Mental Book Review: "An Unquiet Mind" - Free Paper Sample

Introduction

Bipolar disorder relates to a collection of affective diseases characterized by manic or hypomanic and depressive episodes. The primary diagnosis and treatment for these psychiatric illnesses depend on a careful assessment of the patient's behavior and subjective reports of abnormal experiences. However, these categories tend to mask substantial heterogeneity. Therefore, due to heterogeneity within and considerable overlap between actions, finding the appropriate diagnosis and treatment for psychiatric illnesses becomes a significant challenge. Also, individuals living with bipolar disorder often experience persistent residual symptoms, psychosocial functioning problems, and an overall lower quality of life than the general population. Besides, patients with bipolar illness are often alienated from friends and family, bringing suicidal thoughts and new behaviors such as substance abuse, crime, and extreme gambling.

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Kay Redfield Jamison’s book “An Unquiet Mind” explores several ways society stigmatizes mental illness. The author discusses how stigmatization relegates the patients physically, ideologically, and professionally, which reduces their quality of life. However, Jamison uses her experiences with manic depression and life struggles to change how people perceive it. In this book, which was first published in 1995, Jamison discusses her family life and career story, love relationships, mental suffering, and the stigma borne from her illness. In the end, the novel proves to be not only a memoir of moods and madness but also an illuminating piece that educates its readers concerning mental issues and the significance of speaking up.

Content Summary

The field of medicine and nursing holds that personal narratives about a specific illness are essential to the diagnosis and treatment process since they give meaning to the disorder and create order out of disparate facets of experience. It is one of the medical world's strategies that enables medical providers to offer the most effective and influential diagnostic and treatment procedures for maniac depression, currently known as bipolar disorder. Various technological advancements in recent periods, such as social media, have helped disseminate information concerning the disease. Also, autobiographical accounts such as Kay Redfield Jamison’s “An Unquiet Mind” have made crucial steps in changing the public’s perception and attitude towards the disorder. Kay has done so by tackling both the personal and medical consequences of bipolar disorder. The memoir is divided into four major parts, illustrating her struggles with the illness from early childhood, through resistance to medication and her professional career in psychology. In the first section of the book titled “The Wild Blue Yonder," Jamison describes her childhood and early life as part of a military family and its contributions to the illness's development. For instance, Kay reveals that by fifth grade, along with her siblings, they had attended four different elementary schools and lived in various cities and countries (Jamison, 1995). As a result, she was forced to make new friends after every family relocation and had a complicated relationship with her older sister. However, her parents supported her professional interests in writing poetry, school plays, science, and medicine.

Besides, Jamison revealed that she had a happy childhood and received massive encouragement to pursue her medical and scientific interests from her parents, physicians, parents’ friends, and families in the Air Weather Service. However, at the age of fifteen, her world began to fall apart, and she experienced massive life changes that psychologically affected her. First, it commenced with changing schools from Washington to California, where she encountered a unique ritual chant that required her to stand in front of the class and sum up her life in three minutes. To her, performing the routine was complicated and ridiculous since the room was full of strangers and children from wealthy families consisting of parents working in the industry. Secondly, she missed her boyfriend, whom she had left in Washington, and her happy life filled with a supportive family and good friends (Jamison, 1995).). Thirdly, unlike in Washington, where she was a school leader and captain of sports teams, Jamison struggled to establish herself as an athlete and faced fierce competition from the academic front. Therefore, she found it humiliating and discouraging to be behind in every subject that she undertook. After moving to California, her family life deteriorated with her brother leaving for college, her mother busy pursuing professional goals, and her father struggling with depressive episodes (Jamison, 1995). As a result, Jamison embarked on spending the most time with her new boyfriend and friends and pet dog as an escape route to survive her home life's turmoil.

During this period in his senior high school years, and changing circumstances, Jamison experienced her first episode of hypomania that was later followed by manic depression. Despite passing through the phase quickly, she began experiencing memory loss, the emergence of suicidal thoughts, and death topics (Jamison, 1995).). Other signs and symptoms relate to total exhaustion as Kay was too tired to get out of bed in the morning, walk to school, and decide on the clothes to wear. Also, she began isolating herself by avoiding talking to people and spending more time alone in the school library. As a result, Jamison ventured into serious smoking and drinking vodka every morning before school. Jamison lived in denial of her situation as she turned down several efforts of help from her friends and teacher, who had noticed her despair and loneliness. However, she managed to survive the terrible wounds from the depression encounters and proceeded to pursue her undergraduate studies in clinical psychology at the University of California (UCLA). Unlike other students, college was a terrible struggle for Jamison, marked by recurrent violent nightmares and dreadful moods.

