“Everyone has good cause for suicide, or at least it seems that way to those who search for it.” — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
There are relatively few things that kill people that are young other than car accidents and suicide. — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Suicide Note: The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. -Langston Hughes — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
I am by temperament an optimist, and I thought from the beginning that there was much to be written about suicide that… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
I think people don't understand how intimately tied suicide is to mental illness, particularly to depressive illness and bipolar illness. — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Suicide carries in its aftermath a level of confusion and devastation that is, for the most part, beyond description. — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Every seventeen minutes in America, someone commits suicide. Mostly, I have been impressed by how little value our society puts on saving… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“There is an assumption, in attaching Puritan concepts such as "succesful" and "unsuccesful" to the awful, final act of suicide, that those… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Looking at suicide—the sheer numbers, the pain leading up to it, and the suffering left behind—is harrowing. For every moment of exuberance… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible. Suicide will have seemed to its perpetrator the last and… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
There is an assumption, in attaching Puritan concepts such as 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' to the awful, final act of suicide, that those… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Far too many doctors-many of them excellent physicians-commit suicide each year; one recent study concluded that, until quite recently, the United States… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Suicide is a particularly awful way to die: the mental suffering leading up to it is usually prolonged, intense and unpalliated. There… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
It is tempting when looking at the life of anyone who has committed suicide to read into the decision to die a… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“The horror of profound depression, and the hopelessness that usually accompanies it, are hard to imagine for those who have not experienced… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“...even though [my psychiatrist] understood mor than anyone how much I felt I was losing--in energy, vivacity, and originality--by taking medication, he never was… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
It's more common than not that bipolar illness will start in the teens. One of the reasons I spend a lot of time on… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
I think that for thousands of years people have made the observation that there are certain kinds of extreme depressive states that seem to… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
Every seventeen minutes in America, someone commits suicide. Mostly, I have been impressed by how little value our society puts on saving the lives… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them,… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
“I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
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… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe once i was better, that the… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I'm afraid it's something I can't put into words. There's just this heavy,… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
We expect well-informed treatment for cancer or heart disease; it matters no less for depression. — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
Manic depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
People talk about grief as if it's kind of an unremittingly awful thing, and it is. It is painful, but it's a very, very… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share
