Depression and Related Affective Disorders Association (DRADA) was founded in 1986 by a group of doctors, nurses, and lay persons to provide another form of support to individuals struggling with depression and bipolar illness. In the beginning, this support was provided by mutual help support groups alone. DRADA has grown significantly since then and now offers many programs including support groups, accurate information for our community and educational services.

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SCOTT AND ZELDA FITZGERALD a report on a persentation 1 by Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., 2 Smooth Sailing, SUMMER 1996

Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, coauthor of Manic-Depressive Illness, and author of both Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament and the recently published An Unquiet Mind, presented a lively discussion of some of the lesser-known writings of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

In 1936, Scott Fitzgerald published in Esquire magazine a series of three essays dealing directly with depression, which he was experiencing. The first, The Crack-Up, was published in February; the second, Handle with Care, in March; and the third, Putting It Together, in April. Dr. Jamison described these essays as "dark, dreadful, and utterly desolate," with an enormous "sense of bleakness." They vividly express the feelings Scott Fitzgerald experienced during an intense depression. Because he wrote them during it, not afterward, they have great clarity and impact. He wrote "from the bone." He "hated the night and hated the day," and referred to himself as "a cracked plate." Anyone who has endured a severe depression can identify with those descriptions.

On the whole, these essays were poorly received in the literary world. Scott Fitzgerald's friend Ernest Hemingway criticized him for exposing his personal life to the public. On the other hand, many in the public who read the articles delighted that someone could understand and describe their own mental breakdowns so clearly. Scott Fitzgerald died that same year of 1936, and on his gravestone was written "So we beat on boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Regarding Zelda Fitzgerald, Dr. Jamison made it clear that her illness was probably manic depression, not schizophrenia, as has often been claimed. She was a talented writer in her own right and kept journals from the time she was in the fourth grade. Unfortunately, during an episode of illness, she burned them all.

During the question period, a member of the audience asked about the impact of Dr. Jamison's book An Unquiet Mind on her professional career. (Recently published, An Unquiet Mind is the candid narrative of Dr. Jamison's many years of dealing with her own manic-depressive illness, keeping it hidden from her colleagues and patients.) According to Dr. Jamison, her colleagues at Johns Hopkins have been extremely supportive. In response to another question, Dr. Jamison said that three-quarters of the persons who are treated with lithium feel as productive when taking it as they do when not taking it, but noted that lithium does have a profound effect on the central nervous system. Yet another question prompted her to state her impression that people with a personal and/or family history of mental illness often drift into the psychotherapy professions; and the prevalence of affective disorders and suicide is higher in physicians than in the general population.

Parallels can be drawn between the Fitzgerald depression essays and An Unquiet Mind. Both Scott Fitzgerald and Dr. Jamison wrote about their personal experiences with mental illness openly and very courageously. The risks they took, both personally and professionally, were enormous. We owe them a debt of gratitude. They give those struggling with a mental illness hope for recovery; they show that persons with a mental illness can still be productive and functional much of the time; they help, through their writing, to ameliorate feelings of isolation that most persons with mental illness often feel; and they enrich immeasurably our under-standing of the personal experience of mental illness. By Lynne A. Farbman, L.C.S.W.C.

1 Presented at the DRADA/Johns Hopkins symposium, Baltimore, Maryland, April 1996