Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
by Kay Redfield Jamison
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kay Redfield JamisonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-10-10
ISBN: 0375701478
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
Book Review: This book is a warning.
Summary: 5 Stars
In 2001, I hiked from Florida to Quebec with a group of five others, to raise money for a hunger charity. When we passed through Boston, a friend of mine loaned me this book.
This book is a history of suicide, written by someone who has been manic-depressive and suicidal. The history is well-researched, complex, extensive, and disturbing. At times, reading this book was like wrapping my mouth around the exhaust pipe of a truck, with clouds of soul-corroding blackness filling every corner of my being. The book just contains so much sadness and grief: the sadness of the depressed people who have taken their own lives...the grief of their families...and the seemingly unreconcilable wrongness of a world where these sort of things happen all the time.
When I read it, everything I read seemed to be about my older sister, LeeAnne. The descriptions of depression all seemed to be about her, about how she behaved and talked, and in all of the accounts, the depressed people then killed themselves, or tried to. They died, and were gone forever.
It terrified me, but I was relieved to have read this, and I felt like I'd read it just in time. Night fell fast, the other hikers and I made camp in a rainstorm in a dense, wet grove of trees in New Brunswick, Canada. I left my tent and gear to go find a payphone at the flooded parking lot of a nearby truckstop. I called my sister and left a message; I told her I loved her, and told I would call her back that week.
In hindsight, I should have called every hour of every day until I reached her. In hindsight, I should have called every family member and had them call her too.
Because, two days later, my sister was dead.
Dead from too many Ibuprofen and sleeping pills.
Dead for the rest of my life.
Dead forever.
This book is a warning, a thoroughly researched, scientifically and emotionally valid look at depression and suicide.
Anyone who has a depressed family member or friend needs to read this. So does anyone who has been depressed themselves--though maybe not while depressed, as it might give you ideas.
Your soul will darken for a while after reading this, but you will also become more aware. My family and I use to joke about how my sister was always so gloomy, but this book will show you that depression is not something to laugh about.
It's serious.
This book could save your life, or the life of someone you love...if you read it soon enough...if you act on what you've read. If you act now.
Summary of Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
From the author of the best-selling memoir An Unquiet Mind, comes the first major book in a quarter century on suicide, and its terrible pull on the young in particular. Night Falls Fast is tragically timely: suicide has become one of the most common killers of Americans between the ages of fifteen and forty-five.An internationally acknowledged authority on depressive illnesses, Dr. Jamison has also known suicide firsthand: after years of struggling with manic-depression, she tried at age twenty-eight to kill herself. Weaving together a historical and scientific exploration of the subject with personal essays on individual suicides, she brings not only her remarkable compassion and literary skill but also all of her knowledge and research to bear on this devastating problem. This is a book that helps us to understand the suicidal mind, to recognize and come to the aid of those at risk, and to comprehend the profound effects on those left behind. It is critical reading for parents, educators, and anyone wanting to understand this tragic epidemic.
"Suicide is a particularly awful way to die: the mental suffering leading up to it is usually prolonged, intense, and unpalliated," writes Kay Redfield Jamison. "There is no morphine equivalent to ease the acute pain, and death not uncommonly is violent and grisly." Jamison has studied manic-depressive illness and suicide both professionally--and personally. She first planned her own suicide at 17; she attempted to carry it out at 28. Now professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, she explores the complex psychology of suicide, especially in people younger than 40: why it occurs, why it is one of our most significant health problems, and how it can be prevented. Jamison discusses manic-depression, suicide in different cultures and eras, suicide notes (they "promise more than they deliver"), methods, preventive treatments, and the devastating effects on loved ones. She explores what type of person commits suicide, and why, and when. She illustrates her points with detailed anecdotes about people who have attempted or committed suicide, some famous, some ordinary, many of them young. Not easy reading, either in subject or style, but you'll understand suicide better and be jolted by the intensity of depression that drives young people to it. --Joan Price
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