[.ca] Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (ISBN 0375701478)

From Amazon.com:
"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

thanks:
All I have to say is thank you. Thank you for this book.

The Most Complete Book I've Ever Read On Suicide:
Night Falls Fast is impossible to fairly review with the 1000 word limit here on Amazon.com. With this limitation though, I'll try and sum up the understanding one gains in reading this disturbing book. Kay Redfield's thesis is depressingly convincing and accurate: "The causes of suicide lie, for the most part, in an individual's predisposing temperament and genetic vulnerabilities; in severe psychiatric illness; and in acute psychological stress." As sad as her statement is, Kay backs up this notion with personal experience as a bipolar patient, suicide survivor, and psychiatry professor. Not to mention 95 pages of research notes taking up almost a third of the book. She begins with endless and boring statistics regarding suicide; albeit objective, enlightening, and saddening. But the book soon picks up in intensity with the tragic suicide story of Drew Sopirak and his dashed Air Force dreams, thanks to manic depression. For history buffs, an objective essay on the controversial death of Meriwether Lewis is offered as well. In addition to other tragic narratives, Redfield explains the science behind suicide. She delves deeply into the neurotransmitter serotonin, the drugs that have been developed to help regulate mood - especially Lithium, and the genetic factors that often lead to these nasty mood disorders. Finally, she writes on a more hopeful theme: prevention. Her opinions on prevention are depressing, given the uncontrollable variables that cause suicide. Despite this, she still conveys the possibility that many lives can be saved. In addition to the usefulness of psychiatric drugs, she persuasively writes of the need for a combo of medicine and psychotherapy for the patient (rather than just one or the other), family awareness and cooperation, as well as a more open-minded society regarding mental illness. The final chapter is dedicated to those left behind. With insight from her own experience, poetry, and personal narratives, she portrays the anguish, questions, and shame those left behind are forced to deal with. Like most people, I always considered the act of suicide to be the result of extreme personal circumstances: a lifetime of rejection, endless professional failure, years of horrific abuse, etc. But Kay Redfield shatters that myth, proving that the majority of life's survivors do not commit suicide, while very successful people may commit suicide in an instant - thanks to unfortunate heredity, mental illness, and drug abuse. With these three "hits" in place, without help on many levels - medical, psychological, and social - suicide is highly likely. Kay Redfield Jamison is a courageous leader in the field of mental health. She lifts the ignorance, shame, and silence surrounding suicide. And she writes to the public in a chillingly honest, direct, and compassionate manner. Read this book today - and get the real truth.

Scarey:
The book has an exotic name and is very informative on the topic of suicide. But it is a frightening book. I will definitly remember this book for the rest of my life and I get enormous amount of anxiety when I just think about it. I don't recommend this book to anybody because it is like a long research paper(not dry though) but it is not a self-help book. I guess for the general population this book can be very confusing.

Excellent:
This book is excellent. I would recommend this anybody, even people who have not experienced suicide directly. She has a most interesting way of capturing her audience and bringing awareness to a topic that is not always easy to deal with.

An excellent book -- Esp if you are troubled with suicide:
I found this book while reading Solomon's "Noonday Demon." Both books are superb, with this book having more of a specifc focus on suicide. "Noonday Demon" expressly addresses depression, and suicide in that context. This book is broader, and is a very careful, and helpful discussion of the factors that bring a person to suicide. Ms. Jamison does a beautiful job of not only laying out the statistics and studies of suicide, but also threading in the story of her own depression, her own suicide attempt. If you are reading this review, or reading about this book--then you need to get it. You need some help, and this book will give it to you. In addition to this book, I also recommend Alvarez's "The Savage God: A study of suicide."