Originally appeared in the Boston Book Review. Date
Approximate.
Kay Redfield Jamison, a Professor of Psychiatry at Johns
Hopkins Medical school, is known for her two studies of bipolar disorder,
"An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness" (1995), and "Touched
With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament"(1993).
Her new book, "Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide", is an
examination of suicide among the young.
The science is of the first water; it is fast-paced, and it
is laying down, pixel by pixel, gene by gene, the dendritic mosaic of the brain.
Psychologists are deciphering the motivations for suicide and piecing together
the final straws -- the circumstances of life -- that so dangerously ignite the
brains vulnerabilities. And throughout the world, from Scandinavia to
Australia, public health officials are mapping a strategy to cut the death rate
of suicide. Still the, effort seems unhurried. Every seventeen minutes in
America, someone commits suicide.
"Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide"
HB: Is there more suicide among young people than in the
past?