In the second section of the memoir titled "A Not So Fine Madness," Jamison describes how her mania episodes affected her personal and professional life both positively and negatively. For instance, her increased energy and emotions enabled her to be socially active in her new workplace and effectively execute her responsibilities. She was excited about the freedom to pursue her dream career interests, and therefore she worked hard and tirelessly with no or little sleep. At this time, she did not realize that decreased sleep was one of the disorder's causes and symptoms (Jamison, 1995). On the other hand, the heightened energy and her medical condition significantly influenced the end of her first marriage. The illness made her increasingly irritable, restless, and continuously rebelling against her husband’s kindness, warmth, love, and stability (Jamison, 1995). Other characteristics of mania observable in her behavior relate to reckless spending that made her encounter huge debts, which her brother later settled. Afterward, she began to have vivid hallucinations that terrified her and forced her to call a friend who advised her to take lithium and consider professional assistance from a psychiatrist. In an attempt to diagnose the disorder, her friend recommended that take a break from her work duties, talked her family members into offering support, and prescribed the dosage for antibiotics and lithium.

After this, Jamison visited a psychiatrist (looking afraid and embarrassed) who diagnosed her as manic-depressive and prescribed lithium indefinitely. However, due to the medications' side effects and rejection of the diagnosis, Jamison quit taking lithium, which led to severe depressive episodes that resulted in a fatal suicide attempt. In the end, she acknowledges the significance of her family members and psychotherapy in the recovery process. In the third part of the memoir titled "This Medicine, Love," Jamison describes her romantic stories' positive influence in accepting and coping with her situation. In the last section, "An Unquiet Mind," Jamison extensively explores the struggles experienced by patients with mental illness related to stigma. Due to the feeling of embarrassment and shame, most patients fail to share their personal experiences with manic depressive illness, which only exaggerates the symptoms.

Writers’ Review

The book “An Unquiet Mind” by Kay Jamison helps its readers to understand bipolar disorder from two critical angles. First, the memoir provides the contributing factors and several avenues through which the disease develops within an individual. My favorite part of Kay's biography is how it is unique and different from other books about bipolar disorder. It is because the author addresses the subject based on her first-hand experience of being a long-term victim of the disease. She provides real-life causes for the disorder and explores the stigmatization associated with the disease everywhere. My second favorite part of the text relates to the author’s exploration of the disorder's actual nature and the offering of practical solutions to the issue.

However, my least favorite part about the text relates to the author’s rebellion against the renaming of the disease from manic depressive illness to bipolar disorder. She argues that the new name (bipolar disorder) does not provide an adequate description of the medical condition as it fails to separate between depression and manic-depressive illness. However, in my opinion, the term bipolar disorder allows for more clarity during diagnosis, unlike the former name, which denoted a wide array of mental illnesses. Also, the terms "manic," depression," and “mania” are famously associated with massive stigma rather than clinical depression.

Writer’s Perspective: Take Away

Reading Jamison's book provides comprehensive knowledge concerning various aspects of bipolar disorder. In my case, the memoir increased my understanding of the potential struggles that patients might experience to come to terms with their mental conditions. From Jamison's experiences, I learned that patients could refuse to open up about manic depression due to a feeling of embarrassment and fear of stigma from everywhere within society.

The reading also offers critical lessons concerning the diagnosis of the disease by providing various signs and symptoms such as loss of memory, restlessness, tiredness, suicidal thoughts, and social inactivity. Besides, the book revealed different treatment strategies, such as visiting a psychiatrist, lithium medications, and continuous support from close friends and family members.

Clinical Application

The reading provides critical knowledge that registered nurses (RN) can apply in any clinical setting when attending to someone with mental illness. First, through Jamison, an RN will understand that the disorder starts in adolescence or early childhood and is characterized by adverse effects on the victims and their families. The impacts include educational difficulties, psychosocial dysfunction, interpersonal problems, and severe suicidal thoughts. From the book, the RNs can understand that the disease can persist in one's adulthood if not treated in its early stages. At this stage, bipolar disorder is characterized by job-related problems and marital concerns.

Elsewhere, the book's knowledge enables the nurses to understand various treatment options, including different mood stabilizers such as lithium. The treatment option provides the appropriate dosage for the medication and the potential side effects of the medicines.