Latest Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• People are more impulsive and they get slightly less impulsive as they get older and the impulsiveness interacting with the depression is particularly devastating and lethal, potentially lethal.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  People, Impulsive, Interacting

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• There are relatively few things that kill people that are young other than car accidents and suicide.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, People, Car

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• I think people don't understand how intimately tied suicide is to mental illness, particularly to depressive illness and bipolar illness.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Thinking, People

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• I think that for thousands of years people have made the observation that there are certain kinds of extreme depressive states that seem to be more likely to produce philosophers, people in the arts, unusually brilliant scientists.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Art, Thinking, Years

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• I think psychotherapy saves lives and is hugely meaningful and I think that one of the unfortunate aspects of prescription drugs working well is that people tend to think that's enough.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Meaningful, Thinking, People

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• From a public health point of view, still the overwhelming problem is that people are not treated enough for depression; depression remains under treated.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Views, People, Problem

  "Medicating Mania". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• I am a huge advocate of prescription drugs given wisely and for the right reasons and the right diagnosis and also psychotherapy.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Drug, Diagnosis, Reason

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• Most people don't have the advantage of being able to evaluate their doctor in advance.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Doctors, People, Able

  "Medicating Mania". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• I, quite literally, woke up from a coma, from having tried to kill myself and it was very clear to me what my psychiatrist had been saying for years. The choice is not between a drug that has side effects or not, life is not ideal. Yes, your drug has side effects and yes if you don't take it you're going to die.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Years, Choices, Drug

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• Mania can be as terrifying as it gets. It is certainly as insane as one gets and so it's frightening when it gets out of control, but there are periods of mania when it can be extremely attractive.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Insane, Attractive, Periods

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• In depression, your capacity to feel just flattens and disappears and what you feel is pain and a kind of pain that you can't describe to anybody. So it's an isolating pain, a completely isolating pain.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Pain, Feels Just, Kind

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• You become aware of an illness by understanding yourself and understanding the meaning that that illness has in your own life, symbolically and, more importantly, quite literally.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Understanding, Illness, Understanding Yourself

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• I think you have waves of awareness and one of the things that I found with grief was actually - I was well prepared for it by the cyclicality of my manic depressive illness because I was used to things coming and going and so forth.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Grief, Thinking, Awareness

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• If people can talk about having breast cancer, why can't people who have mental illness talk about mental illness? Until we're able to do that, we're not going to be treated with the same kind of respect for our diseases as other people.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Cancer, People, Disease

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• I think that when you're depressed, you can't concentrate long enough and well enough to read for the most part; some people can, but by and large people - that's one of the first things that goes, is the capacity to read meaningful literature. With grief, that's not true. For a while you can't read, but then you really are amenable to solace.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Meaningful, Grief, Thinking

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• I don't think grief of grief in a medical way at all. I think that I and many of my colleagues, are very concerned when grief becomes pathological, that there is no question that grief can trigger depression in vulnerable people and there is no question that depression can make grief worse.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Grief, Thinking, People

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief and they really need to be treated for depression.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Grief, People, Needs

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• 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 interesting sort of thing to go through and it really helps you out.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Grief, People, Interesting

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

• I think that one of the many advantages of death accruing over a long period of time is that you do have time to meet a lot of other people who are going through similar situations and one of the great delights of our life actually was sitting around in labs waiting for the results of tests and talking to other people who were waiting to find out whether their cancer numbers were going in the right direction or not.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Cancer, Thinking, Numbers

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.