Kay Redfield Jamison

Kay Redfield Jamison (born June 22, 1946) is an

American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work Kay Redfield Jamison
has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had
since her early adulthood. She holds the post of the
Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and Psychiatry at
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is
an Honorary Professor of English at the University of
St Andrews.

Education and career

Jamison began her study of clinical psychology at
University of California, Los Angeles in the late 1960s,
receiving both B.A. and M.A. degrees in 1971. She
continued on at UCLA, receiving a C.Phil. in 1973 and
a PhD in 1975, and became a faculty member at the
Kay Redfield Jamison in 2007
university. She went on to found and direct the school's
Born June 22, 1946
Affective Disorders Clinic, a large teaching and
research facility for outpatient treatment. She also Academic background
studied zoology and neurophysiology as an
Alma mater University of California, Los
undergraduate at the University of St. Andrews in Angeles
Scotland.
Academic work
After several years as a tenured professor at UCLA, Institutions Johns Hopkins School of
Jamison was offered a position as Assistant Professor Medicine
and then Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University of St Andrews
University School of Medicine. Jamison has given Main Psychiatry
visiting lectures at a number of different institutions interests
while maintaining her professorship at Hopkins. She
Notable An Unquiet Mind
was distinguished lecturer at Harvard University in
works
2002 and the Litchfield lecturer at the University of
Oxford in 2003. She was Honorary President and
board member of the Canadian Psychological Association from 2009 to 2010. In 2010, she was a panelist
in the series of discussions on the latest research into the brain, hosted by Charlie Rose with series
scientist Eric Kandel on PBS.[1]

Awards and recognition

Jamison has won numerous awards and published over 100
academic articles. She has been named one of the "Best Doctors in
the United States" and was chosen by Time as a "Hero of
Medicine."[2] She was also chosen as one of the five individuals
for the public television series Great Minds of Medicine.[3][4]
Jamison is the recipient of the National Mental Health
Association's William Styron Award (1995), the American
Foundation for Suicide Prevention Research Award (1996), the
Community Mental Health Leadership Award (1999), and was a
2001 MacArthur Fellowship recipient. In 2010, Jamison was
conferred with an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the
University of St Andrews in recognition of all her life's work.[5][6] Jamison at a book fair in 2017
In May 2011, The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal
Church, New York, made her a Doctor of Divinity honoris causa
at its annual Commencement.[7] In 2017 Jamison was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh (CorrFRSE).[8]

Academic contributions
Her latest book, Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Biography in
2018.

Her book Manic-Depressive Illness, first published in 1990 and co-authored with psychiatrist Frederick
K. Goodwin is considered a classic textbook on bipolar disorder. The Acknowledgements section states
that Goodwin "received unrestricted educational grants to support the production of this book from
Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol Meyers Squibb, Forest, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and
Sanofi", but that although Jamison has "received occasional lecture honoraria from AstraZeneca,
GlaxoSmithKline, and Eli Lilly" she "has received no research support from any pharmaceutical or
biotechnology company" and donates her royalties to a non-profit foundation.

Her seminal works among 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. Her second memoir, Nothing Was the Same, examines her relationship with her second
husband, the psychiatrist Richard Jed Wyatt, who was Chief of the Neuropsychiatry Branch of the
National Institute of Mental Health until his death in 2002.

In her study Exuberance: The Passion for Life, she cites research that suggests that 15 percent of people
who could be diagnosed as bipolar may never actually become depressed; in effect, they are permanently
"high" on life. She mentions President Theodore Roosevelt 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.
Jamison wrote An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness in part to help clinicians see what
patients find helpful in therapy. J. Wesley Boyd, an assistant professor at the Department of Psychiatry at
Tufts University's School of Medicine, wrote, "Jamison's description [of the debt she owed her
psychiatrist] illustrates the importance of merely being present for our patients and not trying to soothe
them with platitudes or promises of a better future."[9]

Personal life
Jamison has said she is an "exuberant" person who longs for peace and tranquility but in the end prefers
"tumultuousness coupled to iron discipline" to a "stunningly boring life."[10] In 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.[11]

