Kay Redfield Jamison (born June 22, 1946) is an American
clinical psychologistClinical psychology includes the scientific study and application of psychology for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development...
and writer who is one of the foremost experts on
bipolar disorderBipolar disorder, also known as manic depressive disorder, manic depression or bipolar affective disorder, is a serious mental disorder that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated mood clinically referred to as mania or, if...
as well as suffering from the disorder since her early adulthood. She is Professor of Psychiatry at the
Johns Hopkins UniversityThe Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, China, and Singapore...
School of Medicine and is an Honorary Professor of
EnglishEnglish studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
at the
University of St AndrewsThe University of St Andrews is the oldest university in Scotland and third oldest in the English-speaking world, having been founded between 1410 and 1413...
.
Jamison began her study of clinical psychology at
University of California, Los AngelesThe University of California, Los Angeles is a research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the United States. It was founded in 1919 and is the second-oldest general-purpose campus in the University of California system...
in the late 1960s, receiving both
B.A.Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences or both....
and
M.A.A Master of Arts is a postgraduate academic master degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in English, Fine Arts, History, Nursing, Humanities, Geography, Philosophy, Social Sciences or Theology and can be either fully-taught, research-based, or a...
degrees in 1971.
Kay Redfield Jamison (born June 22, 1946) is an American
clinical psychologistClinical psychology includes the scientific study and application of psychology for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development...
and writer who is one of the foremost experts on
bipolar disorderBipolar disorder, also known as manic depressive disorder, manic depression or bipolar affective disorder, is a serious mental disorder that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated mood clinically referred to as mania or, if...
as well as suffering from the disorder since her early adulthood. She is Professor of Psychiatry at the
Johns Hopkins UniversityThe Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, China, and Singapore...
School of Medicine and is an Honorary Professor of
EnglishEnglish studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
at the
University of St AndrewsThe University of St Andrews is the oldest university in Scotland and third oldest in the English-speaking world, having been founded between 1410 and 1413...
.
Education and career
Jamison began her study of clinical psychology at
University of California, Los AngelesThe University of California, Los Angeles is a research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the United States. It was founded in 1919 and is the second-oldest general-purpose campus in the University of California system...
in the late 1960s, receiving both
B.A.Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences or both....
and
M.A.A Master of Arts is a postgraduate academic master degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in English, Fine Arts, History, Nursing, Humanities, Geography, Philosophy, Social Sciences or Theology and can be either fully-taught, research-based, or a...
degrees in 1971. She continued on at UCLA, receiving a
Ph.D.Ph.D. or PHD may stand for:* Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group* Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip* PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* Parisada Hindu Dharma, an Indonesian organization...
in 1975, and became a faculty member at the university. She went on to found and direct the school's
Affective DisordersA mood disorder is the term given for a group of diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classification system where a disturbance in the person's mood is hypothesized to be the main underlying feature...
Clinic, a large teaching and research facility for outpatient treatment. She also took sabbatical leave to study
zoologyZoology, also spelled zoölogy, is the branch of biology that focuses on the structure, function, behavior, and evolution of animals. The zoologist's pronunciation of "zoology" is , though a common spelling pronunciation is .-Systems of classification:...
and
neurophysiologyNeurophysiology is a part of physiology. Neurophysiology is the study of nervous system function...
at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
It was during her time at UCLA that Jamison's manic-depression took serious hold of her life and helped determine her career path. Jamison would go on to discover a family history of manic-depression on her father's side, who himself was a likely sufferer of the illness. While a member of the psychiatry department at UCLA and under treatment for her illness, Jamison attempted
suicideSuicide is the intentional killing of one's self. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"...
.
Jamison has given visiting lectures at a number of different institutions while maintaining a tenured professorship at
Johns Hopkins UniversityThe Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, China, and Singapore...
. She was distinguished lecturer at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
in 2002 and the Litchfield lecturer at the
University of OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
in 2003.
Throughout Jamison's career she has won numerous awards and published over one hundred academic articles. She has been named one of the "Best Doctors in the United States" and was chosen by
TimeTime is an American newsmagazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong. As of 2009, Time no longer publishes a Canadian advertiser edition...
as a "Hero of Medicine." She was also chosen as one of the five individuals for the public television series "Great Minds of Medicine." Jamison is the recipient of the National Mental Health Association's
William StyronWilliam Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, which included...
Award (1995), the
American Foundation for Suicide PreventionThe American Foundation for Suicide Prevention was founded in 1987 by a group of experts on suicide who wanted to create a 5013 organization to fund research in suicide prevention....
Research Award (1996), the Community Mental Health Leadership Award (1999), and was a 2001
MacArthur FellowshipThe John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a major grant-making private foundation based in Chicago that has awarded more than US$4 billion since its inception in 1978...
recipient.
Academic contributions
Her book
Manic-Depressive Illness (co-authored with
Frederick K. GoodwinFrederick K. Goodwin is a psychiatrist and research professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. He is the director of the Psychopharmacology Research Center and the Center on Neuroscience, Medical Progress, and Society at the George Washington University Medical Center...
) is the classic textbook on bipolar disorder.
Her seminal works amongst laypeople are her memoir
An Unquiet Mind, which details her experience with severe mania and depression, and
Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, providing historical, religious, and cultural responses to suicide, as well as the relationship between mental illness and suicide. In
Night Falls Fast, Jamison dedicates a chapter to American public policy and public opinion as it relates to suicide.
In her study
Exuberance: The Passion for Life, she cites research which suggests that 15 percent of people who could be diagnosed as manic depressive may never actually become
depressedIn psychology and psychiatry, depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity. While most often described as a disease or dysfunction, there are also strong arguments for seeing depression as an adaptive defense mechanism....
; in effect, they are permanently 'high' on life. She mentions President
Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States. He is well remembered for his energetic persona, his range of interests and achievements, his model of masculinity, and his "cowboy" image. He was a leader of the Republican Party and founder of the short-lived Bull Moose Party...
as an example.
Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament is Jamison's exploration of how bipolar disorder can run in artistic or high-achieving families. As an example, she cites Lord Byron and his relatives.
Personal life
Jamison,
in an interview, said she was an "exuberant" person, yet she longed for peace and tranquility; but in the end, she preferred "tumultuousness coupled to iron discipline" over leading a "stunningly boring life." In her memoir
An Unquiet Mind, she concluded:
I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one's life, change the nature and direction of one's work, and give final meaning and color to one's loves and friendships.
Jamison is an Episcopalian and was married to Dr. Richard Wyatt until his death in 2002.
External links