The Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health 2015 Honoree
Kay Redfield Jamison, PhD Dalio Family Professor in Mood Disorders and Professor of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center
The 2015 Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health is awarded to Kay Jamison for her profound insights into affective disorders and suicide that have not only advanced the field, but also transformed public understanding. Her work combines cutting-edge research with deeply humanistic and often personal narratives—an approach that has cut through stigma to become a cornerstone of the field and a beacon for sufferers of mood disorders.
Dr. Jamison is the co-author of Manic-Depressive Illness, the standard medical textbook in the field, and has written more than 125 scientific and clinical articles about mood disorders, suicide, creativity, and lithium. However, her greatest impact may lie in her works of narrative nonfiction, which probe links between creativity and mental illness, trace the natural history of affective disorders, and explore the suicidal mind.
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, which chronicles Dr. Jamison’s own experience with manic-depressive illness, marked a major milestone in combating stigma in the psychiatric profession. It remained on the New York Times best-seller list for 5 months and has been translated into 25 languages. Johns Hopkins Hospital, where Dr. Jamison co-directs the Mood Disorders Center, praises the book on its website as a kind of “bibliotherapy” that does “what pills can’t: It lets patients read for themselves how destructive not taking their medicine can be, it tells of the healing power of structure, psychotherapy and a social network. It tells them they’re not alone.”
A subsequent work, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, was widely praised as a major contribution to the public’s understanding of the complex factors that influence suicidal behavior. Dr. Jamison’s most recent book, Nothing Was the Same, explores the process of grief with her trademark combination of personal and scientific insight.
Dr. Jamison is the recipient of numerous national and international literary and scientific prizes, including the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing About Science and a MacArthur Fellowship. The Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health honors outstanding achievement in improving mental health, recognizing achievements in basic science, clinical application, and public policy that lead to progress in the understanding, etiology, prevention, treatment, or cure of mental disorders or the promotion of mental health. The prize was established in 1991 by Rhoda Sarnat, a clinical social worker, and her husband Bernard Sarnat, a researcher and plastic and reconstructive surgeon, who witnessed firsthand the deleterious effects of mental illness on the lives of those they served. The prize is accompanied by a medal and $20,000.
Past Recipients
2014 2007 1998 Vikram Patel, FMedSci Beatrix Hamburg, MD David Kupfer, MD Wellcome Trust, London School of and University of Pittsburgh Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and David Hamburg, MD 1997 Public Health Foundation of India Weill Cornell Medical College Herbert Pardes, MD 2013 2006 Columbia University William T. Carpenter, MD Jack D. Barchas, MD 1996 University of Maryland School of Weill Cornell Medical College Leon Eisenberg, MD Medicine 2005 Harvard Medical School 2012 Floyd E. Bloom, MD 1995 Huda Akil, PhD Neurome, Inc. Samuel B. Guse, MD and 2004 Washington University in St. Louis Stanley J. Watson, MD, PhD Albert J. Stunkard, MD School of Medicine University of Michigan, Ann Arbor University of Pennsylvania Barnes and Renard Hospital 2011 2003 1994 William E. Bunney, MD Aaron T. Beck, MD Myrna Weissman, PhD University of California, Irvine, School University of Pennsylvania Columbia University College of of Medicine 2002 Physicians and Surgeons and and Ellen Frank, PhD David Satcher, MD, PhD Morehouse School of Medicine Gerald Klerman, MD University of Pittsburgh School of Cornell University Medical College Medicine 2001 Michael L. Rutter, MD 1993 2010 Seymour S. Kety, MD Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD King’s College London and National Institute of Mental Health Mount Sinai School of Medicine Harvard Medical School and Solomon H. Snyder, MD Charles P. O’Brien, MD, PhD Johns Hopkins University School of 1992 University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Daniel X. Freedman, MD Medicine 2000 University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine 2009 Rosalynn Carter David Mechanic, PhD The Carter Center Rutgers University 1999 2008 Nancy C. Andreasen, MD, PhD Paul R. McHugh, MD University of Iowa Hospitals and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Clinics Public Health
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