Kay Redfield Jamison: Personal and Professional Perspectives on Bipolar Disorder
DBSA NCA hosted this marvelous and rare event at the George Washington University Auditorium thanks to long-standing board member Kathy Colvin. Thanks to her relentless efforts and various relationships over the years that help us to connect the abstract world of doctors and lab rats, to the people that benefit from the results of their findings, and in the case of Kay Jamison, their own experiences.
The event got off to a rough, but exhilarating start. Where are the books for the book signing? Where is Kay? Where will the book signing be? I was there early to audio record her lecture for a potential podcast. It was a packed event. People had brought their own books for her book signing. I myself, bought, Night Falls Fast. I had already read Exuberance: A Passion for Life, and Unquiet Mind, her New York Times best-seller.
Kay gave us some memoirs and spoke very candidly. She looked much younger than I thought she would! I think that a large portion of the audience enjoyed hearing her discuss her experiences as a professional with an ongoing, yet treated, mood disorder. What is that like? How do you manage that? How can you teach when you are ill? How can you practice as a doctor? Must we receive our education at Johns Hopkins in order to get the support that you did? Is it the ONLY place in the country with a tolerance and awareness of proactively helping the profession succeed despite whatever is thrown at it, such as students/doctors with addiction, mood disorders, etc.
It was a great inspiration. The audience was extremely diverse.
Something that did make me think was when there was a question about borderline personality disorder. Kay made the distinction that this lecture was about mood disorders. So I guess I have to think about that. I’ve never really thought about any clear differences between mood and personality disorders. (questions for my therapist….)
Tip for the next event: Don’t tell the speaker you own their website domain and that if they want it, they have to buy it from you right away or else it will expire. That’s just NOT cool.
Thanks again to all who helped out at the event and made it such an impacting success. I think this event was important and meaningful to many people and that is definitely what matters.
- Tabetha. VP. DBSA NCA.
September 6th, 2008 at 11:26 am
There is some speculation that Kay Redfield Jamison’s notable failure to ever discuss a differential diagnosis in her own case and her obsessive insistence on differentiating mood disorders from Borderline PD (when much leading research shows intense overlap with axis I disorders in general, especially major recurrent depression, PTSD and Bipolar II, and in particular, that at least in the emotionally dysregulated subtype as opposed to the histrionic impulsive one, there is an undeniable overlap with mood disorders) strikes me uneasily as a kind of denial that runs through much of her otherwise brilliant writing. (Another example is her highly nuanced description of Lord Byron’s character, versus the single mindedness of her use of “manic-depressive illness” as sole explanation.)
Impulsiveness and alcohol abuse and uneven educational goals in her early adulthood possibly masking the pain of a troubled childhood and early trauma, are stated in her autobiography, but never “diagnosed”.
As one critic remarked “The firsthand
and phenomenologically thorough account of her life,
including her decision to abandon her original plans for a
medical career, suggests features of an attention deficit disorder
with hyperactivity and borderline personality disorder
as a comorbid, if not alternative, diagnosis. The latter
might have been obliterated as a personal scotoma because
the author is conversant with personality disorders from her
abnormal psychology studies.”
Further and greater disservice is done when she (wrongly) equates Borderline PD with Antisocial PD in Night Falls Fast. Again while there is trait overlap in certain cases (as BPD may also overlap with almost all other PD’s, and about half of those with BPD have “avoidant” traits instead of “histrionic” or other traits from “cluster B”, Jamison’s confounding the two is at best inaccurate, and at worst, smacks of bad faith.
Just like the rest of us, she wants to be seen as a “good, caring human being”. She could have done a lot more for those suffering from mental illnesses however if she had really taken on and brought to light the most severely stigmatized disorder of them all.