An Unquiet Mind

An Unquiet Mind, written by Kay Redfield Jamison and first published in 1995, is a memoir about a clinical psychologist’s experience living with manic-depressive illness. The book details her life, from her early experiences as a child, through the beginning of her mood swings, her diagnosis of manic-depressive illness, her struggles with the disease, and her eventual management of and control over it, following years of therapy and medication. Aside from having experienced it, Jamison is herself an expert on the subject and has devoted many years to studying mood disorders; she currently holds the position of Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and has written extensively on mood disorders, including manic-depressive illness.

The book is divided into four parts, loosely focused on different periods of her life, although the narrative structure is not always in strict chronological order. Part 1 describes her childhood and the development of her mood swings as a teenager. Jamison spent the majority of her childhood moving around the world due to her father’s status as an Air Force pilot and scientist; despite this, Jamison considers her youth to have been one of relative comfort and stability.