This work is a personal testimony from Kay Redfield Jamison: the revelation of her struggle with manic depression since adolescence, and how it has shaped her life. The book follows her through college, a love affair, her battle with the illness, bouts of madness, violence and attempted suicide.

The revolution in psychiatry that began in the 1950s led to dramatic advances in the understanding and treatment of manic-depressive illness also known as bipolar disorder. No other mental illness has been the subject of such extensive, clinically useful, and scientifically productive research. Hailed as the most outstanding book in the biomedical sciences when it was originally published in 1990,

Kay Jamison draws on her work as a psychiatrist and researcher in mood disorders to explore connections between manic-depressive illness and artistic activity. She applies what is known about the illness to the lives and works of artists including Byron, Van Gogh, Schumann and Woolf.

A re-evaluation of Virginia Woolf's life and work in terms of current medical knowledge about mental illness, especially manic depression. It shows how Woolf's novels and her personal writings dramatize a struggle to imagine and master psychic fragmentation.

Dispels the silence and shame that surround the subject of suicide and provides a better understanding of the suicidal mind and a chance to recognize the person at risk. This book offers an analysis that helps us to comprehend the profound and disturbing sense of loss created in those left behind.