Research Proposal on "Unquiet Mind a Memoir of Moods and Madness Ka Redfield Jamison"

Research Proposal 4 pages (1475 words) Sources: 0 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

unquiet mind, a memoir of moods and madness -- Ka Redfield Jamison

Jamison, Kay. (1995). An unquiet mind. New York: Vintage

Kay Jamison is one of the leading experts on the subject of manic depression (bipolar) disorder. An accomplished researcher, she has studied CAT scans of individuals who suffer from the illness and explored different methods of treating bipolar disorder with a combination of therapy and medication. Jamison is also is the author of Touched with fire (1994) and of Manic-depressive illness (1990). The latter of which is one of the primary academic texts used in universities across the country on the subject of bipolar disorder. However, as revealed in her memoir an unquiet mind, Jamison's interest in buffering the highs and lows of this debilitating illness is not purely academic -- she is a sufferer herself.

Jamison's decision to reveal her condition in prose form is brave, given that it could have destroyed her credibility as an objective researcher. She admits that some of her academic colleagues were shocked, even disappointed when she revealed her condition: scientists are supposed to be separate from the illnesses they study, not sick themselves. However, Jamison sees her perspective as strength -- she has a unique vantage point to appreciate the balance between biology, genetics, environment, and personality that gives rise to bipolar disorder. What is personality, she asks, in light of her experiences? Because the swings of moods, from mania to depression can be so alarming in the case of bipolar disorder, the illness seems to challenge the very notion of identity itself.

Jamison also admits to the strange attractions of the manic state -- to be able to do without sleep and food, unlike ordinary people can be intoxicating. Mania is a period of intense creativity, but quickly burns itself out. When Jamison was stabilized by lithium, she experienced a sense of regret. Because of the seductive power of mania, Jamison argues from the force of experience as well as from the distance and knowledge her newly stabilized mental state has given her: "I have become fundamentally and deeply skeptical that anyone who does not have this illness can truly understand it" (Jamison, 1995, p.171). Her illness, which she speaks about in the third person at times, is "my fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion" (Jamison, 1995, p. 5). It is both separate and a part of herself. Jamison's audience, unlike her previous scholarly works, is quite broad -- she speaks to fellow sufferers who may recognize themselves in her experience; she speaks to clinicians seeking to understand the illness from a more personal perspective in the words of someone they trust. She also speaks to laypeople who are trying to understand the illness of friends and loved ones. And she speaks to herself, talking back to her illness, trying to understand it.

Like many individuals who suffer manic depression, even before Jamison experienced her first manic episode, she was always a highly emotional, moody child and adolescent in a household of emotional people, especially her father. She had a distinguished undergraduate career, and later a graduate career in the field of human and animal psychology. Periods of lucidity, often quite long, alternated with occasional complete shifts to mania, the first of which occurred at seventeen. She speaks of her struggles with wry humor: "I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist (this was Los Angeles), and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse" (Jamison, 1995, p. 55). Jamison relates her life before being diagnosed as a series of disastrous decisions -- shopping sprees, bad marriages, and rejecting and collecting different friends and lives (including a wild horse).

One common question that plagues individuals who have never suffered from mental illness is 'why don't people who are suffering take their medication.' Jamison has the answer: lithium sapped her strength, took away her coordination, and made her feel too tired and numb to do the intense intellectual research that was an integral part of her life. She eventually found a dose that stabilized her moods and still enabled her to function, but in general she states that medications are not panaceas --… READ MORE

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