“Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.”

—  Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Last update Oct. 29, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based t…" by Kay Redfield Jamison?
Kay Redfield Jamison photo
Kay Redfield Jamison 31
American bipolar disorder researcher 1946

Related quotes

Jane Goodall photo

“As I traveled, talking about these issues, I met so many young people who had lost hope. Some were depressed; some were apathetic; some were angry and violent. And when I talked to them, they all more or less felt this way because we had compromised their future and the world of tomorrow was not going to sustain their great-grandchildren.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Then & Now: Jane Goodall (2005)

Barbara Kingsolver photo

“There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

Source: The Bean Trees

Elizabeth Wurtzel photo

“I was so scared to give up depression, fearing that somehow the worst part of me was actually all of me.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Leonard Cohen photo

“It’s a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too.”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

“People get the wrong idea about me, they think I'm depressed or something - I'm not depressed. I don't wish that I was dead, I wish... that you were all dead.”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Stand-up, Excited for You to See and Hate This (2020)

William Glasser photo

“Such people who choose to depress are not mentally ill; their brain chemistry is not abnormal. It is changed from what it is when they are happy, but that change is perfectly normal for the total behavior, depressing, they are choosing…. The brain chemistry no more causes his depressing than sweating causes running. It is the choice to depress or to run that results in both.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Choice Theory (1997), p. 85

Ned Vizzini photo

“Sometimes I just think depression's one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there's so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

William S. Burroughs photo

“The rudeness of many Americans depressed him, a rudeness based on a solid ignorance of the whole concept of manners, and on the proposition that for social purposes, all people are more or less equal and interchangeable.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Source: Queer: A Novel (1985), Chapter One

Rollo May photo

“We are more apt to feel depressed by the perpetually smiling individual than the one who is honestly sad.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Paulus : Reminiscences of a Friendship (1973)
Context: We are more apt to feel depressed by the perpetually smiling individual than the one who is honestly sad. If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.

Leo Tolstoy photo

“These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Related topics