Author and Professor of Psychiatry,
The John Hopkins University
Kay Redfield Jamison is Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine and Honorary Professor
of English at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She
is the co-author of the standard medical text on manic-depressive
illness, which was chosen in 1990 as the "Most Outstanding
Book in Biomedical Sciences" by the American Association
of Publishers, and author of Touched with Fire, An Unquiet
Mind, and Night Falls Fast. She is the author or co-author
of five books and more than 100 scientific articles about
mood disorders, suicide, psychotherapy, and lithium. Her memoir
about her own experiences with manic-depressive illness, An
Unquiet Mind, was selected by The Boston Globe, Entertainment
Weekly and the Seattle Post Intelligencer as one of the best
books of 1995. An Unquiet Mind was on The New York Times Bestseller
List for more than five months and was translated into fifteen
languages. Her most recent book, Night Falls Fast: Understanding
Suicide, was a national bestseller, translated into twelve
languages, and selected by The New York Times as a "Notable
Book of 1999." Jamison is currently working on her newest
book, Exuberance: The Vital Emotion, to be released in 2003.
Dr. Jamison completed 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 Pre-doctoral 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 and
has been cited as one of the "Best Doctors in the United
States." She is the recipient of the American Suicide
Foundation Research Award, the UCLA Distinguished Alumnus
Award, the UCLA Award for Creative Excellence, the Siena Medal,
the Endowment Award from the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard
Medical School, the Fawcett Humanitarian Award from the National
Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association, 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 Falcome Prime
for research in affective illness from the National Alliance
for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, and the Yale
University McGovern Award for excellence in medical communication.
Dr. Jamison was a member of the first National Advisory Council
for Human Genome Research.