A Memoir of Moods and Madness

   This is a beautifully written book by a psychologist who suffers from manic-depressive illness.  Mood disorders are the author's professional specialty, and she has had the advantage of access to the best available treatment, as well as a supportive family and friends. 

   The excerpts from the book (below) convey a sense of the book better than any review could. An Unquiet Mind is a riveting first-person account of bipolar disorder, from the heights of mania to the depths of the blackest depression.

   The author's single greatest regret is never having children.  A reasoned discussion of whether she should have, given the extensive history of suicide attempts and bipolar disorder on her father's side, is the only thing missing from this first-person account.

From An Unquiet Mind:

--"There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones."

   "Shyness goes, the right words and gesture are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty… But, somewhere, this changes… Everything previously moving with the grain is now against--you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind."

--"Violence, especially if you are a woman, is not something spoken about with ease. Being wildly out of control--physically assaultive, screaming insanely at the top of one's lungs, running frenetically with no purpose or limit, or impulsively trying to leap from cars--is frightening to others and unspeakably terrifying to oneself. In blind manic rages I have done all of these things…"

--"Hospitals and professional organizations need to acknowledge the extent to which untreated doctors, nurses, and psychologists present risks to the patients they treat."