Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., New York: Knopf, 1999. (Hardback, 432 pages, $26.00)

As many readers know, Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D. is a gifted writer as well as a prominent scientist, professor, and clinician. She has a deep understanding — both professional and personal — of mood disorders and how lethal they can be. Years ago, like many people who suffer terribly from these illnesses, Dr. Jamison attempted suicide. Now she has written a landmark book, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, intended for lay readers as well as for health-care professionals and policymakers.

The book has received significant praise from reviewers. The Baltimore Sun wrote, "Jamison's excellent book is essential reading for all health care providers, for patients and families of those suffering from mental illnesses and for anyone trying to comprehend a relative's or friend's suicide." The New York Times described Night Falls Fast as "at once the most relentless and the most sympathetic book [Jamison] has produced, written with an edifying urgency that surpasses her previous volumes." Paul L. Wachtel of the Washington Post wrote, "Kay Redfield Jamison brings us face to face with the suicidal mind in a manner so intense and penetrating that, paradoxically, the immersion in despair she offers is a source of great pleasure."

Night Falls Fast is divided into four sections, each with several chapters. The first section gives background information, covering the history of suicide, certain considerations in research, and the magnitude of the problem. The next section discusses the psychological disease patterns that underlie suicide attempts, the methods used, and the places where they occur. The third section treats the biology of suicide [including genetic and neurological factors], giving clear, recent information about neurotransmitters [brain messenger chemicals], neurons [nerve cells], synapses [gaps between neurons, across which neurotransmitters carry information], and antidepressants, for example. The last section concerns the prevention of suicide and the effects of suicide on the people left behind. The sections end with related essays such as the one about the explorer Meriwether Lewis, who had a familial and personal history of depression and who apparently committed suicide (after several previous attempts.)

In a way too rarely seen in print, Dr. Jamison's skilled and heartfelt writing gives life to potentially dry information about the rates of suicide, attempted suicide, and "copycat" suicide among young people in America. Keeping these tragedies out of the public eye or minimizing their emotional impact does nothing to prevent them. Dr. Jamison's frank discussion of her bipolar disorder, near-fatal suicide attempt, and longstanding successful treatment may — especially in light of her remarkable accomplishments — inspire people considering suicide to wait and to seek appropriate help.

Dr. Jamison gives us a wake-up call to a gram reality: suicide is widespread and could touch any one of us at any time. But despite its subject, Night Falls Fast is a powerful, beautifully crafted book that will both inform and transform its readers.

by Louise Riemer
DRADA Book Committee.
Smooth Sailing: Winter 2000
Note: Barbara Pilvin and David Seaman contributed to this review.

You can order the book Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide from DRADA at a reduced price.

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