Renowned psychologist, author, creative, and honorary IBPF board member, Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison goes into detail on the expansive cultural history of the treatment and healing of mental suffering. Her recent book, Fires in the Dark: Healing the Unquiet Mind, is a beautiful meditation on the quest and adventure of healing the mind, on the power of accompaniment, and the necessity for knowledge.
Kay Redfield Jamison is the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders, Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and co–director of the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center. She is also Honorary Professor of English at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is the co–author of the standard medical text on bipolar (manic–depressive) illness, which was chosen as the most outstanding book in biomedical sciences by the American Association of Publishers, and author of Touched with Fire, An Unquiet Mind, Night Falls Fast, Exuberance, Nothing Was the Same, and Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire. Her memoir about her experiences with manic–depressive illness, An Unquiet Mind, was cited by several major publications as one of the best books of 1995, on The New York Times Bestseller List for more than five months, and translated into more than thirty languages. Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide was a national bestseller, translated into twenty languages, and selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of 1999. Her book Exuberance: The Passion for Life, was selected by The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle as one of the best books of 2004 and by Discover magazine as one of the best science books of the year. Her most recent book, Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire, was selected as one of the best books of 2017 by The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, The Irish Times, New Statesman, and The Times Literary Supplement. Setting the River on Fire was a 2018 Pulitzer Prize Finalist.
Dr. Jamison did her undergraduate and doctoral studies at the University of California, Los Angeles where she was a National Science Foundation Research Fellow, University of California Cook Scholar, John F. Kennedy Scholar, United States Public Health Service Predoctoral Research Fellow, and UCLA Graduate Woman of the Year. She also studied zoology and neurophysiology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Dr. Jamison, formerly the director of the UCLA Affective Disorders Clinic, was selected as UCLA Woman of Science. She is recipient of the American Suicide Foundation Research Award, the UCLA Distinguished Alumnus Award, the UCLA Award for Creative Excellence, the Endowment Award from the Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School, the Fawcett Humanitarian Award, the Steven V. Logan Award for Research into Brain Disorders from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the William Styron Award from the National Mental Health Association, the Falcone Prize for Research in Affective Illness from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Yale University McGovern Award for excellence in medical communication, and the Mahoney Prize from Harvard University. She served as a member of the first National Advisory Council of the Human Genome Project and later as a member of the National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Mental Health. She has been awarded numerous honorary degrees, including from the University of St. Andrews (Literature), Brown University (Medical Sciences), and the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church (Divinity), and selected as one of five individuals for the public television series “Great Minds of Medicine”, and chosen by Time magazine as a “Hero of Medicine”. She was Distinguished Lecturer at Harvard University in 2002 and the Litchfield Lecturer at the University of Oxford in 2003. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the recipient of the Lewis Thomas Prize, the Sarnat Prize from the National Academy of Medicine, and a MacArthur Fellowship.