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Before we start, we just want to let you know that this episode does talk about

sensitive topics, including suicide, suicidal ideation, and depression.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hi, shortwaver's Emily Kwong here, and today we are going to talk about bipolar disorder.

Around 40 million people around the world have bipolar disorder, which involves cyclical swings between moods, from depression to mania.

In depression, the mood is overwhelmingly hopeless, despairing, lack of pleasure than things that you would ordinarily find

pleasure in.

The mood in mania most of the time is euphoric, expansive, grandiose.

People feel like you can do anything.

Boundless energy.

Kay Redfield-Jamison is a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

She has written extensively about bipolar disorder, from medical textbooks to personal memoirs about her own experience.

Kay was one of the first scientists living with bipolar to write a memoir about that experience.

It's called an unquiet mind.

Growing up, she loved school. She jumped out of bed each morning and couldn't wait to see her friends.

But when she was 17, a senior in high school, she suddenly got severe depression.

And all of a sudden, I had not only had no energy, I was morbid, I wanted

only to die. I had never had any of these thoughts before, which is not uncommon. Some people have

kind of pre-morbid personalities that are consistent with this. Other people are just like I am.

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