Jamison was born to Dr. Marshall Verdine Jamison (1916–2012), an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and
Mary Dell Temple Jamison (1916–2007).[12][13] Jamison's father, and many others in his family, had
bipolar disorder.[13]

As a result of Jamison's military background, she grew up in many different places, including Florida,
Puerto Rico, California, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. She has two older siblings, a brother and a sister,
who are three years and half a year older, respectively.[13] Her niece is writer Leslie Jamison.[14]
Jamison's interest in science and medicine began at a young age and was fostered by her parents. She
worked as a candy striper at the hospital on Andrews Air Force Base.[13]

Jamison moved to California during adolescence, and soon thereafter began to struggle with bipolar
disorder. She continued to struggle in college at UCLA. At first she wanted to become a doctor, but
because of increasing occurring manic episodes, she decided she could not maintain the rigorous
discipline needed for medical school. Jamison then found her calling in psychology. Here she flourished
and was extremely interested in mood disorders. Despite her studies, Jamison did not realize that she was
bipolar until three months into her first job as a professor in UCLA's Department of Psychology. After her
diagnosis, she was put on lithium, a drug that has commonly been used to regulate and moderate moods.
At times, she would refuse the medication because it impaired her motor skills, but after a greater
depression she decided to continue to take it. Jamison once attempted suicide by overdosing on lithium
during a severe depressive episode.

Jamison is an Episcopalian,[15] and she was married to her first husband, Alain André Moreau, an artist,
during her graduate school years.[13] She later married Dr. Richard Wyatt in 1994;[16] and they remained
married until his death in 2002.[17] Wyatt was a psychiatrist who studied schizophrenia at the National
Institutes of Health. Their romance is detailed in her memoir Nothing Was the Same.

In 2010, Jamison married Thomas Traill, a cardiology professor at Johns Hopkins.[18]

Bibliography
Goodwin, Frederick K.; Jamison, Kay Redfield (1990),
0:00 / 0:00
Manic-Depressive Illness (https://archive.org/details/mani
cdepressivei00good), New York: Oxford University Kay Redfield Jamison talks about
Press, ISBN 0-19-503934-3 Nothing Was the Same on Bookbits
radio.
Goodwin, Frederick K.; Jamison, Kay Redfield
(2007), Manic-Depressive Illness (https://archive.or
g/details/manicdepressivei02edgood) (Second ed.), New York: Oxford University
Press, ISBN 978-0195135794

Jamison, Kay Redfield (1993), Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic
Temperament, New York: The Free Press, ISBN 0-02-916030-8 (includes a study of Lord
Byron's illness)
Jamison, Kay Redfield (1995), An Unquiet Mind (https://archive.org/details/unquietmindmem
oi00jami), New York: Vintage Books Random House, ISBN 0-679-76330-9
Jamison, Kay Redfield (1999), Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, New York: Vintage
Books Random House, ISBN 0-375-70147-8
Jamison, Kay Redfield (2004), Exuberance: The Passion for Life (https://archive.org/details/
exuberancepassio00jami), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 0-375-40144-X
Jamison, Kay Redfield (2009), Nothing Was the Same: A Memoir (https://archive.org/details/
nothingwassameme00jami), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 978-0-307-26537-1
Jamison, Kay Redfield (2017), Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire, New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, ISBN 978-0307700278
Jamison, Kay Redfield (2023). Fires in the Dark: Healing the Mind, the Oldest Branch of
Medicine. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-525-65717-0.

