An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

If you have ever dealt with a person who has manic-depressive or bipolar disorder then this book is the closest you’ll find in helping one understand the disorder. This is not a medical or scholarly book but a book describing the raw realities as well as the wonderful highs of the disorder. I could not put it down having known and worked with many in my career as an educator, friend and colleague. This needs to be read by every professional who deals with this disorder.

I absolutely devoured this book. It is an extremely eloquent, well-written account of Bipolar Disorder affecting even a mental health professional. Very relatable, it will make you laugh and cry, overall excellent read.

Thank you. It is eye opening 🪟

Loved the content

I had never known someone with serious mental illness until recently. I was led to this book when a dearly beloved young woman who is very intelligent, creative, vivacious and warm suddenly (at least as far as we knew) experienced the dark side of being bipolar. It has been sad, frightening, enlightening, and hopeful – she now seems to be comfortable and in control of her life.In the last few months, when I have occasionally happened to mention our concern to friends, I have discovered that several people could understand far more than I would have expected since they too had been through this – were going through it because the battle is never completely won – and could offer valuable understanding, advice, and hope, and the warning that the medication must never, ever stop, no matter how tempting that is or how little at any time it seems to be needed. Over and over.I’ve never met a psychiatrist except one whose house I sold.But the experiences of this exceptional psychiatrist who writes so movingly of her experiences of mania and depression help me understand and feel even more concern and sympathy for a young woman whom I love deeply who is learning to cope with being bipolar. Like Jamison, and the people I know who have some kind of mental illness, she is exceptionally smart, creative, enthusiastic, and the various manifestations of her disease are alternately frightening, frustrating, painful and hopeful for those who love her and would do anything to help her stay within the range of emotions that she can control and that enable her to balance her life.Just as the pediatrician whose child has Downs syndrome, the radiologist whose wife has breast cancer, the psychiatrist who is bipolar is in a unique position to understand and treat others who face what she has faced, fought and come to grips with.This book is memorable and I strongly recommend it on several counts. People who are bipolar, people who want to help them, medical professionals, and anyone needs to re-evaluate their perceptions about mental illness so that the stigmas can be outweighed by compassion and understanding that with appropriate treatment and if necessary supervision, people can cope and have productive lives, and even make enormous contributions.Dr. Jamison makes a valuable contribution to understanding in this book and It’s one of those I will buy in multiple copies to share

Three stars are almost as low as I will go, because if I don't like it any better than that, I probably won't finish a book. The main things I got out of this book were: Stay on your meds; take your lithium; don't forget your meds. I think I already knew this, even though I'm not bipolar. I do have a family member who is, however - and has been for over 35 years now. For twenty years now, there have been no meds taken, but there should have been, because this person is not easy to live with or to even like. I already knew about lithium and other antidepressants before I read this book. What I really wanted from this book was to read a good memoir of what it's like to be bipolar. Instead I got this very carefully worded treatise full of sweeping generalizations like, "My mercurial moods and recurrent, very black depressions took a huge personal and academic toll during those college years." Jamison makes no effort to give any specific examples of either the moods, depressions or the toll taken. Just that broad sweeping statement. (And if it took such a "huge academic toll," how the hell did she end up with a Ph.D.?) She talks about how her marriage was falling apart, but gives no real details. Indeed we know almost nothing about her first husband or that marriage. She talks in only the very vaguest of terms about patients, colleagues and even family. While I recognize that Jamison may have been concerned about things like confidentiality, privacy, and fear of revealing too much of her own private life, that just doesn't cut it. She holds back on everything. The book read, very frustratingly for me, like a bad freshman theme: filled with sweeping generalities, but no specifics to back these up. She will tell you of "unforgettable images of violence, utter madness, mortifying behavior, and moods savage to exexperience, and even more disturbingly brutal in their effects on others." But then she never follows through with examples, from her own experience, of those images, behavior or moods. I'm sorry, but this hardly qualifies as a memoir, and certainly not a very interesting one. While I do feel somewhat sorry for what Jamison says has been a tormented, terrible life, she has gone to very few pains to make that life real to any reader. Indeed it seems quite the opposite. She keeps more from us than she reveals. I wonder if perhaps many of the reviewers here who gave the book five stars and started out by saying, "I'm bipolar," were simply mentally superimposing their own horrendous experiences onto Jamison's narrative every time she wrote one of her generalizations. Sorry, but this is a poor excuse for a memoir. Maybe I should have given it two stars. - Tim Bazzett, author of Love, War & Polio