For those of you who are unfamiliar with the amazing Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, I'll catch you up to speed. She went through medical school and became a successful psychiatrist and researcher.
Despite her long list of outstanding achievements, she was hiding an ailment not too far out of her field of research. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder by a colleague, she, like many of us disordered patients, went through the stages of denial, fear, and secrecy. For the first time, a doctor came out to the medical field as being a patient as well as a healer. Rather than sink into an oblivion of despair, she penned an autobiographical account of her trials, titled "An Unquiet Mind."
Written in lucid, bubbling prose, with plenty of references to various manic poets, Dr. Jamison captivates the reader with her tale. One part that stands out in my mind is the page where she describes experiencing mania after work. She begins to run loops around the parking lot, a rather perplexed colleague watching as she sprints to and fro.
I can relate to this energy, to this temporary high-spirited state. Though outsiders might consider me first and foremost a paranoid schizophrenic, I mostly experience mania, then after several months of mania, I spiral into psychosis, the paranoid schizophrenic type. I rarely experience cognitive misperceptions such as thought insertion, paranoid delusions, and visual hallucinations without the accompanying mania that precedes it and I am convinced I am a psychotic variety of bipolarity, and not a pure schizophrenic. But now I'm having flight of thought...heh heh. Back to the book....
I can relate to the author's experience of being resistant to treatment. For years, I went on and off medications. I believed if I could make the dean's list, how could I possibly be disabled? Disability and hospitals were for people with one leg, or a heart condition. Psych wards were for people who talked to themselves on the street corner and didn't shower. It was hard for me to fit myself into this category of disability, but like Dr. Jamison, I eventually came around to long-term treatment.
Though I haven't earned my B.A. yet (I'm graduating in May, 2012 with a B.A. in interdisciplinary linguistics), I feel that I have done fairly well with myself, considering my past as a pothead, party girl with no money and little ambition.
Reading "An Unquiet Mind" allows me to feel hope for the future. It taught me that even a doctor can have bipolar disorder and still maintain her position within the field...and more than that, she can change the way society perceives mental illness and the potential of people with a diagnosis to go on with productive lives. She taught me hope. Thank you.
Despite her long list of outstanding achievements, she was hiding an ailment not too far out of her field of research. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder by a colleague, she, like many of us disordered patients, went through the stages of denial, fear, and secrecy. For the first time, a doctor came out to the medical field as being a patient as well as a healer. Rather than sink into an oblivion of despair, she penned an autobiographical account of her trials, titled "An Unquiet Mind."
Written in lucid, bubbling prose, with plenty of references to various manic poets, Dr. Jamison captivates the reader with her tale. One part that stands out in my mind is the page where she describes experiencing mania after work. She begins to run loops around the parking lot, a rather perplexed colleague watching as she sprints to and fro.
I can relate to this energy, to this temporary high-spirited state. Though outsiders might consider me first and foremost a paranoid schizophrenic, I mostly experience mania, then after several months of mania, I spiral into psychosis, the paranoid schizophrenic type. I rarely experience cognitive misperceptions such as thought insertion, paranoid delusions, and visual hallucinations without the accompanying mania that precedes it and I am convinced I am a psychotic variety of bipolarity, and not a pure schizophrenic. But now I'm having flight of thought...heh heh. Back to the book....
I can relate to the author's experience of being resistant to treatment. For years, I went on and off medications. I believed if I could make the dean's list, how could I possibly be disabled? Disability and hospitals were for people with one leg, or a heart condition. Psych wards were for people who talked to themselves on the street corner and didn't shower. It was hard for me to fit myself into this category of disability, but like Dr. Jamison, I eventually came around to long-term treatment.
Though I haven't earned my B.A. yet (I'm graduating in May, 2012 with a B.A. in interdisciplinary linguistics), I feel that I have done fairly well with myself, considering my past as a pothead, party girl with no money and little ambition.
Reading "An Unquiet Mind" allows me to feel hope for the future. It taught me that even a doctor can have bipolar disorder and still maintain her position within the field...and more than that, she can change the way society perceives mental illness and the potential of people with a diagnosis to go on with productive lives. She taught me hope. Thank you.
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