Note to our readers: I am delighted to welcome Nathan DeWall as co-author for this edition of Psychology in Everyday Life. He led our shared revision work for this chapter and Chapters 4, 10, and 11.

Kay Redfield Jamison is both an award-winning clinical psychologist and a world expert on the emotional extremes of bipolar disorder. She knows her subject firsthand: “For as long as I can remember, I was frighteningly, although wonderfully, beholden to moods…as a child, as a young girl…as an adolescent…. Caught up in the cycles of manic-depressive illness [now known as bipolar disorder] by the time I began my professional life, I became, both by necessity and intellectual [choice], a student of moods” (1995, pp. 4–5).

Jamison’s life was blessed with times of intense sensitivity and passionate energy. But like her father’s, it was also an emotional roller coaster. Reckless spending, racing conversation, and sleeplessness alternated with swings into “the blackest caves of the mind.”

Then, “in the midst of utter confusion,” she made a sane and helpful decision. Risking embarrassment, she made an appointment with a therapist, a psychiatrist she would visit weekly for years to come.

“Psychotherapy heals,” Jamison noted. “It makes some sense of the confusion, reins in the terrifying thoughts and feelings, returns some control and hope and possibility from it all.”

This chapter explores therapeutic options for those wanting help.