me out of a hospital, ...

Kay Redfield Jamison

Psychotherapy is a sanctuary; it is a battleground; it is a place I have been psychotic, neurotic, elated, confused, and despairing beyond belief.

Kay Redfield Jamison

When I'm talking about depression, I'm talking about the more severe forms of depression, and I think that conceptualising as a form of grief is probably not the most effective way of looking at it. I mean, at the end of the day, people suffer enormo...

Kay Redfield Jamison

In its severe forms, depression paralyzes all of the otherwise vital forces that make us human, leaving instead a bleak, despairing, desperate, and deadened state. . .Life is bloodless, pulseless, and yet present enough to allow a suffocating horror ...

Kay Redfield Jamison

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.

Kay Redfield Jamison

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 ...

Kay Redfield Jamison

I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions c...

Kay Redfield Jamison

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

An intense temperament has convinced me to teach not only from books but from what I have learned from experience. So I try to impress upon young doctors and graduate students that tumultuousness, if coupled to discipline and a cool mind, is not such...

Kay Redfield Jamison

There is no common standard for education about diagnosis. Distinguishing between bipolar depression and major depressive disorder, for example, can be difficult, and mistakes are common. Misdiagnosis can be lethal. Medications that work well for som...

Kay Redfield Jamison

Nothing good comes out of depression.

Kay Redfield Jamison

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. At the end of the day, it gets you through because you have...

Kay Redfield Jamison

Author Bio

  • NameKay Redfield Jamison
  • DescriptionAmerican bipolar disorder researcher
  • BornJune 22, 1946
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPsychiatrist; Essayist; Psychologist; Author
  • AwardsMacArthur Fellows Program