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Kay Redfield Jamison was born into a military family and grew up around air-force bases from Florida to Puerto Rico. In her late twenties, a few months after becoming an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, she had her first episode of manic depression. Her account of the fight to gain control of the disorder – and accept the gruelling treatment regime – is told in An Unquiet Mind (Picador, 1997). She is now professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her latest book, Exuberance: The passion for life, is published…