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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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Kay Redfield Jamison
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: June 22
Essayist
Psychologist
Even
Somehow
Psychotic
Life
Essential
Moods
Essentials
Dealt
Notion
Temporary
Oneself
Reactions
Behavior
Extremes
Seen
Substance
Part
Mood
Understandable

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Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name it is a tragedy
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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.
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Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome.
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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.
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Others would say to me, 'It is only temporary, it will pass, you will get over it,' but of course they had no idea how I felt, although they were certain that they did. Over and over and over I would say to myself, If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?
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The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.
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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.
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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.
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Suicide Note: The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. -Langston Hughes
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Anyone who suggests that coming back from suicidal despair is a straightforward journey has never taken it.
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We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime.
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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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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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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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Mood disorders are terribly painful illnesses, and they are isolating illnesses. And they make people feel terrible about themselves when, in fact, they can be treated.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting
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.
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Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.
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In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief and they really need to be treated for depression.
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