Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes

No pill can help me deal with the problem of not wanting to take pills; likewise, no amount of psychotherapy alone can prevent my manias and depressions. I need both.

Lithium remains the gold standard, but many drugs now treat bipolar disorder. Medication is critical and should be combined with psychotherapy. Compliance is a major problem. Patients believe that once they're better, they no longer need the medication. It doesn't work that way.

I'm manic-depressive, technically bi-polar II with many borderline features.

If you have a friend or a family member who's bipolar, or has panic attack disorder, or is depressed, read up on it a little bit so you can get to know where they're coming from.

I've had this problem since I was in my 20s. They don't call it manic depression anymore. They call it a bipolar disorder, and I'm a Type 2.

Now, bipolar disorder, it goes on a spectrum. There's very severe conditions of it and there are milder ones. I'm lucky enough that it's reasonably mild in my case.

Don't they give you happy pills in this place?

Bipolar disorder is a scary disease, but it is manageable. And I feel blessed that I was able to get the right attention and the right medication to deal with my specific illness.

My manic depression was ravaging my life, but because nobody could see it, many people thought it was a figment of my imagination.

Mania is as bad as it gets. If not treated, it will become worse, more frequent, and harder to treat.

Because of my bipolar disorder, I tend to these mixed states, which are depressed but loud and agitated. So I can be terribly irritable. I go to cognitive behavioral therapy in order not to yell at my children.

I learned that I suffered from bipolar II disorder, a less serious variant of bipolar I, which was once known as manic depression. The information was naturally frightening; up to 1 in 5 people with bipolar disorder will commit suicide, and rates may even be higher for those suffering from bipolar II.

I have a chemical imbalance that, in its most extreme state, will lead me to a mental hospital.

I had had some months of depression. Not serious enough to keep me from work. So, I guess you'd call that a mild depression. It was becoming worse. And I was being treated for it with anti-depressants.

I have people in my family with bipolar disorder, and for years I've watched them struggle with the disorder's extreme moods and often devastating consequences.

I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease.

Bipolar disorder, manic depression, depression, black dog, whatever you want to call it, is inherent in our society. It's a product of stress and in my case over-work.

There's childhood and early onset bipolar, but it transitions in your early adulthood into something a little bit different, and extremely severe. It was at that time that my impulse control just went out the window. Impulse control when you're manic just disappears.

When I'm talking about depression, I'm talking about the more severe forms of depression, and I think that conceptualising as a form of grief is probably not the most effective way of looking at it. I mean, at the end of the day, people suffer enormously, and you want to treat it.

One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you.

When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder the year I turned 50, it was certainly a shock. But as a journalist, knowing a little bit about a lot of things, I didn't suffer the misconception that depression was all in my head or a mark of poor character. I knew it was a disease, and, like all diseases, was treatable.

I'm by no means condemning prescription medicine for mental health. I've seen it save a lot of people's lives.

I'm kind of effectively bipolar.

Every now and then I hear voices in my head, but not very clear. I can't understand what they are saying. It's a mental illness. I have been diagnosed as a manic depressive.

Certainly there is such a thing as chemical depression, and for that, obviously, there are issues that psychotherapists are much more expert at speaking to, but I think there is a low-grade depression that actually prevails in our society. And most of us feel it.