Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide [Hardcover]

Kay Redfield Jamison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 1999

From the best-selling author of An Unquiet Mind: the first major book in a quarter century on suicide, with a particular focus on its terrible pull on the young. Night Falls Fast is both compelling and timely: in the United States and across the world there has been a frightening surge in suicides committed by children, adolescents and young adults.  It is the third major cause of death in 19- to 24-year-olds, and the second in college students. Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, an internationally recognized authority on depressive illnesses and their treatment, knows this subject firsthand.  At the age of 28, after years of struggling with manic-depression, she attempted to kill herself. Her survival marked the beginning of a life's work to investigate both mental illness and self-inflicted death.
        
Weaving together a psychological and scientific exploration of the subject with personal essays about individual suicides, Dr. Jamison in this book brings not only her compassion and literary skill, but all of her knowledge, research and clinical experience to bear on this devastating problem. In tracing the network of reasons that underlie suicide, Dr. Jamison gives us astonishing examples of the methods and places people have chosen to kill themselves, and a startling look at their journals, drawings and farewell notes. She also brings us vivid insight into the most recent findings from hospitals and laboratories across the world; the critical biological and psychological factors that interact to cause suicide; the new strategies being evolved to combat them; and the powerful, but insufficiently used treatments from modern medicine.

Night Falls Fast dispels the silence and shame that too often surround suicide; it helps us to understand the suicidal mind, to better recognize the person at risk, and to comprehend the profound and disturbing loss created in those left behind.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"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

From Publishers Weekly

Providing historical, scientific and other helpful material on suicide, Jamison (An Unquiet Mind), a Johns Hopkins psychiatry professor, makes an excellent contribution to public understanding with this accessible and objective book. There is, she asserts, a suicide every 17 minutes in this country. Identifying suicide as an often preventable medical and social problem, Jamison focuses attention on those under 40 (suicides by those who are older often have different motivations or causes). Citing research that suicide is most common in individuals with mental illness (diagnosed or not), particularly depression and manic depression, she clearly describes the role of hormones and neurotransmitters as well as potential therapies, including lithium and other antidepressants. Jamison presents fascinating facts about suicide in families and in twins, gender disparities, and the impact of the seasons and times of day. She also provides poignant portraits of those who have committed suicideAfrom the explorer Meriwether Lewis to a high-achieving Air Force Academy graduateAas well as stories from her own experience. Historical perspective on how different societies have viewed suicide gives context, especially on methods and common locales (in the U.S., San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge is the most popular spot). Critical of her profession for not recognizing suicidal tendencies more readily, Jamison scolds the media and firearms industry as well. The book effectively brings suicide out of the closet, gives general readers insight into symptoms and should increase national awareness of the problem. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (October 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375401458
• ISBN-13: 978-0375401459
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (92 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #117,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #52 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Death & Grief > Suicide

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

182 of 192 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a warning., October 1, 2005

By 

Mike Smith (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (Paperback)

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.

147 of 155 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Night Can Fall Fast, December 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (Hardcover)

This was a wonderfully informative book to help people with mental illness and their families understand what is going on in the mind. It was very helpful to read when not depressed, but I question the safety of reading it if someone is seriously contemplating suicide. This book leaves nothing to the imagination of exactly how to kill yourself. It is very descriptive. It could not have been written by anyone who had not actually walked the halls of depression. I found it interesting that this person (Kay Readfield Jamison) was and is a mental health professional. I also find it interesting that she made a pact of no self harm with another professional and he was not able to keep that contract. She definately writes from the heart and did some pretty hair-raising research for this book.

70 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A disturbing yet powerful book written about suicide, October 25, 1999

By 

Larry Sydnor (Tracy, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (Hardcover)

Not since "The Savage God" by A. Alvarez has a book covered such a difficult subject with compassionate insight and personalized depth. Doctor Jamison writes about her own attempt at suicide due to continuing and maddening bouts with manic-depressive illness. She then continues and opens a window to allow the reader to observe the misconceptions and myths surrounding the issues of suicide. Her concerns and critiques on suicide are remarkably objective considering all she had to go through personally and professionally to write this book. It was also written with insight that transends personal experience, and written without judgement on those who have committed or attempted suicide. I would recommend that one read "The Unquiet Mind" first by Dr. Jamison in order to gain a insight into the background of "Night Falls Fast". To me, Dr. Jamison's books have dislodged my own misplaced notions of suicide and mental illness and have allowed me to understand that compassion and open-mindedness are strong allies that can be used to begin to rid the world of this terrible affliction.