Kay R Jamison

A haunting meditation on mortality, grief, and loss. Perhaps no one but Kay Redfield Jamison--who combines the acute perceptions of a psychologist with a writerly elegance and passion--could bring such a delicate touch to the subject of losing a spouse to cancer. She looks back at her relationship with her husband, Richard Wyatt, a renowned scientist who battled dyslexia to become one of the foremost experts on schizophrenia. And with her characteristic...

A study of the growing epidemic of suicide among young people draws on the author's firsthand battle with severe manic-depression and attempted suicide to reveal the psychological, medical, and biological aspects of self-inflicted death.

"The anguished, volatile intensity we associate with the artistic temperament, often described as "a fine madness," has been thought of as a defining aspect of much artistic genius. Now, Kay Jamison's brilliant work, based on years of studies as a clinical psychologist and prominent researcher in mood disorders, reveals that many artists who were subject to alternatingly exultant and then melancholic moods were, in fact, engaged in a lifelong struggle...