Despair Quotes by Kay Redfield Jamison

“...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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

An ardent temperament makes one very vulnerable to dreamkillers.

— Kay Redfield Jamison

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

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

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

We expect well-informed treatment for cancer or heart disease; it matters no less for depression.

— Kay Redfield Jamison

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

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