Descent into Madness | Kay Redfield Jamison | Big Think
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- Опубліковано 11 вер 2024
- Descent into Madness
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What happens when life loses any semblance of stability and one is subject to waves of cosmic and sometimes terrifying hallucinations? For Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinically bipolar professor of psychiatry and a mental health expert, this uneasy consciousness was a way of life.
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Kay Redfield Jamison:
Kay Redfield Jamison is a Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where she also do-directs the Mood Center. Once a manic depressive herself, she is now a prominent expert on mental health, suicide, and creativity.
Her books include Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament; An Unquiet Mind; Exuberance: A Passion For Life; and Nothing Was The Same.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Question: When did you first realize you were manic depressive?
Kay Redfield Jamison: Well I suppose it's funny, it's a little like the waves of grief. I think you have waves of awareness and one of the things that I found with grief was actually -- I was well prepared for it by the cyclicality of my manic depressive illness because I was used to things coming and going and so forth. So I think that my awareness of having bipolar illness really-I was 17, I got very, very depressed and I was psychotic and I didn't have any energy and I was totally-I just-but I didn't have the words. People didn't talk about it at that time and people certainly didn't have the words “bipolar illness” or “manic depressive illness.” So I just was terrified. I had no idea what had happened to me and I was very frightened and I was frightened it would come back, but I got well and then I did what everybody, or most people do when they get well, I sort of put it behind me again. Then it would come and hit me again and again.
So I knew there was something wrong. I started to see a Psychiatrist, tried to see a Psychiatrist when I was in college and I ended up just running away and I couldn't tolerate the idea of doing that. But then when I was-I took out my degree and I joined the medical school faculty at UCLA, I became ragingly manic and very psychotic, hallucinating, delusional. I didn't have any choice. It's the great advantage of having an illness as severe as mine is that you are automatically brought in to the medical care system. If you have-as long as it was milder, I could kind of get by with actually without to face what I was-the severity of my problem. I knew the person I wanted to see, it was somebody I had trained with. He was my clinical supervisor and I had seen with patients and I had seen that he was tough and smart and compassionate and humanize, but also knew science and medicine.
So I went to him terrified and he was just absolutely firm in his diagnosis; he just never wavered and he just said that's the way it is. But he was kind about it, but he didn't back off from it and he was a great Psychotherapist. So one of the things I've tried to do in my professional life, like a lot of my colleagues, is to emphasize that medications just aren't enough for many people with these illnesses because, exactly what you are saying, how do you become aware of an illness. You become aware of an illness by understanding yourself and understanding the meaning that that illness has in your own life, symbolically and, more importantly, quite literally.
Question: What was it like to be psychotic?
Kay Redfield Jamison: Well, I primarily have been in the psychotic [state] when manic, which is not uncommon with mania, and it's been mostly when I've been manic it's been a very exhilarating sort of thing, including the hallucinations. I've went around the solar system, I went to Saturn in my mind's eye. I went through star fields. It was a glorious sort of ecstatic experience, which is frequently the case with mania. When you think about a lot of the great religious ecstasies is a very manic quality to that and a very grandiose as they tend to be very universal, cosmic, related to everything is related to everything. But I also had some very bad ones. I've been hallucinating myself as dead or just covered with blood. Mania can be as terrifying as it gets. It is certainly as insane as one gets and so it's frightening when it gets out of control, but there are periods of mania when it can be extremely attractive.
Question: What were your depressive states like?
Kay Redfield Jamison: In depression, your capacity to feel just flattens and disappears and what you feel is pain and a kind of pain that you can't describe to anybody.
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She’s a huge inspiration! I am very grateful for her work!
I recommend an Unquiet Mind to everyone seeking help. It was very therapeutic for me and finally convinced me to see a therapist.
My father has Bipolar disorder for 30 years he is in his late life now i had a tough upbringing because of that. But i was very resilient and i did everything i could become a doctor. I used to hate him and fear him coz of my childhood now i have deepest sympathy for him and what he had to endure in his life! People used to call him mad! I just wish there would be more awareness when it come to this disease around the world!
Thank you for your contributions Dr. Jameson and may the course of your illness go well.
The way you look when you recollect your thoughts and experiences is enough to bring back the throes of this illness. Thanks for your words and for illustrating it the way you have.
I live in the Midwest. We have a terrible shortage of psychiatrist. Every time I see a new one I asked if they read the book an unquiet mind. And you know what's so sad I've never had one say that they did. And I see a new psychiatrist tomorrow and I'm going to ask her that. And if she says no I'm going to say you can't help me and I'm going to walk out.
We need more and better DOs. Sorry for your experience.
You're the witness, no matter what arises.
I don't know how much longer I'm gonna be able to withstand this madness. I fucking despise bipolar disorder. It has absolutely retarded my life.
JacksInn How long ago did you discover that you are sick and how ? Are you on meds? What type of bipolar are you?
+JacksInn I feel the same!!!
paquete habana hope all your kids have bipolar 1
Suzanne, please learn basic science, I believe it will aid you in decoding these cobwebs and cliches (we used to use the word, nonage), and their likely sources. ua-cam.com/video/BhC6hUZJIJ0/v-deo.html
She’s a amazing person. I have read two of her books. Very sharp person.
"The words are not there." Yes. The words simply don't reach there. They don't go there.
i had the everything was one in the universe also. it felt really good.
I was looking for the Ulduar subzone. This is not it.
Familiar feeling af. When one's looking for something on the internet and finds an unrelated thing that just happens to have the same name it feels kind of infuriating. Like I didn't search for it so don't show it to me and then I comment something like why did you name this the same way as the thing I like and want to see
請問如何聯繫到講者,我在台灣的閱讀躁鬱之心是名躁鬱症者,謝謝
What is the treatment for anxiety or benzo withdrawal? Is there a treatment?
paquete habana Wow. Really? How insensitive can one be?
Magnrsium glycinate. Try it.
this is too simplistic DR JAMISON really has Asperger's and is only raising awareness for bp which is much more common yet completely denied for shame
I simply don't believe that her situation was as severe as she describes. How can one be manically depressed, have hallucinations and be bipolar but still be able to study for a medicine degree?
Have you read the book?
Im in graduate school for biochemistry and had a manic episode recently where I was absolutely insane and had hallucinations. I had to withdraw the semester, but my school, like hers, was understanding and let me come back this following semester. If the school is understanding it can be done, and in her case was important to be done.
Have you personally ever experienced depression or mania?
I am praying you can comprehend the vagaries of Bipolar, including its terrifying and hard to imagine fluctuations. Thank Providence for sparing you the suffering of afflicted people who have extreme feelings which most others cannot begin to imagine- good healers are great, but Can only observe the suffering- without ever being stricken themselves
For people like you, the shampoo have instructions....
👌🙏✌🏻🙏🤞🙏👍
Phony
Who are you speaking to? What kind of pain does the uneducated garden variety worker endure? This analysis seems to me so aloof, the psychological plight of the common man is almost assured to be consumed with these sort of aberrations.
nice word choice douche