The book I am currently reading is "An Unquiet Mind" by Kay Redfield Jamison. She entitled it a "Memoir of Moods and Madness" because it is an autobiography about her experiences with manic depression and madness. Redfield works as a Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine while she, herself, is experiencing her own obstacles with her depression. The book is an interesting account of being raised as a pilot's kid and the effects it can have in someone's life.
At first, the reader is introduced to Jamison's early life and how she interacted with others around her. Her father worked in the air force, so she never experienced having a stable home. She enjoyed living in Washington because she went to a school with all the other pilot's kids on the air force base that her father worked at. Jamison didn't experience her first case of manic depression until she moved from Washington to California in 1961. Moving to California was hard for her because everything started going wrong. Because her father retired from the air force, he wasn't as spirited or busy like he was before. Soon, he started drinking and became a very violent and scary drunk. In result, Jamison and her mother often avoided coming home. Upon moving to California, Jamison hadn't experienced a real school with a diversity of different types of kids, yet she was able to adapt and she learned to like Pacific Palisades High School. She was a very spirited and involved student in her high school, before she diagnosed herself with manic depression. Therefore, it was a surprise to everyone. It was her senior year, and she describes the depression as feeling extremely tired and always having a "Bleak preoccupation with death, dying, decaying...".
"An Unquiet Mind" is a very descriptive book about Jamison's downward spiral into the life of depression and madness. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the study of people's minds or anyone who is curious about the minds of the psychologically ill.
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