By
Michelle McCollum
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Kay Redfield Jamison, author and professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, was recognized yesterday for her writing about her experiences as both a manic depressive and a psychiatrist.
Jamison received the Schorr Family Award for Distinguished Contribution in Furthering Public Understanding of Mental Illness. Si and Eleanor Schorr, local advocates of mental health awareness for 25 years, created the award in 1995.
"Their daughter got diagnosed (with a mental illness) in 1975, and they've been real activists in the community as far as mental health and mental illness goes," said Cindy Greer, executive producer of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
For six years, the award has honored those in the mental health field who show exceptional skills in educating the community and facilitating acceptance of mental illnesses.
"There was never an award to recognize people who do outstanding work in mental health or mental illness," Greer said. "This award does just that. (Jamison) is an outspoken advocate for mental illness. For her to be a psychiatrist and one who suffers from mental illness just brings it into a new light."
The award ceremony honored Jamison's outspoken writings and lectures, which describe the prevalence of mental illnesses in the professional community.
Coping with a severe and psychotic form of manic depression, Jamison strives to destigmatize her condition, especially with professionals who have a mental illness.
"Through writing and teaching, I hope to persuade my colleagues of the paradoxical core of this quick silver illness that can both kill and create," Jamison said.
Jamison used her acceptance speech as opportunity to inform her audience of the life-long illness.
"For as long as I can remember, I was frighteningly, although often wonderfully beholden, to moods," she said. "Intensely emotional as a child, mecurial as a young girl, severely depressed as an adolescent, I became both by necessity and by intellectual inclination a student of moods."
Having authored over 100 articles and five books including An Unquiet Mind and Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, Jamison focuses on psychotherapy, bi-polar disorders and manic depression, suicide, and lithium.
Her next book will focus on exuberance, Jamison said.
"It's a very important emotion that doesn't get studied enough - the book on suicide nearly did me in," she said.
"In one word - fantastic," Si Schorr said of Jamison. "She is an incredibly fine scientist with an uncanny ability to deliver her message with eloquence and precision."
Jamison is the recipient of numerous mental health awards, including the American Suicide Foundation Research Award, the Fawcett Humanitarian Award from the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association and the Falcone Prize for research in affective illness from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.
Friends, patients, and colleagues in attendance at the Marvin "Swede" Johnson Building described Jamison as intelligent and remarkable.
The crowd was a "testimony to our honored guest and to the growing importance of (the Schorr Family Award)," said presenter Dr. Allen Gellenberg from the UA Medical School.
The award was co-sponsored by the Schorr family, the University of Arizona Foundation, the Community Partnership of Southern Arizona and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Southern Arizona.
The Schorr Family Award foundation plans to continue moving forward with its service to research in mental health and communication within the public society, Si Schorr said.