References
1. "The Brain Series: Mental Illness" (https://charlierose.com/collections/3/clip/18615). Charlie
Rose. June 22, 2010. Retrieved October 8, 2017.
2. Downer, Joanna (October 1, 1997). "Physician, Heal Thyself" (https://archive.today/2013020
5151451/http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,987104,00.html). Time. Archived from
the original (http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,987104,00.html) on February 5, 2013.
Retrieved July 27, 2011.
3. Baer, Reid (2003). "An Interview with Kay Redfield Jamison" (http://menstuff.org/columns/ov
erboard/jamison.html). Menstuff. Gordon Clay. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
4. "Great Minds of Medicine: Depression (1999)" (https://web.archive.org/web/2014051902440
5/https://www.nytimes.com/movies/movie/185175/Great-Minds-of-Medicine-Depression/over
view). Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. 2014. Archived from the original (https://ww
w.nytimes.com/movies/movie/185175/Great-Minds-of-Medicine-Depression/overview) on 19
May 2014. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
 5. "Laureation addresses Tuesday 22 June 2010" (https://web.archive.org/web/201006271747
27/http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/graduation/laureationaddresses/). Archived from the original
(http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/graduation/laureationaddresses/) on 2010-06-27. Retrieved
2010-06-24. St Andrews 2010 Graduation: Laureation Addresses
6. "Laureation address - Professor Kay Redfield Jamison" (https://web.archive.org/web/201510
03095449/http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2010/title,53001,en.php). University of
St Andrews. June 23, 2010. Archived from the original (https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/a
rchive/2010/title,53001,en.php) on October 3, 2015. Retrieved October 8, 2017.
7. "General Seminary's 189th Commencement on May 18" (https://web.archive.org/web/20110
624162216/http://www.gts.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1159:gener
al-seminarys-189th-commencement-on-may-18-&catid=68:frontpage-news). The General
Theological Seminary. May 5, 2011. Archived from the original (http://gts.edu/index.php?opti
on=com_content&view=article&id=1159:general-seminarys-189th-commencement-on-may-
18-&catid=68:frontpage-news) on June 24, 2011. Retrieved July 27, 2011.
8. "RSE Welcomes 60 New Fellows" (https://www.rse.org.uk/rse-welcomes-60-new-fellows/)
(Press release). Royal Society of Edinburgh. 15 February 2017. Retrieved 28 March 2017.
9. Boyd, J. Wesley. "Stories of Illness: Authorship in Medicine" Psychiatry, Vol. 60 Winter 1997:
352. Print
10. "Kay Jamison Interview" (https://web.archive.org/web/20051119033108/http://mcmanweb.co
m/article-247.htm). Archived from the original (http://www.mcmanweb.com/article-247.htm)
on 2005-11-19. Retrieved 2005-11-06.
11. Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
ISBN 1447275284, Publisher: Picador (1 Jan. 2015)
12. "Marshall Verdine Jamison" (https://archive.today/20130130030315/http://www.northumberl
andecho.com/?p=2136). Archived from the original (http://www.northumberlandecho.com/?p
=2136) on January 30, 2013. Retrieved September 22, 2012.
13. Jamison 1995, pp. 57, 222
14. "Video: Leslie Jamison and Kay Redfield Jamison in Conversation at Politics & Prose" (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20170922003031/https://www.graywolfpress.org/blogs/video-leslie-j
amison-and-kay-redfield-jamison-conversation-politics-prose). Graywolf Press. April 17,
2014. Archived from the original (https://www.graywolfpress.org/blogs/video-leslie-jamison-a
nd-kay-redfield-jamison-conversation-politics-prose) on September 22, 2017. Retrieved
October 8, 2017.
15. Jamison 1999, p. 310
16. Jamison 2009, p. 32
17. O'Connor, Anahad (June 12, 2002). "Richard J. Wyatt, 63, Is Dead; Led Studies of
Schizophrenia" (https://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/us/richard-j-wyatt-63-is-dead-led-studi
es-of-schizophrenia.html). The New York Times. Retrieved July 27, 2011.
18. Thomas-Lester, Avis (2010). "A psychologist's career-altering mental illness" (http://views.wa
shingtonpost.com/on-success/what-it-takes/2009/12/a_career-altering_mental_illness.html).
Washington Post. Retrieved December 8, 2011.

External links
A Conversation With Kay Redfield Jamison, Professor of Psychiatry by Grace Bello, The
Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/a-conversation-with-kay-redfi
eld-jamison-professor-of-psychiatry/247995/)
An Interview with Kay Jamison on Charlie Rose Show - 17 mins video (https://web.archive.o
rg/web/20071012235434/http://www.charlierose.com/shows/1999/10/26/1/an-interview-with-
kay-redfield-jamison)
 Kay Redfield Jamison (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5376545/) at IMDb
Appearances (https://www.c-span.org/person/?52526) on C-SPAN

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