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Everyone has good cause for suicide, or at least it seems that way to those who search for it. (74)

Kay Redfield Jamison

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Kay Redfield Jamison
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: June 22
Essayist
Psychologist
Everyone
Seems
Way
Good
Search
Suicide
Cause
Least
Causes

More quotes by Kay Redfield Jamison

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Conditions of thought, memory, and desire, persuaded by impulse and irrationality, are influenced as well by personal aesthetics and private meanings.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully much that is neither.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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The quickness and flexibility of a well mind, a belief or hope that things will eventually sort themselves out-these are the resources lost to a person when the brain is ill.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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I am reminded of the importance of small kindnesses.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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The assumption that rigidly rejecting words and phrases that have existed for centuries will have much impact on public attitudes is rather dubious.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers...Restlessness and discontent are vital things... Intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways less intense emotions can never do.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Manic depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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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 somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Suicide Note: The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. -Langston Hughes
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name it is a tragedy
Kay Redfield Jamison
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I think wanting to write is a fundamental sign of disease and discomfort. I don't think people who are comfortable want to write.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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I think people don't understand how intimately tied suicide is to mental illness, particularly to depressive illness and bipolar illness.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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There is always a part of my mind that is preparing for the worst, and another part of my mind that believes if I prepare enough for it, the worst won’t happen.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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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
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Anyone who suggests that coming back from suicidal despair is a straightforward journey has never taken it.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist, and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse.
Kay Redfield Jamison